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Oww...

Fri Aug 19, 2005 2:46 am

My joints on my left hand have been killing me. But first, I think this is relevant.

I crack my bones. I crack my ankles, my wrists, my fingers, and my neck. And I don't crack my bones on my hand in a normal way. I simply bend my fingers down like I was making a fist sharply and well, they crack.

I have to do this. It hurts if I don't crack my bones. I've been doing this for about a year.

But recently, my joints on my left hand are hurting if I crack them, but they hurt even more if I don't. I want to know is this is serious or cracking my bones with hurt my body in anyway.

Fri Aug 19, 2005 4:26 am

Well, they say that cracking your knuckles and such is fine as long as it doesn't hurt when you do it. But you say it does. So...that isn't good.

Fri Aug 19, 2005 4:33 am

Sounds just like me. Except it never hurts when I do it.

Toes, ankle, knee, somewhere in my thigh, all three finger joints on my fingers and one joint on each thumb, wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck, jaw, and every single vertebrae.

All loud, all cracking, all the time.

The best explaination for it is hyper-mobility. The pain however is probably caused by some muscles being unable to keep up with the hyoer mobility of the ligaments or something.

If it hurts though, stop it.

Fri Aug 19, 2005 1:58 pm

Cracking your joints does not cause damage...that's an old wives' tale. What's happening is that you are expanding the joint capsule, which causes a reduction in pressure (Boyle's law, hooray!). This decrease in pressure within the capsule causes nitrogen gas that had built up in the fluid within the joint to bubble out as a gas...when the bubble bursts, it makes that popping sound.

It hurts when you don't pop because the nitrogen builds up, causing the joint to swell slightly. Eventually, the nitrogen would pass out of the joint, but nobody wants to wait that long, do they?

Probably, the pain in your hand is related to how you crack the bones...it might be because you're stretching the ligaments and tendons. Next time, rather than pushing downward (which is what a lot of people do), try gripping the end of a finger and pulling outward. The end result ought to be the same.

Fri Aug 19, 2005 4:02 pm

shapu wrote:Cracking your joints does not cause damage...that's an old wives' tale. What's happening is that you are expanding the joint capsule, which causes a reduction in pressure (Boyle's law, hooray!). This decrease in pressure within the capsule causes nitrogen gas that had built up in the fluid within the joint to bubble out as a gas...when the bubble bursts, it makes that popping sound.

lol. I don't think i'll ever crack my knuckles after reading that :lol:

Zega, I also crack my fingers how you do. They never hurted while cracking, but I have had aching fingers ( sort of a cold-ish feeling in them ), which I always thought was because I cracked them.

BTW Shapu, what you said about alot of people pushing downwards, I haven't seen many, around here people push them in the oppposite direction, backwards, which I have always been afaid to try, looks easy to brake a finger that way.
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