ARE YOU one of those people you likes cracking their knuckles and joints – even those in your neck?
One woman's experience might make you kick the habit permanently.
TikTok creator Lily Zacharias took to the platform to talk about her neck-cracking habit and shared how it landed her in hospital in tremendous pain.
In a recent video – which has since garnered over eight million views – she warned others to avoid cracking their own neck.
"I'm naturally really cracky," Lily shared, demonstrating how all the knuckles in her body would snap 'constantly'.
The TikTok creator said she'd gotten into the habit of cracking her own neck by pushing her head from side to side with her hands until it cracked.
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Her mum especially hated it, pleading with her to stop and warning her "You're going to break your neck!"
But Lily kept doing it, up until her first week at university as an 18-year-old.
She described the horrifying chain of events kick-started by morning neck-cracking habit.
“It’s week one of classes of my freshman year and I wake up around 8am and I do my morning routine, which was to sit up in my bed and take my neck and go pop, pop,” Lily said, tilting her head to on either side to show how she'd do it.
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She heard the usual sounds of "pop, pop, pop" when she cracked one side, but when she swapped to the other side, her next instead went "pop, pop, snap," Lily recounted.
"I was in pain, like big time pain," the TikToker said, remembering how she was too afraid to call her mum because she "didn't want her to be right".
But the fact that Lily "couldn't move" and her head was stuck to one side eventually lead her to call her mum "in hysterics".
"She’s trying to call the dorm to get someone to help me, but they wouldn’t talk to her because of privacy laws between students and parents or whatever," Lily remembered.
They finally managed to get through to resident assistant (RA) who was on night duty, who 'shuffled' into Lily's room in 'bunny slippers' and asked "Do you have a problem?".
“Like, no, I’m just sitting here with my neck at 90 degrees for the fun of it," the TikToker quipped.
Instead of calling an ambulance, the head of Lily's dorm convinced her to walk to the nearest A&E, where the 18-year-old discovered she had a compression fracture of her top two vertebrate, and she’d strained and sprained “every tendon and ligament all up in there.”
Compression fractures are small breaks in the bones of your spine – basically Lily had managed to break her own neck.
These sorts of fractures usually appear in people over 50 and they're commonly caused by osteoporosis, a condition which weakens bones.
They're usually treated with pain relief, braces and minimally invasive surgery in some cases.
In Lily's case, the doctor said the fracture happened because she had a mild hypermobility issue, so all of her joints went a bit further than they really should.
The then 18-year-old spent the following two weeks in a neck brace and did physical therapy for a month after that.
"All in all, it could have been a lot worse," Lily concluded.
According to healthline, cracking your neck gently or only cracking it occasionally won’t cause you any harm.
"But doing it incorrectly, too frequently, or too forcefully can actually cause more pain or discomfort," it stated.
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You risk pinching the nerves in your neck, straining the muscles and joints or even stretching the ligaments in your joints, which can cause perpetual instability.
Puncturing a blood vessel can also be an unwanted side effect of cracking your neck, which can result in blood clots and possibly a stroke.
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