This has been plaguing me for my entire life- my joints crack like crazy! It's in both ankles, the right side of my jaw, my back, my wrists, my neck, my elbows (which feel like I'm splitting plywood) and now my left ring finger's last joint! How can I get this to stop? It's a loud cracking and clicking noise which drives me batty all the time (NOTE: this is a result of normal movement, not me trying to crack the joint).
It also seems to be just me with the condition- I've never heard anyone with it.
-Penguin
From what I've been told, joints "crack" (like "cracking your knuckles") when movement creates enough negative pressure that gasses dissolved in the joint synovial fluid pop into gaseous state. Same principle causes the bends when people change ambient pressure to rapidly, and ALL the dissolved gas goes to gaseous state at once.
On the other hand, the "snap crackle pop" that older folks run into comes from irregular joint surfaces, most commonly wear and tear to cartilage. This kind can be felt as a roughness or grinding from the joint when you rest your hand over the joint as it moves, and is called "crepitus". Now that I think about it, I suppose its possible that irregular surfaces could cause micro- areas where the negative pressure is more extreme in one particular cartilage crater, thereby getting small areas to have the gas pop into gaseous form.
So, Penguin, if your joints all seem to pop more easily I'd wonder if they are more flexible than many peoples', which would make them more prone to get enough movement to create the negative pressure
