Knuckle cracking doesn't cause arthritis, but frequent cracking may loosen ligaments. Self-spine cracking is different: it only affects joints that already move well, potentially worsening imbalance. A professional adjustment targets dysfunctional joints to relieve nerve pressure, with the crack being a harmless side effect.
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Hey everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well and enjoying yourselves and creating those great experiences out there in your life. You know, one of the questions we get in the clinic that has to do with the cracking and popping sound that sometimes people experience with a chiropractic adjustment actually has to do with cracking of the knuckles, especially parents whose children crack their knuckles. The parents are always asking us, is that bad for them? Is that going to cause arthritis? And I think deep down inside they're hoping that we're gonna say yes so that their children will stop doing the popping and the cracking of their knuckles, right? And I don't know about you, but we do a lot of shopping online for the convenience and for the affordable prices. And you end up with a lot of this packing material. And the cracking of the knuckles kind of reminds me of this packing material, you know? When it cracks. And kids love to do that. And it's kind of fun to do. Even as an adult, it's kind of fun. Yeah, when you have a lot of it and over and over, there's kind of, okay, that's enough. It gets to be a little bit annoying. And that's the same thing with cracking of the knuckles, I think, for some people. Once in a while, you might hear it's not a big deal, but when you have someone around you that's doing it all the time, I think that's the more social aspect that people may not like very much. But they found in the research that the cracking of the knuckles actually doesn't cause arthritis. There's no negative side effects. And unfortunately, it's not the answer that parents want to hear, But it's what the science seems to point out. But they did find in the research that the cracking of the knuckles can cause some looseness in the ligaments and maybe even some extra swelling in the joints. So there may be a side effect there that's not the best thing. Now sometimes at the clinic we have people who come in and they crack their own spine, they pop their own spine, and they do it repeatedly throughout the day sometimes. And this creates a little bit of a bigger concern because the spine is very different than a knuckle. There's over 75 joints in that spine, and sometimes when some are moving really well and some aren't moving that well, and someone goes to crack their own spine, the ones that are allowing that gas to escape or to coalesce and create that cracking sound, what they call a cavitation, are the ones that are already moving well. The ones that aren't moving well don't participate in that, and the person creates or perpetuates a gap between good function, maybe excess function, and no function. When a chiropractor goes to do an adjustment clinically, we only want to affect the dysfunctional joints, the ones that aren't sitting or moving well, and bring them back into harmony with the ones that are sitting and moving well. So that's why there's a lot of specificity, and an adjustment is not about the crack. The crack is just a side effect. It's normal joint physiology. That gas, those little bubbles that come together in the joint to create that popping or snapping sound, is normal physiology. But it's not what a chiropractic adjustment is designed to do. A chiropractic adjustment is more about the intent. It's about what bone in what direction that'll allow to get the pressure off the nerves that will help your body work and operate and feel at its best. And when you do that, bringing things into harmony, that's what creates the health result, not the crack or the pop. So again, like the paper, sometimes enough is enough. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. But overall, with the spine especially, it's not a good idea to be cracking and popping the spine. And the basic logic with that is it does feel good sometimes initially, but over time people have to do it more and more. And if it was actually fixing or correcting something, the person should have to lose the need to have to keep doing that if it was creating a benefit. And that's what happens with chiropractic adjustments, is you lose the need to feel the have to do that because you're restoring function. All right, so that's my long message today about cracking and popping. Okay for the knuckles, not going to cause arthritis, but not a good idea, especially with the spine. All right, so hopefully that helps you guys learn some more information about what goes with the chiropractic treatment. Get out there, keep creating those good experiences, and I'm going to catch you next time.
