Does cracking your fingers give you Osteoarthritis?
updated the 24 June 2015 à 10:58Will this sound-making gesture for fast-relief – that you can’t seem to stop doing – impair your fingers? Here’s the answer you’ve been waiting for.
If only we got a dollar every time our parents tell us to stop cracking our fingers, we would have gold rings on every one of them. Now that we’re older, we keep hearing friends say that one day we might not be able to move our fingers as we get older. But we can confidently tell them that’s not entirely true.
CRACKING YOUR FINGERS, IS THERE REALLY NO DANGER TO IT?
It was American allergist Dr. Unger who initially took serious interest in the matter. After being told by his mother to stop cracking his knuckles, Dr. Unger spent 50 years of his life experimenting the impact of this small seemingly insignificant gesture. He cracks his left hand twice a day, but never the right. After half a century of this “popping” routine, he found no difference in the knuckles of both hands*. Considering the discovery won an Ig Nobel prize (a parody Nobel prize for unusual and trifling scientific findings), it must be in line with other relevant more rigorous researches.
But where does this crack sound come from? According to rheumatologist Dr. Philippe Brissaud, “Pulling the fingers decreases the pressure within the joint cartilage, and doing so lowers the vaporization temperature of the gas dissolved in the cartilage cells: it forms bubbles 80 per cent of which is carbon dioxide whose sudden burst is audible,” as quoted from La Recherche in 2006.
WHAT HEIGHTENS THE RISK OF OSTEOARTHRITIS?
According to Sing Health, around 40 per cent of Singaporeans are affected by Osteoarthritis, a degenerative disease when the joints inflame due to the thinning of the articular cartilage. Yet, only 10 per cent seek medical attention. Age and normal wear and tear of the joints being the main risk factors, other factors include declining estrogen levels associated with menopause and obesity.
So, since there is no correlation between cracking your knuckles and contracting osteoarthritis, crack away!
Source: Does knuckle cracking lead to arthritis of the fingers, arthritis and rheumatism, 1998 Arthritis Foundation, November 2014.
Maureen Diament
