– I get withdrawals when I don’t crack my fingers, says Ørjan Berg. – It feels good, says Sol Tomine Øvergård. The students are among the majority of those news talks to at the University of Agder who can confirm that yes, they do break their fingers. Others hate the sound the cracking causes. 74-year-old Bjørn Hansen is one of them. – It is torture to listen to, he says. Bjørn Hansen (74) calls the sound of snapping fingers torture. Photo: Ina Marie Sigurdsen / news But why do so many people break their fingers? And how to stop it? Then just read on. The young people news has asked have no clear answer as to why they do it. Ørjan Berg and Tommy Tverdal break their fingers several times a day. – I don’t remember why I started, says Tverdal. Audun Attestog and Sol Tomine Øvergård also break their fingers. – I don’t think about the fact that I’m doing it because I’m so used to it, says Øvergård. – Releases endorphins Doctor Wasim Zahid, who himself is an avid “finger wringer”, says that wriggling leads to the release of endorphins, so that we get a good feeling. – You get a kind of feeling that you are being twisted up like a cloth and are simply being renewed. He says it can almost seem addictive. – If I feel like cracking and can’t do it for one reason or another, then I start to feel a kind of uneasiness. Zahid is a senior physician in the heart department at Drammen hospital, but spends his spare time running public information for his 70,000 subscribers on YouTube. Doctor and author Wasim Zahid constantly publishes videos on his YouTube channel about both weird and everyday health topics. Photo: Screenshot / YouTube Not harmful Zahid says it is a myth that cracking fingers can be harmful. – We don’t destroy our fingers by constantly breaking them, he says. Although his wife is not particularly fond of the pop sound, he has no plans to stop. – I see no reason for that. I’ve been at it for 46 years and still haven’t gotten arthritis. Self-reinforcing habit Psychologist Bjarne Kristian Aaslie Hansen says people break their fingers because a negative reinforcement is formed. – The reward is that you avoid discomfort or irritation. The problem, according to Hansen, is that if you do it to get rid of the discomfort, you reinforce the pattern of action. – These impulse things give way, it just takes a little time. Different techniques can be used to resist. Hansen works as a professor at the University of Bergen and is a center manager at Helse Bergen. – Difficult to change a habit Psychologist Ann Birgithe Solheim Eikhom believes that many people are not aware that they break their fingers, like many other habits. She thinks that if the cracking is not a problem, then it is not necessary to make changes either. But if someone wants to quit, perhaps because it is embarrassing for those around them, it is not necessarily that simple. – It can be difficult to change a habit when the motivation is externally controlled, says Eikhom. news has four tips for those who want to quit, based on the advice of the two psychologists. Become aware of the action If there is a problem and you need to change the habit, it may be a good idea to have an overview of why you crack your fingers. – Do you do it more when you are stressed, for example, asks Eikhom. Then her advice is to map out whether you do it in certain situations and then become aware of why you do it. For some, it can be a signal that you may have to do something about what is causing the stress, rather than stop cracking. Photo: Ina Marie Sigurdsen / news Create action rules If this is something you want to stop doing, another piece of advice could be to create action rules. – If you break your fingers, you can give yourself things to do. A bit like “if I do it, then…”, says Eikhom. An example is getting up from the sofa and drinking a glass of water, or cleaning up the mess in the living room. This is something that applies to all the changes we want to achieve. Exercise and practice Psychologist Hansen believes that you can get rid of finger cracking through exercise and training. – In relation to joint cracking, there is the urge to do it, but this gives way. The question is what you can do in the period where you feel on irritation so that you don’t crack. Since many people do this on autopilot, recognizing what comes before the urge becomes important. Once you know the urge, you have a choice. This takes us into the next tip. Fun fact about research on finger cracking The American doctor Donald Unger was always told by the adults in the family that finger cracking would lead to arthritis if you kept doing it. To test this out, he started cracking the fingers on only one hand. This he did every day for 60 years. His clone clusion? His creative research ning on arthritis showed that there was no difference, and in 2009 he won the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine – the Nobel Prize’s satirical little brother. Block the action Hansen’s best tip is to do something to physically block your ability to break your fingers. It could be holding something or clenching your hand into a fist. – You have to find things that are incompatible with snapping your fingers. The whole point is to recognize when you have to break, so as to be able to initiate measures that are incompatible with the habit. – In practice, you override the action. You then have to do this as long as there is a need so that you don’t feel irritated at not being able to break your fingers anymore, explains Hansen. The phenomenon of cracking fingers has also reached the musicians:
ttn-69
Finger snapping is both loved and hated – news Sørlandet – Local news, TV and radio
