Can i get arthritis from cracking my knuckles

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This then "creates a vacuum that sucks the joint apart rapidly," causing a popping sound in the knuckles. So why do so many people find relief in cracking their knuckles? Cracking your knuckles "feels as if it relieves tension in the joints," Dr. Fackler says. If traction is applied to the joint, it feels as if it loosens up and is more mobile. His conclusion? There have been some other, perhaps more formalised studies carried out.

In , twenty-eight residents in a Jewish nursing home in Los Angeles were asked whether they had ever cracked their knuckles habitually.

Those who had were less likely to have osteoarthritis in their hands later on. In a larger study conducted in Detroit in , researchers examined the hands of three hundred people over the age of The authors say this means knuckle-cracking should be discouraged, but I wonder whether the people who crack their knuckles might feel more discomfort in their hands in the first place.

Could this indicate a predisposition towards problems later on, rather than a cause? The most recent study, published just last year, is the most comprehensive so far, because it looks not only at whether people ever crack their knuckles, but also how often they do it.

You might guess that cracking your knuckles every fifteen minutes could have a very different effect from doing it once a day, but again it made no difference to rates of osteoarthritis.

A variety of gases are continuously dissolved in this fluid. When one cracks a knuckle, the stretching of the capsule lowers the pressure inside the joint and creates a vacuum which is filled by the gas previously dissolved in the synovial fluid. There is no evidence that cracking knuckles causes any damage such as arthritis in the joints. However, a couple of reports in the medical literature are available associating knuckle cracking with injury of the ligaments surrounding the joint or dislocation of the tendons attachments of muscles to bones which improved with conservative treatment.

A study found that after many years of cracking habitual knuckle crackers may have reduced grip strength compared with people not cracking their knuckles.