Hi friends,

I frequently get asked if it is safe to “crack” your own joints. Before I get to the answer let’s start with what happens when you hear a joint pop.

Cracking a joint is more formally known as joint manipulation in healthcare. When a quick stretch is applied to a joint, the joint surfaces separate, and gas bubbles (carbon dioxide) form and collapse to help normalize the pressure change in the joint. This accounts for the audible pop that you hear when you crack a joint.

Physical therapists and chiropractors often use joint manipulations to help increase motion in specific joints, alter the position of joints, and decrease pain.

Is it bad to manipulate your own joints?

It has been established that cracking your joints doesn’t cause arthritis, but that doesn’t mean that you should do it.

A skilled clinician can target and manipulate specific joints that are “stuck” to improve mobility. When people try to manipulate their own joints, they often manipulate joints that are already hypermobile, or joints that have too much motion, while the joints that don’t move as well remain stuck. This can actually make things worse.

You may get temporary relief when you crack your neck or back, but oftentimes the pain intensifies after.

The body takes the path of least resistance, meaning that if you manipulate a joint that already moves too much, it will feed into the pattern of it doing more work than it is designed to do, while the joints in the surrounding area remain stuck.

Frequently, people who feel the need to crack their own joints already have too much motion, and would therefore benefit from stability and strength training. This is a difficult thing to do because improving joint stability often takes weeks to months of dedicated work while joint manipulation offers dramatic relief temporarily. But if you want to fix the problem, it often takes long periods of work even though you may see little to no results in the short-term.

So, I do not recommend that you manipulate your own joints. If you feel like a joint is stuck or that you don’t have enough motion in a specific area of your body, go see a skilled physical therapist to determine if you could benefit from joint manipulation, stability training, or both.

Until next week,

Kevin