Within a few minutes of picking up a guitar my fingers start to stiffen up, I crack them and then all is well, been doing this for 30 odd years now and the joints of my hands are some of the few which don't cause me problems at this point in my life. I never could crack my knuckles before I started playing guitar and if I stop playing for a few weeks, I cease being able to crack my knuckles.
These articles on knuckle cracking never seem to say anything but state, but sort of maybe could be but your aunt is almost certainly wrong unless or maybe in certain exceptions. For the majority of people I think we crack our knuckles for the same reason we often stretch when we get up, it relieves a tension that needs relieving.
there are 2 type of cracking. from guitar i have same, its ok, some fluid goes out because ur tendons are longer and there is some space. something like that (i am not medical person ofc).
then there is 'forced' cracking, which will be more difficult to do because its actually going to crack things that are un healthy. it destroy some soft crap between the bones.
both are not healthy but first is much less destructive and wont lead to chronic issues as fast/often as the later which much more often has that result later..
the second forced one u rly need to put some pressure or pull them hard etc its not about getting rid of that stiffness u talk about.
i did that for 15 years and my fingers/hands are fine. (stopped playin so that also went away eventually, mostly)
This is a bit weird, but I started getting mild wrist pain from computer use in college, and I credit two things with reversing it. One was rock climbing which strengthened my forearms and wrists, and the other was developing a habit of cracking my wrist joints. I stopped rock climbing many years ago but I continue to crack my wrists to this day. The habit causes me to flex and stretch my wrists every so often while I'm working and I really think that has helped prevent the development of repetitive strain injuries from mouse and keyboard use.
I get wrist pain as soon as I use anything taller than Apple’s flat Magic Keyboard and touchpad. I’ve used this combo for like a decade now and never experience fatigue. Once, I bought a fancy mechanical keyboard and I returned it within a few weeks as it immediately caused me wrist pain.
You can scoff at low travel and membranes all you want, but less movement = less fatigue, so I think they’re amazing.
Never thought about the climbing angle, but I’ll chime in and say that after I started climbing I’ve definitely not experienced more fatigue.
Everyone’s anatomy is different: wrist rests give me significant wrist pain and stiffness in minutes. I either need my wrists a touch lower than the keyboard (I’m okay resting on the desk if the keyboard is thin) or I must hold them elevated without resting them at all (if the keyboard thicker) which always makes me feel like an old-fashioned typist :)
I feel like wrist pain can have many different causes. I'm a climber and programmer, and I had pretty bad wrist pain for a bit. Went to the physical therapist, and after poking around a bit, she was like "yeah idk if this is actually a wrist issue. I think it might be referred pain from a pinched nerve higher up". Told me to try and sit with better posture, and gave me some tendon glide exercises. Wrist pain went away in like a week or two.
I mean, this was from a physical therapist at Kaiser Permanente, pinched nerves and referred pain are real things, and whatever happened fixed it for me, so idk? My guess is that it sounds like something a chiropractor would say because they tend to over-attribute pain in general to be referred pain from spinal misalignment? But idk much about chiropractic things.
I used to get wrist pain from using mouse and keyboard back 20 years ago. I did no exercises. No stretching, no rock climbing, no triathlons, it just slowly subsided and went away. Maybe I just became aware of positioning and strain to such an expert degree that I just instinctively do the correct moves.
I've had serious issues with my wrist in June (after decades of sitting in front of computer for most of the worktime), it hurt when bent or when using it for almost any load.
I tried painkiller cream (don't think it helped), wrist brace (pretty much impossible to use mouse with it), wrist exercises (bending/stretching arm) didn't help.
I switched from traditional mouse (HP 255 dual wireless) to my wife's Logitech Lift Vertical (she didn't use and bought based on my recommendation anyway, so replaced with my HP) and the pain/issues were gone in ~2 weeks, not sure if it was thanks to the vertical mouse or if it would gone by itself, but just to be safe I keep using vertical mouse. Later I went to preventive check with my kid to their pediatrician, amusingly noticed he is using exactly same mouse.
Btw. how do you crack your wrist (you mean sudden movement to left/right/up/down)? I crack finger joints, but would never think of cracking the wrist.
Any muscle, back and joint pain should first be met with mild strengthening, mild weight loss and mild exercise. It's like turning your computer off and on. Mostly the problems go away. Then check for other things :) Keep remembering to relax and move, from your fingers to your wrists and shoulders. And keep trying different set-ups and equipment if you can. There is a pretty magic set-up for most people. 30+ years myself into being on a computer nearly all the time personally and professionally. Back is starting to hurt again. Time to take my own advice again :)
This is good to read about, and nice that it has and research referenced.
