Knuckle Cracking

The recent coroner’s inquest finding (that a woman’s death due to stroke was an accident following chiropractic adjustment) got me thinking about my perpetual knuckle cracking again.

This time I’m blogging the result of my search for future consumption. According to Johns Hopkins, knuckle cracking is normal, and is not correlated with future arthritis, so one can crack away!

My neck cracks too, and this is perhaps a bit more worrying, since there seems to be general neurological agreement that the rapid (even violent) neck cracking of Chiropractic can damage cerebral arteries (causing blood clots, which can break off). This is likely what occurred to the woman whose death sparked the inquest described above.

The chiropractors themselves suggest that I should not crack my own neck, although not because of any arterial issue, but because of ligament stretching. (The thesis is essentially that neck cracking doesn’t help in the long run, because the neck responds to cracking by tightening muscles, which would make the neck just feel more tense.

Another medical writer suggests, very sensibly in my mind, that cracking which is not brought on by sudden or violent actions is likely to not be too much of an issue. Although the ligament stretching argument is perhaps valid.

I think I’ll try to cut back on neck cracking (but it’s hard when it feels so good…) and instead try to consider why my neck feels tense. I think I may be holding it in the wrong place (bad posture) and forcing the muscles to work too hard. Once again the Alexander technique (see also here) could be helpful…

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› health     2004-01-16 18:23   ...1