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  • I can't help but sense a bit of frustration here on the part of some.

    As time and boredom strike me I hope to add more.

    1. Joint cracking has some negative social implications that seems to have really messed with some people's heads.

    2. Joint cracking has not been significant enough of a health problem to interest the medical community.

    3. Joint cracking is ubiquitous throughout the population.

    As a result of the above, since joint cracking is found equally in all types of people: some people who crack their knuckles have arthritis and some people do not, some have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and some do not, some have vertigo and some do not. . .

    Some of the people who have arthritis and crack their knuckles blame their arthritis on knuckle cracking.

    Some of the people who have OCD and crack their knuckles obsess about knuckle cracking.

    Some of the people who have vertigo and crack their knuckles blame their vertigo on knuckle cracking.


  • Community Lead

    hal, thanks for your post!

    The lack of scientific evidence and interest of the medical community in the reasons and implications of joint cracking are responsible for driving me into founding this community.

    I wanted to learn more and learn more I did! Not too long ago I was pointed to a very plausible explanation for most of my questions.

    If you check out the forums structure you can see that I tried to provide a meaningful clustering of the incoming knowledge. Take my thread on Commen Core Symptoms for example. Yes, there have been reports of jointcrackers on symptoms like OCD, chronic headaches, and multiple anxieties. As you wrote, these do not belong in the list of common core symptoms. Not everyone shares them!

    If there is one thing I learned from the numerous posts, it is that the group of people cracking their joints is indeed rather heterogeneous.

    I could not be more open to any ideas on how to improve this community to get a better grip on scientific reasoning. I do share your frustration on this point.

    Remember, we are just starting. 😎 It was and still is a pain to establish this site as the main meeting point for joint poppers of all sorts. This place is here to stay! As the community grows this sites capabilities shall adapt to our common goals.

    I think a Forum like we have now always will be a must have to share every day thoughts.

    Maybe we should think about a detailed joint crackers profile with questions like:

    • which joints do you crack?
    • how often?
    • when did you start?
    • do you have any OCDs?
    • do you have chronic headaches?
    • do you have any allergies?
    • do you have arthritis?
    • etc. pp.

    If enough representative poppers join in on this, the collected data could maybe even be automatically combined and evaluated for everyone to see. We could get some very interesting insights from that. This would be much easier to evaluate than reading everyones posts.

    I am also considering adding a Wiki to our future site or maybe even better yet an online book everyone can add too. This should provide a very structured way of collecting our combined knowledge.

    Any other ideas?

    I hope you do add more!



  • Jointcracker,

    Why do you suppose it may be that the "medical community" has felt that joint cracking is not a significant public health issue?



  • How exactly is it a health issue?
    Nobody is dying from joint cracking.
    there is no proof of a link to arthritis , which is a disease.
    people get embarrassed when they fart in public too.
    OCD seems to be a common thread among crackers , but non crackers too.
    Life is crazy man, but I can understand why doctors are more concered w cancer then joints popping.
    Can't you?



  • yes obviously joint cracking may not seem life threatening, but does that make it a reason to virtually ignore it?


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