Thursday, November 20, 2008
Many students wake up for some mind-blowingly early classes and immediately twist their backs, popping every vertebrae they can get at. It feels good. Back popping releases endorphins and increases joint range. But it also increases your chances of having creaky, painful joints later on, right?
Tate Janssen, chiropractor and practitioner of wellness at the Janssen Clinic of Natural Medicine in Lawrence, says this old wives’ tale is actually false.
Janssen says cracking your back is not a chiropractic adjustment. The popping sound you hear is like a bag of chips being pushed, instead of pulled open.
The body builds liquid pressure that turns into a gaseous form—carbon dioxide—when released, and then gets reabsorbed. Vertebrae tend to take 20 to 30 minutes to settle back into normal form again.
According to Janssen, the dangers of popping before vertebrae resettle—or too much popping in general—are hyperextension or misalignment. Popping your back could also aggravate a prior problem if one exists, which could remain undetected until age 50 or 60.
“The body is a dynamic organism,” Janssen says. “It’s not like a car where you change the brakes once and you’re done. We don’t have easily interchangeable parts. You have to do general upkeep.”
So while popping your back probably won’t injure you, a good back check-up never hurts.
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