snap your fingers or taking off the tabas, whatever you want to call it, is a quite frequent habit though it may cause joint problems “almost certain” in the long term. sometimes for nervesor simply for pleasure or taste, fingers are forced unconsciously and several times a day. Some people get to do it with all their fingers at once, while others delight in finger to finger.
Thus, the president of the General Council of Colleges of Physiotherapists of Spain, Miguel Villafaina Muñozexplains that “almost certainly” there can be relationship between cracking hands and arthritisAlthough there is much controversy on the matter. However, he emphasizes that when a general study is carried out, all the cases agree that people who have had some inflammation or arthritis correspond to people who have snapped their fingers throughout their lives.
“The relationship it has is that those who occasionally crack their joints may have arthritis. If they do it repeatedly throughout their lives, they may have a degenerative process that it’s called osteoarthritis“warns the expert.
Side effects
At a general level, it stands out that removing tabas regularly has side effects. These correspond to a muscular weakness and, above all, with a inflammation and pain in the joint. With time it points to cartilage problems. “One thing that is worrying is that it can generate joint instability. In the joints there is a balance of the parts that make it up. They have their normal tension and crunching the fingers can cause it to deteriorate and make fingers unsteady”alert.
In his opinion, it is “a little worrying” because with the fact that only one finger lacks stability, the loss of grip in hand. It is also talked about circulatory problemsbut it is not 100% proven either, appreciates the physiotherapist, while indicating that, contrary to what is thought, the tremors They do not have to be produced by removing tabas. “Although it is true that when there is muscle weakness and effort is made, those who are not used to it can produce a tremor in the muscle,” he adds.
Villafaina also draws attention to the fact that the insecure people tend to take tabas, a fact that, in his opinion, It gives them a certain security and pleasure.. “All joints have sensory richness, and stretching produces some momentary pleasure or release from the joint,” he adds.
What really happens when we snap our fingers?
But really, what happens when you snap your fingers? The president of the General Council of Colleges of Physiotherapists of Spain stresses that the noise that is perceived is a ‘pomp’ that is exploded. “When there is a separation of the boneswhich are together or joined by soft part elements, when separated there is sinovial fluidthat generates carbon dioxide gases. When there is a separation, there is a spacebecause it is generally occupied by a quantity of liquid, and that air usually occupies it. and with those gases when trying to force it to crack, they burst as if they were little balloonsthat’s what it sounds like,” explains the expert.
As specified, this situation would also occur when, for example, the feet move and sound unconsciously and without forcing. “In many people this act generates pleasure and the one next to it creepy tremendous”, jokes Villafaina, at the same time that he specifies that he emphasizes that men take more tabas than women since, generally, these have the “coarser” musculature, while that of women is “more lax”.