It's interesting to know that it's gas collapsing. And nothing to do with the bone rubbing.
And it makes you wonder what chiropractors are actually doing when they're popping your back... It's probably not doing anything to help you with your pain. And it's probably not actually adjusting anything.
I recommend reading up on the actual history of chiropractic ... I've seen articles that seem to make it clear that it was long con right from the start.
I acknowledge that this is not the only view on the history.
A physical therapist costs significantly more, which is why a lot of chiropractors in rural areas with a lot of manual labor are well looked upon. They are mostly just practicing physical therapy without a medical license which could get them in trouble if it wasn't considered chiropractic work. The pure quackery doesn't get them as far because most of their customers are too poor to regularly spend on woowoo crap.
In my area someone's insurance might cover the first 3-4 sessions of physical therapy, but nothing after that despite them needing it for longer. So the physical therapist will at the end of insurance billing send them down the road to do the exact same thing at the chiropractor for significantly cheaper.
In places without a lot of manual labor they are probably mostly just the quackery. Their clients are lots of hypochondriacs and office workers who really just need to get more exercise but are willing to find anyone who says they can make them better without significant effort. Im sure the massages and stretching does feel good though atleast, but im sure a massage parlor would set out some crystals and do a massage for cheaper.
> The pure quackery doesn't get them as far because most of their customers are too poor to regularly spend on woowoo crap.
Yeah, but them very same type of folks (like where I grew up in "rancher territory") who can't (or won't) regularly spend on "woowoo crap" will happily budget a reasonable monthly (or even weekly) fee for a bit of good advice, some stretching exercises and "adjustments", and a bit of basic applied physical therapy techniques that provide a measure of genuine relief. That's how chiropracters in "farm country" make their money.
They basically are as you say "practicing physical therapy" (and some other similar and related services) under a different license (chiropractic). If they didn't provide a valid service in places like that, they'd be outta business downright quick-like, because them small-ish towns, word gets around pretty quick if you done somethin' bad like scammin' a hard-workin' neighbor with "woowoo crap".
My insurance covers physical therapy, chiropractor, and/or massage all in the same category. I get 12 total visits a year, mix n match style.
I don't really understand what people need a physical therapist for... They basically just instructed me on how to do exercises that significantly worsened my pain. Brilliant? And then she had the nerve to say riding my bicycle is a bad idea?! Fuck that stupid bitch I never went back.
My chiropractor was much more pragmatic. He asked if bicycling made my back feel better. Guess what?! It does!!!
While a massage therapist or chiropractor does things I can't do to myself. So PT seems kind of like a waste of time and money.
I suggest Bob and Brad on YouTube. Do it at your own pace and do things that actually feel good and don't hurt!
This doesn't really make any sense, because the entire point of chiropracty is pain and function improvement. This is measurable by people. The Wiki page on the topic is loaded with vitriol and agenda, but the study [1] they relied on to try to discredit chiropracty concludes: "When spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is compared to sham SMT/placebo, it may result in a small improvement in pain and medium improvement in functional status in adults with chronic low back pain. When compared to no treatment, SMT may result in a medium improvement in pain and a large improvement in functional status."
The issue they had is that the data were very noisy due to the SMT being conducted across different populations, with differing frequency, and differing application formats. In any case, if that's the worst our agenda-driven editor could dig up, then I can only conclude that chiropracty is, at the minimum, certainly not a scam.
DOs are sorta weird in the US. They go to real medical school for 4 years like MDs and practice actual licensed medicine at the same level as an MD. They can even call themselves physicians.
Non DO osteopaths are not trained with any sort of scientifically backed curriculum.
Sports doctors were never immune to misguided treatments. The regular ice baths after an injury have already been thoroughly proven to slow down recovery. You need ice only after the initial trauma, afterwards ice just hinders the healing process. But million dollar bodies were subjected to it for years and still are.
And a lot of treatments are known by the doctor to be fake but are still performed so the player benefits from the placebo effect.
In the sports where the team doctor would routinely administer PEDs to the players under the guise of “vitamins” or whatever, after the practice became harder to pull off some doctors kept administering sugar pills to avoid the nocebo effect. They just follow the ritual that doesn’t harm the player but gives them peace of mind.
