You probably know someone or you yourself enjoy cracking your own joints. You hear the knuckles pop, you’ve seen people turn and pop their own neck or even turn to pop their back. If you’ve seen this or done it, you might wonder if it’s good for you or if it’s even safe?
While generally when people do this to themselves quite frequently, the biggest question I propose is. Why? Why is there a need to do this? I find the answer falls under two categories. One, they feel that their joints feel stiff or it needs to pop therefore they try and pop it. Or two they’re addicted to the feeling so they can’t stop it anymore.
Let’s look at the first scenario. Through normal use of the body you can feel certain joints feeling like they are locked up. Over time as we age or use certain body parts this feeling of being locked up can become more apparent. Some people will deal with this feeling by popping their own joints to get relief. While this may provide relief in the moment, this feeling of being stiff or locked up will keep coming back within hours or days. This is because when you pop the joint, endorphins will be released and it will feel good temporarily but once those endorphins stop working, you will feel the stiffness again. Also when most people pop their joints, they aren’t taking into account the normal movement of the joint, usually you bring it to where the joint stops and push it further to get the pop. The way the joint moves and the way people are popping the joints can be causing more issues.
At our office we spend time analyzing your body as a whole to figure out why you keep getting this feeling. This could be because the joint needs some movement but we will figure out exactly where the joint has been misplaced to bring it back or maybe when you pop your back or neck, you aren’t moving the correct bone that’s causing the problem. This is why the feeling keeps coming back over and over again. This is the most important thing to address because when we can address the root cause, the need to pop your own joints will go away because the joints aren’t stuck.
Otherwise you might fall into the second scenario, where you can’t stop popping the joint because it becomes an addiction. This happens when it goes on for years and years without addressing the original cause. This is where you are popping your joints more than once per day, every single day. This might cause you to be addicted to the endorphin release so that it becomes a harder problem to fix. We recommend you come into the office so we can find out exactly what’s causing your problem so you don’t get to this point. Remember, popping your joints isn’t necessarily the problem, we have to work together to understand why you feel like you need to do this. This is where we can help you understand your own body and help you figure out how to help correct it.