Is it possible to develop arthritis from cracking bones a lot?
I crack my fingers, wrists, knees, ankles, toes, back, and neck a lot as I get really bad pain in all my joints. I constantly have sore knees and a sore back/ neck. I’ve done some considerable damage to my ankles by cracking, spraining, and I also used to be a dancer. is it possible that I may have developed arthritis or could?
In short no. You could develop arthritis but this is not an indicator of it.
The cracking noise is simply a release of gas from fluid between your joint. The only known setback from cracking is a weakening in strength. i.e. if you crack your knuckles a lot, you will have a weaker grip strength than you would have otherwise had.
Cracking your joints in this manner is not very healthy. The sound you hear is only the gas escaping into the vacuum that the pressure release has created.
But doctors are not 100% sure that it DOES NOT cause osteoarthritis later in life. The problem is that you are repeatedly traumatizing your joints when you pop and crack them. It is only logical to assume that repeated trauma to any part of the body will have repercussions later in life.
Many doctors say that you could lose grip strength eventually but just because medical science hasn’t studied it extensively doesn’t mean that it won’t cause osteoarthritis later in life.
The possibility of developing arthritis, specifically osteoarthritis, would be more relevant to the stress on your body from the dancing, not cracking your joints. One of the major contributing factors to OA is repetitive use of a joint or injury. Studies show that cracking your joints does not cause arthritis, but it still doesn’t seem like a great idea.