Arthritic Knuckles

Myth: Popping your knuckles will cause you to get arthritis when you’re older.

True or False: False! (Sort of)

     Strangely enough, there hasn’t been a lot of research done to find out for sure, but the best studies that are out there say: no. What exactly is happening when you pop your knuckles then, and can it be bad for you in other ways?
    When you pop your knuckles you’re shifting the joint around. Joints are made of moveable parts (bones and tendons) and a fluid that keeps things moving smoothly. (Just in case you’re wondering the fluid is called "synovial fluid".) As you push on your joint, you cause that fluid to shift around and change it’s pressure. As the fluid shifts, it quickly forms air bubbles that expand and burst. That’s what makes the sound you hear.
    Think of a soda pop bottle. When you very first open the bottle, you are causing the amount of pressure on the liquid to change. If you look, you can see small bubbles of carbonation form on the sides and roll up. When you twist the lid, the expansion of these little bubbles cause the hiss or pop you hear.
    If you put the lid back on and immediately open it again, will it hiss? No! The pressure needs time to reset. That’s why you can’t pop a knuckle more than once, until enough time has passed. The synovial fluid has to finish absorbing the air and resetting the pressures that allow your joints to function like they’re supposed to.
    Ok, so if we pop our knuckles all the time- hey it’s a cool sound and annoys mom- but we don’t cause arthritis. Does it hurt us at all? Well, we can weaken the joints. This means after years and years of popping, we my not be able to use them as well as we used to. The joints may not grip as tightly, but this isn’t arthritis. Arthritis means that the joints are breaking down. The materials inside them either start becoming less dense or over compensating by producing build-ups of things that don’t really belong, these things cause the joints not to work well, and they are painful.