Chiropratic can help with pain, but not for the claimed reasons. Studies show it's as efficacious as massage therapy. I believe the same is true of cupping. Insurers increasingly cover these sorts of therapies, and primary's increasingly prescribe them, because they're cheaper than a real doctor's time, especially a specialist's, and the patient is more likely to feel better than if they were subjected to a long diagnostic gauntlet with an inconclusive end.
Just tripping a bit messed up my SI joint pretty bad a few years back. It didn't even seem serious at the time, just a bit of a stumble off of the curb, but the next day I could barely get out of bed and was in pretty serious pain for several days. Couldn't go up stairs and had a tough time getting my pants on. Still acts up sometimes.
This can definitely happen, I had a like crooked hip for a few days after I bumped into a table while lifting something. I dont think this could ever result in something good though like chiropractors claim.
I have difficulty breathing sometimes but when bones were adjusted on my back, it was an instant relief, breathing like I have never experienced for a very long time that I almost forgot. Effortless and deep.
There is a chain of clinics here called "Emergency Chiropractic" and they advertise how they take insurance and get your adverse diagnosis fast, fast, fast.
It's not "probably not" doing anything, it's definitely not doing anything, because chiropractic is quack pseudoscience that has been thoroughly debunked and also has a bunch of other bizarre and fantastical elements to it beyond "cracking your back"
It's surprising that it's not common knowledge that "Chiropractic" is not medicine, nor a science, and the field is associated with vaccine misinformation and unproven supplements.
Only in the US, really; some other countries have some sort of legitimisation of osteopaths, but the US osteopathic physicians are, as far as I know, unique.
I've been to wonderful chiropractors and I've been to quacks. The good ones will discuss what's going on and individualize treatment.
The bad ones will kind of just do the same exact routine every time you go there and they'll do the same thing to everyone that goes there -- wham, bam, ty ma'am style -- get you in and out the door as quick as possible! They'll probably pop just about everything they can, which accomplishes not much of anything at all. I guess you'd call that the bruteforce method of chiropracty?
However, a single bad adjustment can painfully linger for weeks.
A good chiropractor for me was Dr. Blake Meyer at DSMCore. He would take a whole half hour and do some targeted deep tissue glute massage and nerve flossing that really helped my sciatica. Then finish up with a few minor adjustments and send me on my way, walking a little taller and straighter and with appreciably less sciatic pain. But don't expect miracles.
I tried a physical therapist near his office but she pushed me too far, too quick and made it worse. So I just stuck with Bob(RIP) and Brad on YouTube and did it at my own pace.
> Dr. Blake Meyer is an Iowa native with more than a decade of experience in biomechanics, rehabilitation, and patient-centered care. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa and his Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic.
> During his training, Dr. Meyer worked with the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics and Sports Medicine Research Lab at University of Iowa Health Care and the Sports Injury and Rehabilitation Department at Palmer College. He has also completed advanced coursework in physical rehabilitation at the board certification level.
This guy is the real deal. More often than not he didn't pop a single thing on my body, buddy. He would get deep into my glutes and floss my sciatic nerves though and that's very evident-based work. And I referred plenty of people to him and we all love the guy.
So, I can crack the 2nd and 3rd joints of my fingers just by flexing them. My thumbs don't crack, but I can push the first joint through the range of motion until it locks and pushes the knuckle out the palm side. I can also push my shoulders out of their sockets, getting about another 2 inches of reach. Are my fingers and shoulders just strangely double jointed or is this something different?
I'm in my 60's, and I crack my knuckles dozens if not hundreds of times a day. I started very young, and I do every joint on both hands, every finger joint all the way up to the wrist. This is my hands while I deep think, and I think a lot. I'll do one hand, then the other, and go back to the first hand and repeat.
Due to this habit, I have researched the cause of the crack, and this article is absolutely nothing new whatsoever. The same information I've been reading for 50 years, since I was first "ordered" to stop.
For the record: zero issues. Zero ramifications beyond "stop that!" verbalized endlessly through out my life.
Sorry to see the down votes you are getting. I am an inveterate knuckle-cracker, but I very much understand that a subset of people find it unpleasant and irritating to hear.
Another question, has anyone noticed cracking knuckles being contagious like yarning?
I often crack my knuckles and quite often see others noticing and doing it themselves.
My grandpa (he was 10 when he was liberated from the Nazis by the US and remaining French troops) told me that a French general would always crack his wrists when someone didn't hurry up. Sometimes with drastic consequences. That is my memory of his story about it, whenever I hear that..
