Short Stuff: Knuckle Cracking

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[music playing] Hey, I'm welcome to the short stuff, Josh, Chuck. She here, he's sitting in her for days, so this is short stuff. Chuck, I have a question for you. Are you cracking your knuckles right now?

I am, did you hear that? Yeah, that wasn't like a foldy effect. No, I was cracking my knuckles. I'm a knuckle cracker. I don't do it. I did it a lot when I was a kid, but I still do it some.

This is what my knuckle sound like when I crack them. That's it. Yeah, I can't do it again, because I have to wait 20 to 30 minutes for the airbags to come back and cavitate once more. Yeah, well, tell everybody what's going on here.

I know there was a lot of, you know, when you're young, everyone was like, it'll give you arthritis, and it's your bones grinding together,

“and that's what cracking your knuckles is,”

and that can't be good for you. Yes, if your bones ground together, you would not be able to think of anything else but your bones grinding together, because you would be in so much pain that you would know your bones are grinding together.

That's not what cracking your knuckles is. It turns out, instead, it has everything to do with the space in the area around where your bones come together. Your bones don't actually come together. That's right.

Where there's a joint that is where two bones meet, but they're separate, they're held together by ligaments and connected tissues and all that stuff. But there's also some very other key ingredient in there. It's called Sonovial Fluid.

It's a thick, clear liquid that kind of encases that area, right? Yeah, it's thick. It tastes just like orange crush, surprisingly. And when you pop your knuckle, what you're doing is stretching or bending

the ligaments and connected tissues and the Sonovial Fluid there too, right? So when you do that, that capsule is what it's called, the connective tissue capsule that includes the Sonovial Fluid, it gets stretched, which increases its volume,

and then suddenly the pressure inside the capsule in that Sonovial Fluid, it goes down. It decreases in pressure, which means that all these gases that used to just be part of the solution, now are part of the problem.

I mean, now turn into bubbles. That's right. So they become, you know, they form those bubbles. And if you stretch that joint far enough, like, you know, trying to crack your knuckles,

the pressure in the capsule goes so low, that it just pops those bubbles. And that's the popping sound that we're hearing. There you go. Not your bones rubbing together, okay?

I want you to go to recess and tell your friends, that is not your bones rubbing together. Yeah, and then the cavitation you mentioned earlier,

“I think before we break, we should just clear that up.”

You said 20 to 30 minutes. That is how long it takes for that gas to re-desolve into that joint fluid. And cavitation is possible again. Yeah.

Go watch that button. We can't take my knuckles, yeah, exactly. Oh, I just did one again. Okay, I say we take a little break and come back and talk about how we know that cracking your knuckles

doesn't give you arthritis. All right, we'll be right back. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Jonas?

We created our own podcast. Oh, hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it.

We just contributed to first people to do podcast.

Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts, right there. But this one's extra special.

Hey, Jonas, guys.

I honestly don't remember.

“I think it was on a call about what we should call it.”

And oh, we were thinking I originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. Well, this is how you guys remember going down. Yes, I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast.

We put the call in and say, hey, Jonas, and then I broke down on my little note pad. Hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title. Oh, the talk has. But thanks for remembering that, guys.

Listen to hey, Jonas, on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast, just listen. We don't care where he hears it. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guy. Not quite on humor me with Robert's Michael and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week, my guest. SNL's Mikey Day and Head Writer, Streeter Side L helped an Occupella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?

We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert's Michael and friends on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Chuck, I know we talked about this guy before Dr. Donald Unger.

I think we did a video about him. Yeah, but he, you know what, I'll bet we talked about him in the ignoble prize episode because he wanted to be ignoble for this. But essentially, he conducted an experiment for 60 years because he wanted to prove his mother wrong.

“And he only cracked the knuckles and I think is left hand.”

Never cracked him on his right hand.

It's crazy. And then after 60 years, he finally said, okay, it's time. And he x-rayed his hands. Yeah. If he didn't have the compulsion to crack his knuckles,

I could see how this happened, but if you are a knuckle cracker, you're kind of, you feel compelled to do it. So I can't imagine what it would have taken to not crack the knuckles on one hand for that many years. It must have been really tough.

Oh, yeah, sure. That's my guess. So yeah, he did this over his lifetime. He x-rayed himself on the rig and eventually decades later came to the conclusion that he doesn't have any arthritic difference in his hands.

