The relationship between noisy joints and pain and injury

Written By Joey Hext

I very often get people in my clinic asking me about their noisy joints, usually noisy knees and the questions are usually tinged with an understandable edge of anxiety.

The noises our joints make can feel very disconcerting, especially if they’re loud, they make us worry about our joints wearing down over time like an abused break pad on a car, but the relationship between noise and injury is complicated and lends itself to nuance not hysteria.

If you want a short answer: noise in your joint can be the result of pathology or injury but it very often isn’t

I’m going to lean heavily on this 2024 systematic review by crouch et al. which showed crepitus (the technical term for noisy joints) was found in between 35-81% of people with identified pathologies of various kinds, including osteoarthritis. That doesn’t seem so great, you might be listening to your knees right now and interpreting that as evidence that you have a 31-85% chance of there being a problem with your knee.

But not so fast.

That same study showed that 36% of pain free people also had knee crepitus.

Bear in mind too that only 4.5% of people in the UK actually have arthritis, that means that the vast majority of people with noisy knees are pain free.

So what should you do with this information?

Well my take as a clinician is that while you shouldn’t ignore crepitus, you need to consider it in a wider set of questions:

  1. Do you also have pain in the joint?

  2. Is it just noise or is there locking or catching?

  3. Did the noise start after a traumatic injury?

  4. Does it also feel stiff? Especially in the morning or after rest?

  5. Is there swelling?

  6. Does the noise reduce when you’re warmed up?

A noisy joint on its own is not something to worry about, millions of other pain free people have it and you’ll do your health a far worse turn by avoiding or reducing exercise. If you have some of the symptoms described by the questions above then reach out to me to organise a session, but if not, then carry on training young buck, and go get strong and fit.

Joey Hext