Highly agree with the article. If you don't have neck issues, don't pop that shit. Especially by twisting. Pulling sideways left or right, you're probably fine. Palm to chin and the other hand twisting the neck? Risky!
Cracking one's knuckles has been a thing that men do, that is: only a minority of women would be engaging in this, but men would pick it up in groups and it would become a custom. And of course, boys at a younger age would emulate the elder men, and so you had boys cracking their knuckles, and doing it at home, in front of their sisters and their mothers, and doing it in school in front of their teachers. And it is a blue-collar activity; something considered uncouth for the genteel knowledge-worker to do, except if you're acting in solidarity with the manual laborer, and you crack your knuckles as you sit down at the keyboard to type.
So the cracking of knuckles annoys people who don't do it, and it annoys women, and it annoys people in authority over young boys. So you want them to stop, and you want to regulate men's bodies and control what we do with our bodies. But you cannot tell us all the time "because I said so" or God forbid, "because it annoys me", because that can eventually achieve the opposite result.
So the medical myth of developing arthrosis and hurting your bones and damaging your joints, those were "old wives' tales" and "white lies" that were told in order to scare boys into stopping the activity. And perhaps even to scare husbands and employees into stopping. They tell men to stop spitting on the floor, to stop picking their nails with a pocket knife, and usually a medical excuse arises, because this is a higher authority that will terminate any individual choice or discretion in the way we treat our bodies.
The article makes a point to mention specifically that excessive/forceful neck cracking can be dangerous, but then switches to just "Cracking your own neck is not recommended"... but to me it sounds like they're referring more to the forceful kind, such as the manipulations on youtube they reference.
I suppose it's like asking people to stop using q-tips... they're probably not going to, and the amount of people accidentally injured from either seems to be quite low.
I mean it is pretty easy to find all sorts of people misusing or poorly using common hygiene products. Everyone I know uses q-tip in their ears and none have ever had a problem with it. To me it would be like not using toilet paper because some people aren't smart enough to not scour their ass raw.
And you think YouTube represents the average user of q-tips?
Even when YouTube has videos uploaded by doctors having to put up with this kind of stupidity, it doesn't change the fact that hardly anyone does that. The vast majority of stuff uploaded to YouTube isn't even that. It's losers trying to get views.
> For some reason, be aware or careful always gets compressed to avoidance
The reason is legal liability, generally.
If you sell Q-Tips and tell people to be careful when sticking them in their ears you're likely to be held legally liable when someone isn't careful because there will be infinite wiggle room for them to claim you didn't specify the safe use clearly enough.
If you sell Q-Tips and tell people not to put them in their ear (even though you know that's why most people are buying them) then when someone sues you for messing up their ear you can tap the words on the box and say "well, we told you not to do that".
Within a few minutes of picking up a guitar my fingers start to stiffen up, I crack them and then all is well, been doing this for 30 odd years now and the joints of my hands are some of the few which don't cause me problems at this point in my life. I never could crack my knuckles before I started playing guitar and if I stop playing for a few weeks, I cease being able to crack my knuckles.
These articles on knuckle cracking never seem to say anything but state, but sort of maybe could be but your aunt is almost certainly wrong unless or maybe in certain exceptions. For the majority of people I think we crack our knuckles for the same reason we often stretch when we get up, it relieves a tension that needs relieving.
there are 2 type of cracking. from guitar i have same, its ok, some fluid goes out because ur tendons are longer and there is some space. something like that (i am not medical person ofc).
then there is 'forced' cracking, which will be more difficult to do because its actually going to crack things that are un healthy. it destroy some soft crap between the bones.
both are not healthy but first is much less destructive and wont lead to chronic issues as fast/often as the later which much more often has that result later..
the second forced one u rly need to put some pressure or pull them hard etc its not about getting rid of that stiffness u talk about.
i did that for 15 years and my fingers/hands are fine. (stopped playin so that also went away eventually, mostly)
This is a bit weird, but I started getting mild wrist pain from computer use in college, and I credit two things with reversing it. One was rock climbing which strengthened my forearms and wrists, and the other was developing a habit of cracking my wrist joints. I stopped rock climbing many years ago but I continue to crack my wrists to this day. The habit causes me to flex and stretch my wrists every so often while I'm working and I really think that has helped prevent the development of repetitive strain injuries from mouse and keyboard use.
