Knuckle-Cracking is Actually Good For You

Of Myths and Results

Tanya Johnson is an outstanding nurse, but has been driving her boss, Dr Robert Szabo nuts for 15 years with her never ending knuckle cracking which makes him want to choke her. Szabo is the former president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand and is also a hand surgeon at the UC Davis Medical Centre. Johnson was constantly told by Szabo to stop with the cracking of her knuckles by saying it wasn’t good for her to which she replied asking him to prove it. But Szabo was unable to.

When Dr Robert Boutin, his colleague who is a radiologist at the same centre asked him to work together on a knuckle-cracking study, Szabo grabbed the opportunity. They together gathered people, along with Johnson herself, who were driven with the needed habit, and perform the action under ultrasound so as to observe what really happened inside the joint. Not only were the knuckles examined before and after the cracking of them, but also the knuckles of a number of those who do not crack their knuckles were also considered, to observe problems inclusive of swellings and weakened grip strength.

Szabo felt certain that the test would prove to his nurse that the cracking of her knuckles had to stop as it was bad. But this didn’t fall in his favour. They found no hand problems in those who cracked their knuckles frequently. As a matter of fact, when a knuckle was cracked, the individual showed an increased range of movement as compared to those whose knuckles hadn’t cracked. The study was presented at a meeting in December of the Radiological Society of North America, although it has not been published.

What causes the crack?

More than simply knowing the pros and cons of knuckle cracking, Szabo and Boutin were keen to know what exactly happened inside the joint that had been cracked. The researchers found something remarkable, by looking at the ultrasounds of around 400 knuckles. They found that when a knuckle was cracked, there was characteristic and a sudden flash in the joint.

They though that when a knuckle is cracked, two surfaces of the joint is being pulled apart, which lowers the amount of pressure in the joint. That pressure lets gas which is mixed with the fluids within the joints to be liberated, and the bright flash observed is a bubble of gas forming. Boutin says that he thinks that is why a joint has more motion post cracking. Maybe lowering the pressure permits the joint to be a little loose and relaxed.

The mythology behind knuckle-cracking

If knuckle cracking is proved to not be bad for you, then how did it come around with a negative approach? A rehabilitative medicine specialist, Dr Greg Kawchuk at the University of Alberta said that, everybody’s aunts and grannies say that it isn’t a good practice, but no one has an idea where that comes from. He mentioned he might know it, based on the fervent reply he received when he published his very own study on knuckle cracking last year.

He also said that they got feedbacks from a lot of people and while a few said that they felt relieved by cracking their knuckles just as many found it pretty disgusting. Perhaps, this could be the reason why generations of grannies and aunts have corrected children to stop with the practice because they simply couldn’t bear the sound. It was his person opinion, but he felt that few of the people felt gross because of it that they created such myths. But this myth does have a scientific side.

A study from 1990 showed that knuckle crackers were more prone to have swelling hands and bad grip strength. But Kawchuk and Boutin pointed out some flaws in the study from more than a one fourth of a century ago. First, if the researchers knew which individual cracked knuckles and which did not and not having known that could have made their evaluations biased.

Secondly, the writers did not maintain transparency as to how they judged grip strength and swelling. Be that as it may, Szabo and Boutin are the first to say that their test wasn’t a final study on cracking knuckles, especially as they observed only short term and not prolonged effects. They say that in the coming years, a greater and better study may refute their findings.

Boutin typed an email saying ‘Knuckle kerfuffles are numerous’ adding an emoji of a smiling face at the end of the sentence. But in the bargain, it clicked to Szabo that he has no valid reason telling his nurse to put an end to cracking her knuckles. He said at the end, that after he reviewed the science behind it, he had a strong opinion that knuckle cracking was on the whole not harmful.