You've likely heard — again and again to the point that it's been branded into your mind — that cracking your knuckles is awful for you and will lead to any number of irreversible ailments.
A recent study is about to change everything you know about this annoying, albeit satisfying habit.
As BuzzFeed Blue points out in the video below, doctors used to assume that the cracking sound was caused by popping bubbles in the synovial fluid — that gooey lubricant around your joints. And Pedro Beredjiklian, a chief surgeon at Philadelphia's Rothman Institute, told TIME that there was no correlation between finger cracking and that persistent wive's tale about its link to arthritis.
“Finger cracking is so common you would expect to see a lot of causal reports if it was harmful," he said. "But you don’t. So I think it’s unlikely cracking joints in hands leads to arthritis.”
As we reported earlier this year, a researcher named Dr. Donald Unger popped only his left hand for 60 years in a self-driven experiment to find out if the habit caused any trace differences. And wouldn't you know, none were found — he experienced no arthritic pain in the hand he'd regularly popped.
So there's the good news for all you knuckle-crackers, and the bad news for those who can't stand it.
Let us know what you think in the comments, and please SHARE this post with your friends on Facebook to dispel those old knuckle-poppin' rumors!