I get wrist pain as soon as I use anything taller than Apple’s flat Magic Keyboard and touchpad. I’ve used this combo for like a decade now and never experience fatigue. Once, I bought a fancy mechanical keyboard and I returned it within a few weeks as it immediately caused me wrist pain.
You can scoff at low travel and membranes all you want, but less movement = less fatigue, so I think they’re amazing.
Never thought about the climbing angle, but I’ll chime in and say that after I started climbing I’ve definitely not experienced more fatigue.
Get a wrist rest to raise the hight of your wrist to match the keyboard, it does wonders.
Everyone’s anatomy is different: wrist rests give me significant wrist pain and stiffness in minutes. I either need my wrists a touch lower than the keyboard (I’m okay resting on the desk if the keyboard is thin) or I must hold them elevated without resting them at all (if the keyboard thicker) which always makes me feel like an old-fashioned typist :)
Yeah, I also love this particular aspect of this keyboard.
I feel like wrist pain can have many different causes. I'm a climber and programmer, and I had pretty bad wrist pain for a bit. Went to the physical therapist, and after poking around a bit, she was like "yeah idk if this is actually a wrist issue. I think it might be referred pain from a pinched nerve higher up". Told me to try and sit with better posture, and gave me some tendon glide exercises. Wrist pain went away in like a week or two.
That sounds like something a chiropractor would say
I mean, this was from a physical therapist at Kaiser Permanente, pinched nerves and referred pain are real things, and whatever happened fixed it for me, so idk? My guess is that it sounds like something a chiropractor would say because they tend to over-attribute pain in general to be referred pain from spinal misalignment? But idk much about chiropractic things.
No, it really doesn’t.
I used to get wrist pain from using mouse and keyboard back 20 years ago. I did no exercises. No stretching, no rock climbing, no triathlons, it just slowly subsided and went away. Maybe I just became aware of positioning and strain to such an expert degree that I just instinctively do the correct moves.
I've had serious issues with my wrist in June (after decades of sitting in front of computer for most of the worktime), it hurt when bent or when using it for almost any load.
I tried painkiller cream (don't think it helped), wrist brace (pretty much impossible to use mouse with it), wrist exercises (bending/stretching arm) didn't help.
I switched from traditional mouse (HP 255 dual wireless) to my wife's Logitech Lift Vertical (she didn't use and bought based on my recommendation anyway, so replaced with my HP) and the pain/issues were gone in ~2 weeks, not sure if it was thanks to the vertical mouse or if it would gone by itself, but just to be safe I keep using vertical mouse. Later I went to preventive check with my kid to their pediatrician, amusingly noticed he is using exactly same mouse.
Btw. how do you crack your wrist (you mean sudden movement to left/right/up/down)? I crack finger joints, but would never think of cracking the wrist.
Any muscle, back and joint pain should first be met with mild strengthening, mild weight loss and mild exercise. It's like turning your computer off and on. Mostly the problems go away. Then check for other things :) Keep remembering to relax and move, from your fingers to your wrists and shoulders. And keep trying different set-ups and equipment if you can. There is a pretty magic set-up for most people. 30+ years myself into being on a computer nearly all the time personally and professionally. Back is starting to hurt again. Time to take my own advice again :)
My lower back pain resolved automatically after I lost 15 kgs (100 to 85).
This is good to read about, and nice that it has and research referenced.
It's interesting to know that it's gas collapsing. And nothing to do with the bone rubbing.
And it makes you wonder what chiropractors are actually doing when they're popping your back... It's probably not doing anything to help you with your pain. And it's probably not actually adjusting anything.
I recommend reading up on the actual history of chiropractic ... I've seen articles that seem to make it clear that it was long con right from the start.
I acknowledge that this is not the only view on the history.
Its a con that is trying very hard to become legitimate.
Chiros started as a scam, continued as a scam, and are now a widely accepted scam. The legit work they do is often just physical therapy.
Just go to a physical therapist.
A physical therapist costs significantly more, which is why a lot of chiropractors in rural areas with a lot of manual labor are well looked upon. They are mostly just practicing physical therapy without a medical license which could get them in trouble if it wasn't considered chiropractic work. The pure quackery doesn't get them as far because most of their customers are too poor to regularly spend on woowoo crap.
In my area someone's insurance might cover the first 3-4 sessions of physical therapy, but nothing after that despite them needing it for longer. So the physical therapist will at the end of insurance billing send them down the road to do the exact same thing at the chiropractor for significantly cheaper.
