Should You Stop Cracking Your Knuckles?

Should you stop cracking your knuckles? Here's everything you need to know about this habit of making popping sounds in the joints.

As Donald Unger was growing up, his mother, aunts, and later his mother-in-law warned him that cracking his knuckles would lead to arthritis. To prove them wrong, Donald cracked the knuckles on his left hand at least twice a day for 50 years, for a total of about 36,500 times. He left the knuckles on his right hand alone. In 1998, at the age of 72, he had X-rays taken of both hands to see the results of his life's work. He concluded, 'I had no arthritis in either hand and no obvious difference between my hands.'