Does cracking your knuckles cause arthritis? - Big Questions - (Ep. 214) | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm Craig, and this is Mental Floss Video. Today I'm going to answer SeanJedi's 97's big question

Does popping your knuckles really cause arthritis? Well, your commenting in all caps causes tinnitus

So, between 25 and 54 percent of people do this, and men are more likely to crack or pop their knuckles than women

But does it cause or increase the risk of arthritis? Let's get started

First I want to explain what's actually happening when you crack your knuckles. The joints in your fingers are diarthroidal joints, which means there are two bones with

cartilage in between them. Around that cartilage is a joint capsule, which also contains synovial fluid

And when you put pressure on your fingers, like when you crack a knuckle, the synovial fluid tries to expand

In order to make that happen, some gases get released in the form of little gas bubbles

So it's like a little knuckle fart. So that doesn't sound like such a big deal, but some still claim that there's a connection

between knuckle cracking and arthritis. There are a few studies about this. One particularly interesting one was conducted over the course of about 50 years by Dr Donald Unger from California Every day he cracked the knuckles on his left hand at least twice and he hardly ever cracked his right hand According to his research paper the knuckles on the left were cracked at least 36 times

while those on the right cracked rarely and spontaneously. He didn't develop arthritis or notice a difference between the two hands over 50 years

but using one guy as an example doesn't really prove much. One of the most commonly cited studies on this was conducted in Detroit during the 90s

There were more than 300 participants, and the researchers observed that people who cracked their knuckles

were more likely to have swelling in their hands in addition to a weaker grip, but they weren't more likely to have arthritis

And a 2010 study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine had similar results

Of the 215 participants between the ages of 50 and 89, 18% of people who cracked their knuckles had arthritis

and 21.5% of people who didn't crack their knuckles had arthritis. So, no connection was found

So, I'm gonna keep cracking my knuckles. Basically, researchers have yet to find a link between knuckle cracking and arthritis

So, crack away, but don't do crack. Thanks for watching Mental Floss Video, which was made with the help of all these knuckleheads

If you have a big question of your own that you'd like answered, leave it below in the comments, and next week we'll take a crack at it