Knuckles Toes Ankles Neck Spine Joint Cracking Community

Moved to new host

Unfortunately, we have had some trouble with our hosting in the last two years. The old hosts service quality has deteriorated dramatically within the service contract. Fortunately, it didn\'t get really bad until the very end. So instead of extending our stay...

...we moved to a new, currently much more reliable, innovative and faster host. Should this one slip up over time, we won\'t have to wait long to move again, thanks to the now monthly plan.

All nameservers should be updated within the next 48 hours. Please post should you encounter any problems.

At the same time security has been tightened up.

Pending upgrade [Update 4]

To move forward and to celebrate our 1 year anniversary, in the upcoming months the meanwhile outdated PHPNuke CMS architecture will be upgraded to the current top of the line CMS framework Drupal.

Of course I plan to make the transition as smoothly as possible. Stay tuned for exciting new possibilities!

UPDATE 4:
The old infrastructure was unfortunateley hacked yet again on June 22nd 2007 while I was not available for a couple of days. I\'m really sorry for the extended downtime due to this badly (or from the hackers\' point of view - good) timing. If you notice any downtimes please check again regularly, like you did just now.
Anyhow, the site has been reverted with no data lost whilst patching the newly found loophole.

Registration bots locked out

In the last couple of weeks a fair number of bots registered at this site with the sole purpose of increasing the page rank of an usually pornographic website. Never mind the futility of this attempt regarding that the memberlist isn't even visible to neither the public nor to spider bots due to privacy reasons.

The easy-access registration loophole has meanwhile been filled and verified. It will take a while until these bots have grown smart enough to bypass the now inevitable counter measures at the regular registration form. Don't worry, only bots will despair here, human users won't even notice any change. :)

As an added positive side effect the "User Info" box is now displaying much more realistic numbers.

There are two pretty reliable indicators for bot users:
- no posts
- website specified

Currently, 76 out of 190 users match this profile. It's in the best interest of this community to purge these very likely bot users from the database before they decide to actually start spamming in the forums.
Of course I might still be in error in a few rare cases. Maybe some fellow jointpopper is just too shy to write anything?

This is why I won't clean up until the 30th of September 2006. Of course any user registering after the 14th September won't have to worry in any case.
If you find yourself in the following list, please send me a private message, post a quick hello or anything. Thanks and sorry for this mess.

Biggest mysteries unraveled?!

The SpineCare Chiropractic group posted an article on 5/11/2003 which eluded me so far. hp was so nice to share this link with us.
Check it out now!

I'll quote the summary:

SUMMARY: If you often crack or pop your neck yourself, it probably means that the joints are hypermobile. The ligaments are a bit lax so the joints move a little more than they should. In response, the muscles tighten up to stabilize the joints. This makes your neck feel tight and makes you want to crack it. When you do that, the muscles are momentarily stretched, they relax somewhat, and you feel better for a while. But when you crack your neck you also stretch the loose ligaments further which makes the muscles tighten up again. It’s a vicious cycle.

I dissected this article and distributed all relevant information to the respective forums and threads to enable detailled discussion.

Do your experiences confirm the findings? Where do you differ? Join in on the fray!

ResearchPennState Article

Sanjiv Naidu, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at the Penn State College of Medicine and an orthopaedic surgeon at Hershey Medical Center posted an interesting article on joint cracking and the risk of permanent damage mentioning our growing community:

Although the actual process of cracking a knuckle may take only a few milliseconds, the relief that some people feel from it is palpable. Chiropractors make a business out of manipulating joints to reduce stress, and dedicated joint-crackers even have their own Web site and discussion board, on which to exchange anecdotes. If you're among them, it's likely that the only consequences you'll face for your popping and snapping will be comments from friends and funny looks from innocent bystanders.

Let's hope what he writes is true and we are really just following a strange hobby of sorts with no underlying physiological root cause. In any case it cannot possible harm to share more anecdotes! :) Read the full article here.

Jointcrackers.com launched!

On Monday 09th January 2006 Jointcrackers.com has finally been launched as the definite site dedicated to Joint cracking! It is hard to believe... but there really was no definite resource until then!

I filled the forum with initial content to get us started. Of course it takes a little while for a new community to establish itself. For this we need you and your experiences. It is easy to register and start posting.