In places without a lot of manual labor they are probably mostly just the quackery. Their clients are lots of hypochondriacs and office workers who really just need to get more exercise but are willing to find anyone who says they can make them better without significant effort. Im sure the massages and stretching does feel good though atleast, but im sure a massage parlor would set out some crystals and do a massage for cheaper.
> The pure quackery doesn't get them as far because most of their customers are too poor to regularly spend on woowoo crap.
Yeah, but them very same type of folks (like where I grew up in "rancher territory") who can't (or won't) regularly spend on "woowoo crap" will happily budget a reasonable monthly (or even weekly) fee for a bit of good advice, some stretching exercises and "adjustments", and a bit of basic applied physical therapy techniques that provide a measure of genuine relief. That's how chiropracters in "farm country" make their money.
They basically are as you say "practicing physical therapy" (and some other similar and related services) under a different license (chiropractic). If they didn't provide a valid service in places like that, they'd be outta business downright quick-like, because them small-ish towns, word gets around pretty quick if you done somethin' bad like scammin' a hard-workin' neighbor with "woowoo crap".
> They are mostly just practicing physical therapy without a medical license
Oh, well as long as they're only practicing medicine without a license, I suppose that's okay then...
My insurance covers physical therapy, chiropractor, and/or massage all in the same category. I get 12 total visits a year, mix n match style.
I don't really understand what people need a physical therapist for... They basically just instructed me on how to do exercises that significantly worsened my pain. Brilliant? And then she had the nerve to say riding my bicycle is a bad idea?! Fuck that stupid bitch I never went back.
My chiropractor was much more pragmatic. He asked if bicycling made my back feel better. Guess what?! It does!!!
While a massage therapist or chiropractor does things I can't do to myself. So PT seems kind of like a waste of time and money.
I suggest Bob and Brad on YouTube. Do it at your own pace and do things that actually feel good and don't hurt!
This doesn't really make any sense, because the entire point of chiropracty is pain and function improvement. This is measurable by people. The Wiki page on the topic is loaded with vitriol and agenda, but the study [1] they relied on to try to discredit chiropracty concludes: "When spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is compared to sham SMT/placebo, it may result in a small improvement in pain and medium improvement in functional status in adults with chronic low back pain. When compared to no treatment, SMT may result in a medium improvement in pain and a large improvement in functional status."
The issue they had is that the data were very noisy due to the SMT being conducted across different populations, with differing frequency, and differing application formats. In any case, if that's the worst our agenda-driven editor could dig up, then I can only conclude that chiropracty is, at the minimum, certainly not a scam.
[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41494147/
It's a con like osteopathic "medicine". D.O. should be shunned and rejected because it's pretending to be legitimate and/or legitimized.
DOs are sorta weird in the US. They go to real medical school for 4 years like MDs and practice actual licensed medicine at the same level as an MD. They can even call themselves physicians.
Non DO osteopaths are not trained with any sort of scientifically backed curriculum.
I have a cousin who is a DO (in the US). It seems like it's basically an out to get effectively an MD with a slightly lower bar for admission.
Once you're in the program, it's basically the same as an MD program, and then you go through residency programs on an equal basis with MDs.
Its such a scam that professional sports teams all hire chiropractors to work on the bodies they invest millions of dollars into each year.
Athletes are often highly superstitious and ritualistic, (and young and dumb), its not surprising they would engage in something like chiropractic.
Sports science is mostly just guesswork.
Yes, rich people get scammed too.
Sports doctors were never immune to misguided treatments. The regular ice baths after an injury have already been thoroughly proven to slow down recovery. You need ice only after the initial trauma, afterwards ice just hinders the healing process. But million dollar bodies were subjected to it for years and still are.
And a lot of treatments are known by the doctor to be fake but are still performed so the player benefits from the placebo effect.
In the sports where the team doctor would routinely administer PEDs to the players under the guise of “vitamins” or whatever, after the practice became harder to pull off some doctors kept administering sugar pills to avoid the nocebo effect. They just follow the ritual that doesn’t harm the player but gives them peace of mind.
none of us is as dumb as all of us...
“You have a fever because of the ghosts in your bones”
Chiropratic can help with pain, but not for the claimed reasons. Studies show it's as efficacious as massage therapy. I believe the same is true of cupping. Insurers increasingly cover these sorts of therapies, and primary's increasingly prescribe them, because they're cheaper than a real doctor's time, especially a specialist's, and the patient is more likely to feel better than if they were subjected to a long diagnostic gauntlet with an inconclusive end.
