What is manipulation (clicking of joints)?
Manipulation is not always used in a treatment and in fact if you don’t want it then there are alternative techniques – you decide. The aim of joint manipulation is to improve the quantity or quality of movement or to reset the sensitised state of a segment in your back or neck. Most of us have a joint somewhere that occasionally clicks naturally (elbow, shoulder, neck…) and it is not painful. Similarly, osteopathic manipulation is usually pain free. The clicking, popping or cracking noise is not bones rubbing on each other but thought to be gas coming out of solution as the joint is moved similar to the whoosh of opening a coke can.
