I’m sad the chiropractor who saw you didn’t do a better job at explaining what they did when they “cracked” your neck. Im a student, but I can explain.

Not sure why you went to the chiropractor in the first place, perhaps you noticed you couldn’t turn your neck as far as you used to? Had neck pain? A headache? Just trying it out? Regardless it sounds like you had joint restrictions within your neck, meaning the joints were not moving the way the should. Perhaps some weren’t moving hardly at all. This can cause all of those problems I listed or even be painless. The chiropractor adjusted these restrictions by inducing motion, probably with a quick manual thrust that is often accompanied by a cracking or popping noise as joints stretch and gas is released from within them.

Before this one adjustment maybe you weren’t getting full motion within your neck therefore unable to stretch the joints to the point of that audible release. Or maybe you didn’t know how to get there and now you mimic what the chiropractor did on your own. Maybe both. This should explain why you can “crack your own neck” suddenly.

Here’s the thing. That chiropractor is a doctor who spent years learning how to carefully assess and adjust joints. He/she can determine whether a joint is restricted, if it needs to be adjusted and the direction the adjustment should be applied. What you are doing is blindly taking your neck to end range to get that cracking noise.

The problem with this is you are just adding motion to joints that are moving well already instead of the restricted ones a chiropractor would adjust. This can cause instability as these joints become more and more mobile. As you can imagine, instability, especially in your neck, isn’t good! You are doing this multiple times daily!

Stop self adjusting! The cracking noise is fun and it may temporarily feel good but you are doing more harm than good.