Case closed. He had an AD. No arthritic difference. That's right. That's not to say though that even if you don't get arthritis from cracking your knuckles,

another thing you can tell your friends at recess, did they even have recess anymore? I guess maybe, yeah, our long screen time. No, that recess. Okay, great.

There is damage that you can do from cracking your knuckles habitually. There is a guy named Raymond Broder and he examined 300 people who cracked their knuckles to look at what their joints look like and compared to the control group, no difference with arthritis again.

But there was other damage like soft tissue damage to the ligaments and the synovial fluid capsule and that they had a decrease in grip strength. So if you crack your knuckles a lot, like don't even think about holding glass of water with just one hand. Yeah, which, you know, as you age, grip strength is important.

So it's definitely not a harmless thing. There's some other possible side effects, something called ligament laxity,

which is basically looseness over time if you're just doing this a lot.

“That's what leads to the reduced grip strength and sometimes sort of overall hand function.”

I think in rare cases, if you have a really weird method or forceful method, or you're a little too aggressive with it, you can get some soft tissue swelling around the knuckles and joint. Yeah, and you can just straight up injured yourself if you, you can like dislocate a joint, you can injure your tendons.

And even if you don't straight up injured yourself, just habitually cracking your knuckles over time, the stretching of the ligaments can, like you said, the grip strength thing is a big deal just even without cracking your knuckles. It also happens in pictures too, major league pitchers. Imagine minor league pitchers too, but over the years, just throwing over and over and over again,

they're stretching those ligaments suddenly, violently basically, which is kind of what you're doing when you crack your knuckles, they're just doing it with different ligaments. But that is why oral herchisers right arm just dangles uselessly at his side because it's been ruined. He ruined it, pitch. Yeah, I mean, I know you're kind of kidding, but sad but true, like especially these days there's been more and more instances of Tommy John surgery being

get it near 100 miles an hour these days, you're not going to have much of a chance. So,

it's real problem in baseball. Was there a ring down from my joke? Yeah. I just love that you love saying oral herchisers. Sure. Who else did they say? Boy, he was great. Yeah. There was a study in 1990 that confirmed

“the grip strength thing. I think they studied 74 people who regularly crack their knuckles and their”

average grip strength was definitely lower and they had more instances of hand swelling than the

226 people who did not crack and another interesting thing is they found that in another study that if you're a habitual knuckle cracker, you are more likely to be a manual labor more likely to bite your nails as I do. Smoke cigarettes, which I don't and drink alcohol, which I do. Yeah. So, you're, you know, three for five? Yeah. I don't manual labor. So, okay,

“two from count that one. So, there is some benefits to actually cracking your knuckles though too.”

We're not just hating on cracking your knuckles. There's something called the Golgi tendon organs. Not the Golgi apparatus. It's a different, different episode altogether. The Golgi tendon organs sense muscle tension and when you crack your knuckles, you're actually relieving some muscle tension. So, the muscles are round the joints when you crack them get relaxed. So, you can feel like, you know, your hands feel pretty melo after cracking your knuckles. I saw it described

as yoga for your knuckles. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I thought so too. So, like getting your back

crack or something? Basically, yeah. But for your knuckles. Yeah. We found one more thing, you know,

like, I'm at the age where, you know, if I kneel down to get something, you're going to hear a couple a snap crackle in a pop maybe. And then from some part of my body. Do you make an involuntary sound to when you're getting up? I do. Oh, yeah. Like, oh, god. Here we go. Something like that. It was like you can't not do it. Yeah, for sure. And when I walk downstairs, my right ankle like on every step just goes pop pop pop pop. So, those things happen. I don't

think anyone knows exactly where that comes from. There's speculation it could be just like, you know, if it's your knee, it may be your kneecap rubbing on the bones or something like that, or maybe a tendon sliding over a bumpy surface or something like that. So, I don't think it's anything to be alarmed about. It is alarming, though, for sure. Yeah, because it comes with age. So, every new pain and sound is like, Oh, that didn't happen a few years ago. Exactly. I should go

sit down for a while. Right. You got anything else for short stuff guy? I got nothing else. I can't crack my ankle. So, oh, wait, they're my one. Recapitated. So, what does that mean? I think that

“means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of eye heart radio. For more”

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