Does cracking your knuckles cause arthritis?

I have heard this all my life. Every single time I crack my knuckles my mom yells at me saying that I am going to get arthritis if I continue to do this. I have been cracking my knuckles pretty much all of my life, and it has become sort of a habit. So it made me wonder if there was actually truth to what she was saying. She is a nurse, so I figured she maybe has some sort of medical facts that support it, however I have also heard many people say that this is only a myth. This intrigued me, so I decided to investigate and find out if cracking your knuckles truly causes arthritis.

A study was done by Dr. Donald Unger to determine if cracking knuckles caused arthritis. He decided to use himself for the experiment. For 50 years he would crack his knuckles on his left hand, but not on his right hand. Dr. Unger reported that he cracked the knuckles on his left hand at least 36,500 times. The result of this study was that despite him cracking the knuckles on his left hand, he did not have any arthritis or differences in either of his hands.

That study was only done of one person, so I still wanted to see more evidence from a larger study of people. A study was done by the Uniformed services University of the Health Sciences. The study looked at 215 people, 20% of them cracked their knuckles regularly. The result of the study was that 18.1% of the people that cracked their knuckles had arthritis while 21.5% of the people who didn’t crack their knuckles had arthritis. The conclusion of this study is that people who crack their knuckles do not have a better chance of getting arthritis than people who don’t.

After looking at both of these studies, I think that it is safe to say that cracking your knuckles will not cause you to get arthritis. There could still be evidence that we have not yet found that proves otherwise, but for now we can say that this is true. Although I think it would be good to do a larger study of this to be more certain. Cracking knuckles may not be beneficial, but it does not seem to be harmful, so now when my mom tells me to stop, I can provide her with some factual evidence of why it is okay.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/259603.php

 

7 thoughts on “Does cracking your knuckles cause arthritis?

  1. David Ross

    Ive been cracking my knuckles since elementary school and do not see any reason to stop in the near future. I was excited to read you article and find out that I won’t get arthritis just because I crack my knuckles. Since it is just air bubbles bursting when we crack our knuckles, I couldn’t imagine any negative longterm effects. One thing I wonder is if cracking knuckles causes them to increase in size. My knuckles are huge and almost seem disproportional to the rest of my hand. Do you think this could be because of my excessive knuckle cracking habit?

  2. Devon Buono

    You and I did the same exact post! I also wrote about Dr. Donald Unger too. The only thing is that his experiment took place over a span of 60 years, not 50. Also your post lacked an explanation on why people assumed the popping noise was damaging. In my post, I went into detail about why we hear this noise, and described an experiment analyzing this. The experiment viewed subjects cracking their fingers under a ultrasound. The results showed that the noise originated from the bursting of an air bubble created by the stretching of our muscle joints. People assumed that this noise was our muscle joints cracking, in turn destroying our joints. The experiment I talked about did not see any signs of stress on our joints, suggesting that cracking our knuckles is harmless (http://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-confirms-what-really-happens-when-you-crack-your-knuckles). Lastly, next time explain what arthritis is. It is possible for your audience to be uneducated about the disease, and may find this whole blog confusing. Overall good job, you picked a very interesting topic.

  3. Angelica Marie Arguello

    I found this post really interesting because I have a habit of cracking my knuckles a lot, it’s kind of the thing I do when I get really nervous. I’m surprised to see that it doesn’t cause arthritis because for a while there I believed that “myth”. I might need a lot more proof that it doesn’t lead to arthritis just due to the fact that the studies were relatively small and I really would like to know for my own good as well.

  4. Naseem Memari

    What I love about reading other people’s blogs is the creativity of subjects on the blogs. I saw this and wanted to read it because we have all heard that cracking your knuckles will give arthritis! I am guilty of cracking mine, but I am sure others are too and wanted to see the insight your article had to offer.

  5. Patrick Ryan

    I like this article because I can relate to it. I crack my knuckles a lot and sometimes I don’t even realize I am doing it. When reading the title of this blog, I got worried for a second because I actually thought it meant you can easily get arthritis. In the blog I like how you used multiple studies and even commented about how the single person study is hard to believe the results from because you always have the possibility of chance. With more people in a study, the more valid the results become. I found this article with a little more information supporting your claim of not causing arthritis…http://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/does-knuckle-cracking-cause-arthritis

    Unfortunately it says that even though it doesn’t cause arthritis, its a good idea to let go of the habit because it causes swollen hands and reduces a persons grip strength.

  6. Melanie Noemi Campos

    I know exactly what study you are talking about! I too have been told that cracking my knuckles would lead me to having arthritis at a young age. I never bothered to educate myself on whether or not this was a true possibility that could stem from my bad habit or if it was just a wives tale. As you said it would be great to have more evidence to back these claims up. That researcher was one out of many people on this planet therefore he could have been the lucky one in a million that was not affected, possibly because of a confounding variable. Here is a website describing the signs of arthritis in the hands http://www.arthritis.org/about-arthritis/where-it-hurts/wrist-hand-and-finger-pain/.

  7. Melanie Noemi Campos

    I know exactly what study you are talking about! I too have been told that cracking my knuckles would lead me to having arthritis at a young age. I never bothered to educate myself on whether or not this was a true possibility that could stem from my bad habit or if it was just a wives tale. As you said it would be great to have more evidence to back these claims up. That researcher was one out of many people on this planet therefore he could have been the lucky one in a million that was not affected, possibly because of a confounding variable.

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