When my back starts hurting, I have someone crack it, and then it feels better. I heard air bubbles or gas is released. Can some explain it to me like I’m five about why this would relieve pain and how it all works?
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About the gas…
Trapped gas in your digestive system can cause back pain and bloating. Gas in your digestive system is relatively normal and usually released through belching or flatulence. But when excess gas can’t escape, it gets trapped. As a result, gas can cause back pain and other uncomfortable symptoms.
Maybe you just cracked a helluva fart?
This phenomenon is called ‘crepitus’ and no one’s really sure what causes it. There are three main theories however.
The one you’re likely thinking of is ‘cavitation’. Tiny air bubbles in the fluid surrounding your joints pop under the change in pressure caused by moving the joint. Ever been on an airplane and felt your ears pop from the change in pressure? Like that.
Another suggested cause is your tendons ‘popping’ as they roll over your bones, catch and release. Stretch out a rubber band and roll it against something long ways. Feel that tension and stretch, and then the snap back into place?
Finally it’s been suggested that the popping sensation is due to the bones in your joints grinding against each other. Just straight up clicking into their neighbors when you bend them a bit out of shape beyond their typical path of motion, or too quickly for them to smoothly adjust and stay out of the way. I’m not entirely sure, but I think this theory suggests that the cartilage that normally protects your bones from wearing away at each other is thin, worn, damaged, or slipped out of place, or you’re stretching in a manner that knocks them outside of areas where the body placed handy biological kneepads.
As for pain relief, unless you have a trapped/pinched nerve (and I don’t recommended this as a solution to fix that!) the pain you’re experiencing a ‘relief’ from likely has more to do with the muscles that have been holding on position for too long. They’re fatigued, and stiffened. The motion of ‘releasing’ your back for a crack triggers a change in the muscle state. A tiny ‘jolt’ of sensation that resets the muscles from their holding pattern. This relief is likely only temporary if you don’t correct the posture putting strain on your body.
Alternatively, it’s possible that cracking causes very minute amounts of damage to your body, just enough to trigger the body’s pain relief protocols. Like rubbing your eyes, it’s just under the threshold for actually registering pain, so it ‘feels good’ because the body over compensated with its feel better brain chemicals. Be very careful with this. Too much, too often, too many back to back will cause damage over time. You can wear down the cartilage, and stress the tendons (and with rubbing eyes, damage your cornea).
I was just about to ask this question! I figured i should scroll through the sub first to make sure and you only posted this an hour ago. So thanks!
I have so many joints that crack its disturbing. Toes, feet, ankles, knees, hips, fingers, wrists, back, neck, even my elbows sometimes.
The cracking sensation is caused by nitrogen gas bubbling out of joint fluid solution due to the sudden pressure change that occurs when the joint is snapped into different position, ie cracking knuckles or back. Now that much I know and am certain of, and the other redditor I think might be leading you a stray in talking about the bones grinding away at cartilage etc as this was an old hypothesis that led to the False conclusion that cracking your joints leads to arthritis (inflammation of the cartilage in joints) which we now know is incorrect, hence the bone/cartilage rubbing hypothesis is incorrect.
Now in terms of the pain relief mechanism, that isn’t very well understood, nor have many studies been able to conclusively show it even is physiological, which is why chiropracting is considered a non-evidence based healthcare practice. There have however been studies that have shown the effect of cracking joints helps to increase pain threshold for said joint, so I guess it’s a bit like exposure therapy, so maybe by cracking your back whenever you are in pain, your brain is rewired to no longer perceive the current painful stimuli from your back muscles/tendons/ligaments as large enough to warrant a painful response, and so the pain goes away, but the damage that was causing the pain stays, and I imagine this effect wears off hence why the pain returns a week later after doing the same lifting etc that caused the pain.
Alternatively it may be completely down to the placebo affect but that’s another rabbit hole to dive down
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