Should I worry about my clicking joints – and stop cracking my knuckles?

Our knees, shoulders, necks and hands make all sorts of pops and clicks. Sometimes we even encourage them. But is this the sound of damage being done?

When Donald Unger was a child, his mother and several aunts - and later his mother-in-law - told him that cracking his knuckles would lead to arthritis. Rather than stop (or at least do it less obtrusively), Unger embarked on his own experimental programme: for 50 years, he cracked the knuckles of his left hand at least twice a day, leaving his right-hand knuckles to crack spontaneously, or not at all. After 36,500 cracks or so, the results were clear, at least for Unger, who had become a doctor and published his findings in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism. There was no arthritis in either hand, and no apparent differences between the two hands," he concluded. If you can't applaud Unger for his half-century of dedication, you have to at least respect him for not calling it a cracking" result.

Still, voluntary knuckle-cracking is one thing - what about all the other clicks, crunches and crackles that seem to increase in tempo as you start to age? Generally, it's pretty good news. Lots of people have joints that click from time to time, and that's completely normal," says Claire Speer, a physiotherapist and musculoskeletal champion" for the charity Versus Arthritis. I myself often notice a sense of relief when my back or shoulder clicks after stretching or a massage, when everything just feels like it moves a little easier."