Q & A: My (toes, or elbows) knees pop and crack?Should I be worried?
A:No, you don’t need to worry if your knees pop and crack. If you need a doctor to say it: “It’s normal for joints to make cracking and popping sounds… It’s nothing to be concerned about if it’s not painful,” says Michael Kralovec, MD, orthopedic surgeon and clinical director of the Franciscan Health Center for Joint Surgery Munster.
People’s bodies (joints and backsides) tend to get nosier with age, and when it comes to your joints there are 2 primary reasons.
1. Popping bubbles: Our joints are lubricated by something called synovial fluid. This fluid accumulates bubbles of nitrogen gas when at rest, and these bubbles are released with movement. The bigger the joint the more bubbles can be trapped, so your knuckles will probably only crack once every 10-20 min, whereas elbows and knees can build up multiple cracks every 10-20 min. (Aside, no, cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis.)
2. Normal aging: Collagen changes with age. We see this every time we look in the mirror. The lines or wrinkles in our faces are a reflection of how our collagen changes over time. We may not like it, but we all know it’s a normal happening because it’s on the outside.
The cartilage inside our joints is mostly collagen, and it ages just like the collagen in our face does. It changes shape. The changes in shape can sometimes make squeaky or other noises. The only way to fix this is with a time machine. Remember, knees pop and crack with age.
No 60 year old is going to have the collagen of a 20 year old. This is true for our faces, and of how our joints appear in an MRI.
For example: If you are over 60 and do not have back pain, and you randomly got a (hopefully free) MRI of your spine, you have a greater than 90% chance of having “degenerative discs.” If you do not have knee pain, you have a 76% chance of having a meniscus tear. This is because meniscus “tears” are pretty much a wrinkle.
“Our study suggests that imaging findings of degenerative changes such as disk degeneration, disk signal loss, disk height loss, disk protrusion, and facet arthropathy are generally part of the normal aging process rather than pathologic processes requiring intervention.” Source
Nobody feels 100% pain-free all of the time, so banish that expectation. Aging is living. Not everything about getting older is what we’d prefer, but it definitely beats the alternative.
Should you ever worry?
If something is excruciating (silent or noisy) and it doesn’t improve after a few minutes of walking, that’s something to pay attention to. Regardless of what is going on, keep moving because our bodies were made to move, and they heal best when they move (and worst of all when they are at rest). Research over the past 40 years has shown that stopping all exercise or avoiding movement will make things worse.
Knee Health
Quick aside: Moving the synovial fluid in your joints is extremely important for their health and well-being. Let’s take your knees for example: most of the cartilage in them does not have its own blood supply, which means your knees depend on synovial fluid for nutrition, and healing. This is a process called active diffusion, which is a fancy way of saying that it takes motion, pressure and time to first make the synovial fluid, and more motion, pressure and time to push the nutrients and water into your cartilage. When the knees are deprived of motion (“rested”) the cartilage is starved and dehydrated, and becomes thinner, weaker and more brittle.
Just remember, when your knees pop and crack, don’t despair, just Stay moving!