A terrifying simulation is unlocking a new fear in people.
Cracking your joints is a satisfying and mainly harmless habit that many people are prone to- however, cracking your neck could lead to very serious consequences.
A terrifying simulation by Zack D. Films has shown exactly what could happen if you crack your neck too forcefully, and it's quite scary.
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Watch below, and read on for a full breakdown of how it works:
What is joint cracking?
First things first, the strange sensation you get in various joints that makes you want to crack them is a result of gas bubbles in the joint fluid.
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Harvard Health compares it to 'blowing up a balloon and then stretching the walls of the balloon outward until it pops'.
What happens if I crack my neck?
As per the simulation below, cracking your neck too forcibly could cause a tear in the lining of a blood vessel.
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In rare cases, this tear could lead to a blood clot. Should the clot travel to your brain, it may block blood flow to the vital organ and cause you to have a stroke.
While not all strokes will be fatal, strokes are said to be responsible for 39.5 per 100,000 deaths in the US in 2002, as per US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In fact, every 40 seconds someone in the country has a stroke, making up more than 795,000 people over the course of a year.
People have since reacted to the terrifying simulation. One person wrote below the YouTube clip: "As someone who cracks their neck a lot, this video feels like a warning of some kind."
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A second said: "New fear unlocked! Thank you again Sir!"
"My neck hurts watching this video," added someone else.
Away from potentially killing you, frequently cracking your neck can strain or stretch the ligaments in your neck that help to keep your spine in place, explains Neurosurgery One.
It's strongly advised that you do not use your hands to crack your neck (like the guy in the simulation) and do not crack your neck constantly.
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You've been warned!
What other body parts do people crack?
One of the most common parts of the body people crack is their knuckles (myself included).
Some have questioned if this can lead to a person developing arthritis, but research has found that there's little chance that the quirk will have long-lasting damage."Cracking the knuckles is probably harmless," says Harvard Health.
"Although there have been occasional reports of dislocations or tendon injuries from overly vigorous knuckle cracking, such problems seem very much to be the exception and not the rule."
Niamh Shackleton