The question is as old as time itself: Why do my knees crack and pop? Ever since man has first squatted down to make a fire or defecate (see my last blog post to learn more), he has heard these noises and wondered what the heck those snaps and crackles were! Well, there are a few possibilities of what you COULD be hearing in your knees or [insert any joint you have heard] are making sounds and unless you are having a unique amount of excruciating pain and can weight-bear easily with no functional deficits, there is a good chance you are experiencing one of the below phenomenon. Check it out below!

#1: RELEASE

As we stretch a certain joint to an end range (imagine when you crack your knuckles or twist and side bend your low back) we often hear a popping noise. Why is this? Well, each joint in our body is surrounded by a coat of synovial fluid and encapsulated in a sac as pictured below. When you move in a particular direction where the joint is stretched on one side and compressed on the other, you are creating a pressure gradient in which you will get a rapid movement of gas bubbles within the synovial solution that creates a popping noise.

As we pull or manipulate the joint in one direction or the other you will get that satisfying sound we all know and love: a cavitation :)

For examples: When any practitioner (Chiropractor, Physical Therapist or local organic, ayurvedic quinoa healer) cracks your back, performs a realignment or manipulation, what you were hearing is not your vertebrae going back in the place but a bunch of these little cavitations happening between the many articulations in each vertebra in your spine. It’s like dozens of little knuckle cracks with in your back. If already feels good to crack one finger, so imagine how awesome it feels when you multiply that out along multiple joints in the spine! Pretty damn good.

Joints between vertebrae, joints between the ribs and vertebrae, joints errrrywhere

#2: Oh SNAP!

Remember when your mom would make baked chicken leg quarters growing up? Because you were a gross kid, you would take the thigh and start twisting it off the top part? Ok, maybe I was the only person doing this, which makes me some sort of freak. While doing this you were actually conducting a small experiment of tendon-snapping-caused crepitus (yea, that is a made up word).

Example: Snapping hip syndrome is where the distal tendons of the iliopsoas, glutes, tensor fasciae latae or IT band muscle slides and “pops” over the greater trochanter (or top of your thigh) or anterior portion of your pelvis, creating the pop and crack and you might hear that.

If you don’t warm up well or have had the sensation of stiffness or pain in your knees or muscles that insert around the knee joint (I’m looking at YOU, quads) you may notice more cracking and popping as the muscles inserting across that joint are not sliding, gliding and moving totally smoothly. Try quad soft tissue work with a lacrosse ball/foam roller on top of body weight mobility exercises beforehand to prep your tissues and aid in that deep squat proprioception (your body’s feel for itself within it’s environment).

The blue sound explosions are popping noise that we hear when the tendon when it slides over and around the treacherous environment that makes up our knee.

#3: Intra-joint Crepitus

Joint crepitus describes any sound that occurs from within the joint itself. You probably hear this like crazy when you drop down into a squat or even sit in a chair. The sounds can really have some people thinking there is something wrong with them, and I can understand why! Unless you have an active fracture which probably wouldn’t be emanating directly from the knee joint and you would probably have immense pain, possible swelling or black and blue marks, there is a good chance that the sound you are hearing is relatively harmless and rather your body singing a beautiful tune.

Extra POINT! Is it going to give me arthritis?

There’s been there has been no study that the work week while it’s cracking in the constable the development of arthritis. There was a study done in 2011 (Deweber, Olszewski & Ortolano, 2011) that examined x-ray images of people who had always cracked their knuckles and those that never had. The study saw no difference in the development in osteoarthritis between groups. Thus cracking does not cause OA! Of important note, consider that some of these people were in their upper 80s and had been cracking their knuckles their entire life. HOW ANNOYING for their spouses and classmates!

Extra Extra POINT! You’re ALPHA Ma-dude

In an attempt to show the other bulls and females of their herd how much fighting ability and size they have, the eland bull will intentionally crack its knees as he walks to distinguish his unique power and non-fragility to the females AND predators. Now THAT is what I call music to my ears.

Worry Less About Your Cacophonous Body

In the absence of a traumatic or acute injury and with a focus on always continuuing to train effectively, with proper mechanics when loaded, there is likely nothing to feel too concerned about if you have loud joints. This goes DOUBLY if you are an eland bull. Although, I do not expect and eland bull to be able to read this article too easily…

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Sources:

Deweber K, Olszewski M, Ortolano R (2011). "Knuckle cracking and hand osteoarthritis". J Am Board Fam Med. 24 (2): 169–174. doi:10.3122/jabfm.2011.02.100156. PMID 21383216.