Month: January 2019

January 30, 2019 at 04:21AM by CWC Maybe you know a knuckle-cracker, or maybe you are a knuckle-cracker. In any case, we’re all familiar with the sound: An intense popping or cracking that’s either strangely satisfying or straight-up excruciating, depending on whom you ask. What knuckle-cracking actually is though, practically speaking, is a nervous habit akin to nail-biting, hair-twirling, or foot-tapping: It’s something many default to when they’re uncomfortable or even mindlessly when they’re just bored. But is it innocuous, health-wise, like those other common rituals? Or might the overextended stretching of your digits be causing you body any damage? Because that popping effect certainly doesn’t sound natural. First things first, here’s what actually happens when you cathartically enmesh your fingers, flip ’em inside out, and stretch: That popping sound? Bubbles bursting in the synovial fluid of the knuckles, which is the stuff that gives your joints their lubrication. And while the notion of knuckle-cracking leading to arthritis has been gratefully rejected by several studies, one sizable aesthetic question mark remains: Can the habit make your knuckles bigger? The risks associated with knuckle-cracking Good news: The whole knuckle-cracking-makes-your-knuckles-bigger myth seems to be just that—a myth. According to plastic surgeon Lara Devgan, MD, current research points to a causal relationship between cracking and enlarged knuckles being unlikely. There are risks to consider, though. A 1990 study published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases found that that 84 percent of 300 regular knuckle-crackers experienced hand-swelling later in life, yet just 6 percent of non-crackers shared those

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January 30, 2019 at 03:38AM by CWC I am 27 years old, and until last week, I had never touched my toes in a forward fold. In my childhood dance and gymnastics class, I could never quite reach those 10 little piggies, and not a whole lot has changed now that I’m an adult who goes to yoga twice a week. Sure, I can contort into dancer’s pose and bird of paradise, but ask me to hinge toward the floor, and we’ve got a problem on our hands. So when Corinne Croce and Dariusz Stankiewicz of Body Evolved Studio—a brand new upscale physical therapy destination opening this week in New York City—told me that they could get me to touch my toes in 2 sessions, I practically laughed in their faces. “I’ve been trying to do this for 2.5 decades—there is no way you can fix it in 2 hours,” I scoffed during my first appointment with Croce. Yet, she swore that my hands would be on the ground in no time. “A person’s ability to reach up and down is much more than just a testament to their flexibility,” Croce explains. “Of course flexibility plays a role in how much movement can be created at each consecutive joint involved, however more often than not, the inability to touch ones toes is caused by a dysfunction with the fundamental pattern of hinging at the hips.” Most of us refer to this as tightness, but it’s actually more complicated than that. “The ‘tone’ and tension being

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January 30, 2019 at 02:30AM by CWC I’ve thought a lot lately about the stories time takes from us. A year or so ago I was deep into rummaging through Black history at the turn of the 20th century for a research project I was working on. In the process of digging into the strides Black folks had made in the three short decades since slavery ended, I began to encounter—over and over again—women. Black women. So many of us. They cropped up everywhere: in the shadows of famous men and well-documented events; delivering lectures at conferences with W.E.B. Du Bois; sharing stages with Frederick Douglass; leading movements alongside John Brown; running newspapers and writing books that celebrated other Black women from times earlier than theirs. Despite protests from their white sisters, they were there at the first women’s rights conventions. They were there, speaking and protesting at World’s Fairs, including Chicago’s storied Columbian Exposition in 1893—the setting of the Devil in the White City. In those places, they gave speeches of their own about how Black women’s freedoms would not be pushed aside. They coached a young Ida B. Wells on persuasive public speaking, and gathered their community together to help launch her anti-lynching campaign—a revolutionary catalyst that charged an entire generation to stay active in the fight for our lives. They were at Southern train stations and boat ports, helping young Black girls in search of better jobs gain safe passage north, after realizing they were too often

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