If a chiropractor could adjust something by pushing on your bone, imagine what tripping and falling would do.
Tripping and falling can mess you up for a long time. And I don't mean broken bones.
Just tripping a bit messed up my SI joint pretty bad a few years back. It didn't even seem serious at the time, just a bit of a stumble off of the curb, but the next day I could barely get out of bed and was in pretty serious pain for several days. Couldn't go up stairs and had a tough time getting my pants on. Still acts up sometimes.
So can a chiropractor!
I think that's the joke?
This can definitely happen, I had a like crooked hip for a few days after I bumped into a table while lifting something. I dont think this could ever result in something good though like chiropractors claim.
I have difficulty breathing sometimes but when bones were adjusted on my back, it was an instant relief, breathing like I have never experienced for a very long time that I almost forgot. Effortless and deep.
There is a chain of clinics here called "Emergency Chiropractic" and they advertise how they take insurance and get your adverse diagnosis fast, fast, fast.
https://youtu.be/kOzwC5j7UkA?si=sHdHJzzEdn-E2a_N
And their mascot is literally a duck! I think it took me ten years to figure out the quack part here!
It's not "probably not" doing anything, it's definitely not doing anything, because chiropractic is quack pseudoscience that has been thoroughly debunked and also has a bunch of other bizarre and fantastical elements to it beyond "cracking your back"
It's surprising that it's not common knowledge that "Chiropractic" is not medicine, nor a science, and the field is associated with vaccine misinformation and unproven supplements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic
Sadly many universities offer degrees with chiropractic being a major part.
Osteopathy makes even bolder claims for similar shit and has been legitimized into the medical community as "equal" to medical doctors.
Only in the US, really; some other countries have some sort of legitimisation of osteopaths, but the US osteopathic physicians are, as far as I know, unique.
I've been to wonderful chiropractors and I've been to quacks. The good ones will discuss what's going on and individualize treatment.
The bad ones will kind of just do the same exact routine every time you go there and they'll do the same thing to everyone that goes there -- wham, bam, ty ma'am style -- get you in and out the door as quick as possible! They'll probably pop just about everything they can, which accomplishes not much of anything at all. I guess you'd call that the bruteforce method of chiropracty?
However, a single bad adjustment can painfully linger for weeks.
A good chiropractor for me was Dr. Blake Meyer at DSMCore. He would take a whole half hour and do some targeted deep tissue glute massage and nerve flossing that really helped my sciatica. Then finish up with a few minor adjustments and send me on my way, walking a little taller and straighter and with appreciably less sciatic pain. But don't expect miracles.
I tried a physical therapist near his office but she pushed me too far, too quick and made it worse. So I just stuck with Bob(RIP) and Brad on YouTube and did it at my own pace.
All chiropractors are quacks. The whole thing is based on quackery.
Says a duck like you?
> Dr. Blake Meyer is an Iowa native with more than a decade of experience in biomechanics, rehabilitation, and patient-centered care. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa and his Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic.
> During his training, Dr. Meyer worked with the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics and Sports Medicine Research Lab at University of Iowa Health Care and the Sports Injury and Rehabilitation Department at Palmer College. He has also completed advanced coursework in physical rehabilitation at the board certification level.
This guy is the real deal. More often than not he didn't pop a single thing on my body, buddy. He would get deep into my glutes and floss my sciatic nerves though and that's very evident-based work. And I referred plenty of people to him and we all love the guy.
My knuckles no longer crack when I'm in ketosis. I assume it's inflammation related but I've never heard anyone else mention this though.
So, I can crack the 2nd and 3rd joints of my fingers just by flexing them. My thumbs don't crack, but I can push the first joint through the range of motion until it locks and pushes the knuckle out the palm side. I can also push my shoulders out of their sockets, getting about another 2 inches of reach. Are my fingers and shoulders just strangely double jointed or is this something different?
I have the exact same, and my doctor has told me I have [hypermobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermobility_(joints))
I'm in my 60's, and I crack my knuckles dozens if not hundreds of times a day. I started very young, and I do every joint on both hands, every finger joint all the way up to the wrist. This is my hands while I deep think, and I think a lot. I'll do one hand, then the other, and go back to the first hand and repeat.
Due to this habit, I have researched the cause of the crack, and this article is absolutely nothing new whatsoever. The same information I've been reading for 50 years, since I was first "ordered" to stop.
For the record: zero issues. Zero ramifications beyond "stop that!" verbalized endlessly through out my life.