Feel free to reply to existing posts or open new topics as you wish.

I will never ever use any supplied emails for any other purpose than to re-send lost passwords. Of course, I do not block sites like spamgourmet.com for those still paranoid either. The email activation is merely a safe guard against spammers.

Dare to start contributing! Whatever it is, it is highly appreciated. :)

Best regards,
JointCracker

Cracking your back without moving

Found in Kiffin's Blog at http://www.kiffinsblog.com/archives/2002/07/crackedtycrack.html in a comment from Emma.

The 2004 65th annual American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation conference in Phoenix, Arizona, revealed the development of an upcoming "Traction" device.

"Traction" is like the ultimate back-stretch. The patient is strapped into this machine (very similar to the torture device seen in "The Princess Bride" (1988) - but much more comfortable) and slowly stretched to ease the tension on the lower back, lumbar vertebrate and disks. It feels great. But unfortunately, it didn't make Seth any taller.

This is what the machine looks like:

Discuss in the forums.

Crackedty-crack

Kiffin's blog has one entry from 2002 which accumulated many testimonials of Jointcrackers which encouraged me to start this web community. Due to a lack for better words I'll quote the initial post in full:

Let's see now, how many joints of my body can I crack? A whole lot, that's for sure. Well, there are my eight fingers and my two thumbs, that's ten, two extra low dull cracks per thumb and three additional snaps for each finger (two sideways and one downward), that's twenty-six more thus thirty-six total. Then come my two elbows, two knee caps, twice the metacarpals of my feet, two big toes and the other eight toes, that's sixteen more joints bringing the total to fifty-two cracks. My back at three places, fifty-five. And then there is my neck, three (sometimes four) wonderful release cracks like a machine gun going off. Sixty-one (sometimes sixty-three). There are also a number of micro-cracks sometimes available by twisting my pinkies and/or ring fingers a certain way. Okay, on average ten extra micro-cracks totaling to one good full crack making it sixty-four. Sometimes sixty-five that is. That's a good many cracks per cycle. Over a good day I can repeat this sixty-four crack cycle perhaps let's say eight times bring a grand total of five hundred twelve cracks. On occasion I can even crack the cartilage of my nose, does that count? Make that five hundred thirteen cracks total then. Hard to believe that there are some people out there who rarely have a single crack in a day nor in a week nor rarely ever. And then when a finger is accidentally bent too far back and cracks, these people scream in subdued pain and disgust as if cracking one's knuckles is a terrible thing to let happen.

So what is knuckle cracking anyway? According to the article Do people who crack their knuckles get arthritis? it says:

"The mechanism by which clicking noises can be produced by extreme pulling, twisting, flexion, or extension of joints is well established. When a joint is deformed in this way, the pressure in the joint space decreased, and a CO2 filled cavity forms in the synovial fluid. The pressure in the cavity is lower than that in the surrounding fluid, so the fluid quickly rushes into the cavity. This sudden implosion of the cavity is thought to be what causes the distasteful cracking sound. Interestingly, tiny bubbles of CO2 remain in the synovial fluid, taking about 15 minutes to be reabsorbed. This explains why a knuckle cannot be recracked immediately."

Each crack feels really really good, as if I am addicted to some cracking drug, but the pleasures last no more than a second or two, including the after effects. Crack, yes, all gone, for a time at least. For each joint that cracks one has to wait around ten minutes before the next time it can be cracked, but the longer you wait the better the crack. The first crack is always by far the best, with each following crack less fulfilling depending on how long you wait in-between cracks. Stop that, stop cracking your knuckles! Sorry, I cannot help it. I am tensed up inside, I am restless, I am insecure and so it is necessary to crack every single possible metacarpophalangeal and interphalangeal joint in my body that is even remotely possible to crack. When I was around ten or so I learned for the first time that I could crack my fingers. What a major discovery that was. Almost as good as the day I first learned to burp on command. Slowly this cracking urge spread to the other parts of my body. Something one is born with and in adolescence comes into fulfillment, you might say. When I wake up, especially from a long deep motionless slumber, my stiffness thaws and then explodes with all kinds of random cracks whichever way I move, twist or turn. Like an ice-breaker crackling through the frozen sea of the morning. Crack, crack, snap and pop.

Crack my knuckles

Please feel free to discuss joint cracking in the forums!