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Deliberately "cracking" the neck to relieve pain is not a recognized treatment and can lead to dangerous, sometimes fatal, complications, medical experts have warned.
Professor Ozgur Yigit, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist and coordinator chief physician at Basaksehir Cam and Sakura City Hospital in Istanbul told Anadolu Agency (AA) that neck cracking is not a treatment method and should never be performed without a doctor's direction.
"Some people claim it relieves pain, others say it improves hearing. All of this is, frankly, quackery," Yigit said.
Yigit said even physiotherapists cannot treat a patient without a diagnosis and can only act under a doctor's supervision. He warned against assuming a technique works simply because someone felt temporary relief, noting that pain and illness have many causes and that establishing a correct diagnosis matters more than any single treatment. A method that helped every condition, he said, would make doctors unnecessary. He added that one person's relief does not mean the same procedure is safe for someone else with a different underlying condition.
An incorrectly performed procedure can cause serious harm, Yigit said, including blood clots reaching the brain, paralysis, fractured neck vertebrae and damage to the spine or brainstem.
He said doctors take extreme care even when tilting a sedated patient's head, and urged the public not to trust unlicensed practitioners or people who claim to have "learned it by hand," but to consult specialists instead.
Professor Suat Turgut, head of the Turkish Society of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, said neck cracking is not a beneficial practice and that the damage a sudden movement can cause to the cervical vertebrae is unpredictable.
Turgut said a person's anatomy may not suit such movements, citing risks including bone density loss and herniated discs. He noted that two major arteries supplying blood to the brain run behind the neck vertebrae, and that sudden movements have been linked clinically to arterial tears, sudden strokes, vertigo and cerebellar hemorrhage.
Turgut said the medical literature describes "whiplash injury," in which a sudden forward and backward motion of the neck vertebrae carries a risk of respiratory arrest and sudden death.
He said even a trained physiotherapist cannot always predict when a sudden neck movement will cause harm, and that such movements can cause internal muscle bleeding and damage that surfaces later.
Turgut advised anyone experiencing discomfort after a sudden neck movement to see a doctor without delay, warning that delayed treatment of an arterial tear can lead to bleeding in the brain and, in some cases, death.
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