Does cracking your knuckles give you arthritis?
Does knuckle cracking lead to arthritis of the fingers?
A doctor cracked the knuckles of only his left hand for over 60 years to see if his mum’s warning was right.
Ig Nobel 2009
As a child, Donald Unger was told that cracking his knuckles would give him arthritis. So he cracked the knuckles of his left hand at least twice a day for more than six decades, and left his right hand alone as the control.
After roughly 36,500 cracks, neither hand had any arthritis, and there was no difference between them. A study with a sample size of one, but a follow-up period most trials can only dream of.
The most patient “told you so” in medical history.