Most joint-related cracks and pops aren’t anything to worry about, no matter how scary they might sound. A lot of the time, they’re just the sound of gas bubbles bursting in the fluid around your joints; it’s most common in smaller joints, like your toes and fingers.

This thick fluid – also known as synovial fluid – is there to cushion the ends of your bones and reduce friction as you move, and contains gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Sometimes, when you flex your joints, a process called cavitation occurs, when the excess space around the joint leads to the formation of gas bubbles. When the joint moves and the space condenses, these bubbles pop – producing that ‘click’ sound we’re all familiar with.

It’s for this reason that you can’t purposely crack joints like your knuckles over and over again within a short period. When these gas bubbles pop they dissolve into a liquid form, so you have to wait for them to regenerate as the joint moves. This process usually takes between 15-20 minutes.

This kind of gas dispersal is entirely normal, Stocks says. “Cracking joints can be noisy and concerning, but the good news is that it rarely means that there is any damage in the joint,” she explains. “There is a good body of research that confirms that clicking, grinding and crunching is very normal and does not correlate to injury.”

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