"No."
How often can this cracking be done at a time? Does the gas escape? Does it need time to form? And why can some people do it and others not?
There is definitely a cool down between being able to crack joints. But it is very subjective, and also dependent on your posture, etc.
Not in my house. It's annoying.
Sorry to see the down votes you are getting. I am an inveterate knuckle-cracker, but I very much understand that a subset of people find it unpleasant and irritating to hear.
I have bad news for you about what happens your joints as you get older
I am older. ;-)
Another question, has anyone noticed cracking knuckles being contagious like yarning? I often crack my knuckles and quite often see others noticing and doing it themselves.
Bruce Lee cracked his knuckles a lot, and he died in his 30s. He was in great shape too.
But I think it's mostly just escaping gases.
Edit: ^ is my way of asking why this is on HN, which I never do, cause then someone could ask the same about me.
Yup. Bruce Lee drank water. He died. Anyone who drinks water will eventually die. It's a fact.
You know, water is basically made up of rocket fuel. And they put it in our kids' schools.
Over my dead body.
My grandpa (he was 10 when he was liberated from the Nazis by the US and remaining French troops) told me that a French general would always crack his wrists when someone didn't hurry up. Sometimes with drastic consequences. That is my memory of his story about it, whenever I hear that..
Highly agree with the article. If you don't have neck issues, don't pop that shit. Especially by twisting. Pulling sideways left or right, you're probably fine. Palm to chin and the other hand twisting the neck? Risky!
Cracking one's knuckles has been a thing that men do, that is: only a minority of women would be engaging in this, but men would pick it up in groups and it would become a custom. And of course, boys at a younger age would emulate the elder men, and so you had boys cracking their knuckles, and doing it at home, in front of their sisters and their mothers, and doing it in school in front of their teachers. And it is a blue-collar activity; something considered uncouth for the genteel knowledge-worker to do, except if you're acting in solidarity with the manual laborer, and you crack your knuckles as you sit down at the keyboard to type.
So the cracking of knuckles annoys people who don't do it, and it annoys women, and it annoys people in authority over young boys. So you want them to stop, and you want to regulate men's bodies and control what we do with our bodies. But you cannot tell us all the time "because I said so" or God forbid, "because it annoys me", because that can eventually achieve the opposite result.
So the medical myth of developing arthrosis and hurting your bones and damaging your joints, those were "old wives' tales" and "white lies" that were told in order to scare boys into stopping the activity. And perhaps even to scare husbands and employees into stopping. They tell men to stop spitting on the floor, to stop picking their nails with a pocket knife, and usually a medical excuse arises, because this is a higher authority that will terminate any individual choice or discretion in the way we treat our bodies.
Betteridge says?
TL,DR: No, unless you're doing it so hard that you're straining your joints. But don't crack your neck.
> don't crack your neck
The article makes a point to mention specifically that excessive/forceful neck cracking can be dangerous, but then switches to just "Cracking your own neck is not recommended"... but to me it sounds like they're referring more to the forceful kind, such as the manipulations on youtube they reference.
I suppose it's like asking people to stop using q-tips... they're probably not going to, and the amount of people accidentally injured from either seems to be quite low.
Yeah, and with the q-tips, it seems trival to do it safely. For some reason, be aware or careful always gets compressed to avoidance
There is never any reason to put q-tips in your ear. Ear drops are infinitely better.
YouTube has some pretty awful videos of ear canals full of cotton fibers. Touching the eardrum is not the only risk.
I mean it is pretty easy to find all sorts of people misusing or poorly using common hygiene products. Everyone I know uses q-tip in their ears and none have ever had a problem with it. To me it would be like not using toilet paper because some people aren't smart enough to not scour their ass raw.
And you think YouTube represents the average user of q-tips?
Even when YouTube has videos uploaded by doctors having to put up with this kind of stupidity, it doesn't change the fact that hardly anyone does that. The vast majority of stuff uploaded to YouTube isn't even that. It's losers trying to get views.
> For some reason, be aware or careful always gets compressed to avoidance
The reason is legal liability, generally.
If you sell Q-Tips and tell people to be careful when sticking them in their ears you're likely to be held legally liable when someone isn't careful because there will be infinite wiggle room for them to claim you didn't specify the safe use clearly enough.
If you sell Q-Tips and tell people not to put them in their ear (even though you know that's why most people are buying them) then when someone sues you for messing up their ear you can tap the words on the box and say "well, we told you not to do that".
Really BBC ?