We now know whether cracking your fingers causes arthritis or not

While scientific studies on the subject have multiplied, no one has gone as far in testing as Donald Unger, a Californian allergist.

In order to answer that famous question, "Does cracking your knuckles cause arthritis?" and perhaps debunk the myth, Unger decided to crack the knuckles of his left hand for no less than 50 years!

Here's what the study, published in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism in 1998, says: "For 50 years, the author cracked the knuckles of his left hand at least twice a day, leaving the knuckles of his right hand untouched as a control. As a result, the knuckles of his left hand cracked at least 36,500 times, while those of his right hand cracked only rarely and spontaneously. At the end of the 50-year period, his hands were compared to determine the presence or absence of arthritis."

Same observation, different sample

After this original experiment, Donald Unger's conclusions, who admitted that his sample was very small (five fingers), were confirmed by other subsequent studies, notably that of Rebecca Ortolano, Kevin deWeber, and Mariusz Olszewski, who used 215 participants. Published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, their study revealed the same finding: cracking knuckles in the fingers do not cause arthritis.

Thanks to the man who won an Ig Nobel Prize for originality and imagination in 2009, the myth has been shattered, cracked, destroyed. And what about the cracking sound? It's not bones cracking, but rather bubbles in the synovial fluid bursting.

(MH with Raphaël Liset - Source : RTBF - Illustration : © Unsplash)