Creaky joints might sound like a sign that you are getting older and your body is falling apart, but for the most part, your noisy knees are nothing to worry about. Let’s take a quick look at why joints make noise and how to tell if there’s really a problem.
Most of the snaps are just rearranging your body parts
If you hear a pop or click with every movement, a common reason is that the muscles, tendons, or other body parts surrounding this joint are moving past each other. This is especially common in the shoulders, says orthopedist Kim Stearns of the Cleveland Clinicbecause shoulders have so many moving parts.
If this happens during exercise, you can often improve the situation by warming up and stretching a little before doing the movement that makes the noise. A loosened muscle or curled tendon is less likely to be loud.
Creaking is common in healthy joints too
A creaking, crackling sound from the knees or other joints is known as crepitus and is more common in older people than younger people. People with osteoarthritis often suffer from crepitus, which leads to people with crepitus wondering if they will develop arthritis or if they damage their joints in some way when they move.
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Fortunately, that’s not the case. Crepitus is common in people with arthritis and in people without arthritis. The cartilage in our knees becomes rougher over time, and rough cartilage makes more noise as it moves than smooth cartilage. writes Michael Stuart, orthopedic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic.
Ironically, people often think they should stop doing knee exercises when their knees crunch and creak, but Stuart points out that if you have strong leg muscles, your knees will be healthier in the long run. So exercises that use your knees are more likely to help than hurt. This is true even if you know you have osteoarthritis. The The Arthritis Foundation points out their website “Exercise is considered to be the most effective non-drug treatment for pain relief and improvement in exercise in patients with osteoarthritis.”
Is It Bad for Cracking Ankles and Other Joints?
A single “pop” sound that you can’t repeat is usually due to a gas bubble in your joint. The joints are surrounded by a layer of fibrous tissue called a capsule. Inside this capsule is a fluid called synovial fluid that acts as a lubricant when your bones slide against each other.
The leading theory about how to crack your knuckles is that bubbles can form and burst in this liquid, and that the bursting of a bubble creates that characteristic knuckle cracking. The reason you usually can’t crack your knuckles twice in a row is because you’re already bursting the bladder and there is no other to burst. Wait a little, however, and another might form.
But is it unhealthy? There is no solid evidence for this. Several Experts | to have specified that there is nothing wrong with cracking your ankles, including A doctor who only cracked the knuckles of his left hand for 50 years and kept his right hand as a control. He couldn’t tell the difference between the health of his joints in his right and left hands.
When should you seek medical help for creaky joints?
If the sounds in your joints are accompanied by pain or swelling, it is time to see a doctor. That said, pain or swelling in a joint is a sign of a problem, even if it doesn’t happen with creaking noises, so the noises themselves are not the problem.
A single “pop” sound can sometimes occur when you tear certain ligaments or tendons, as anyone who has torn the ACL in their knee can tell you. Again, the sound itself is not the problem; After hearing this “pop” you will notice pain, swelling, or sometimes instability in the joint. (After tearing my ACL, my knee felt loose and wobbly.) Watch out for the injury and don’t forget to mention the pop sound when you tell the story of what happened.
