Can anyone else do this?



  • Hi. I'm new here, but I have a question I have to ask.

    So, I can crack my thumb with out even touching it, if you know what I mean.

    I just bend the knuckle forward and it makes a small pop.

    Can anyone else do this? :?



  • i can do this to, but i think it might be unsafe.
    as you prob know, the lubricant in your fingers seperates into gas and liquid. when you crack your knuckles, the gas "pops" back into the liquid making a mix, and over time they seperate. this isnt dangerous. but you shouldnt be able to do it much more than every 15 min max. if you can do it whenever however many times you want, i think it might be cartilage or bone snapping past eachother, which could wear down the cartilage and lead to arthritis. so i dont do it that often



  • I can do this with my right toe, my neck, my shoulders and my right wrist!
    It's similar, in that I don't need another appendage to do the work.
    Right toe: I bend all my toes down then flick up quickly. It will NEVER fail to crack.
    Neck: I can bend it slowly to one side, then do a snap back to the other side and it will crack. I tend not too do this too many times in a row, it begins to not feel too good after about 5~.
    Shoulders: Left shoulder rotates around and constantly cracks. Right shoulder I put my right hand on the back of my neck and bringing my straight with my torso and you hear one big loud pop and you can see it on my arm too, it suddenly jerks back into a different position.. hard to explain, but yeah.
    Right wrist: Make a squid shape with my fingers, pull them back down to the inside of my arm and I snap it back.

    None of these ever fail to pop…yet it does begin to hurt after some repetition, so I stop.


  • Community Lead

    I can crack my ankles indefinitely by rotating them on their own. Pretty much the same also applies to my right shoulder joint. All other joints do at least need some "reloading" time.
    For me my ankles are also the most annoying / crack demanding joints which are the hardest to resist / to not crack.
    I wonder if there is a correlation between the easiest on their own indefinitely crackable joint and the most annoying / demanding one. This seems to be true in my case for the ankles. However my shoulders are clearly not as annoying as my ankles, even though they are next in line on the easiness scale. I'd say my toes are next in line on the annoyance scale, and I can't do them indefinitely.
    Probably it is the intersection of the easiest crackable joints and the joints most prone to be moved around during the day which are most annoying. I do move my ankles and toes pretty much all the time I move about….

    One other releated report on ankle cracking from 2007:
    @OCD ankle cracker:

    Hi, every night when I am laying in bed my partner gets very irratated because I HAVE to constantly crack my ankles 20 times or more, I feel that if I don't that my ankles may throb or something. I usually do it to the point that they end up hurting, but then I just keep on doing it, I have done it so much at times that they next day I can't even stand to bear weight on it. My partner yells at me to stop, as it aggravates them, but I can't help it, I can't seem to stop, I wish I could, I try not to, but I just can't stop. I do it about every 5 minutes throughout the day, but at night I do it every few seconds until I go to sleep. My partner thinks its an OCD, is that what this is? Thanks a lot! I would love to rid myself of this.



  • i know exactly what you mean! when i bend my thumb into about a 90 degree angle (like the top joint) it cracks by itself!



  • @madijd:

    i know exactly what you mean! when i bend my thumb into about a 90 degree angle (like the top joint) it cracks by itself!

    Lol I never crack my fingers or thumbs


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