Popping joints/lax ligaments

I have also noticed this--so look forward to Esther's answer!

Hi, I have had this issue also...I took my chiropractor's advice and worked on strenghtening my muscles via weighlifting and pilates.  I do something called "super slow" which is heavy weights lifted slowly with a trainer on nautilus weight machines.  When my muscles are stronger, the ligaments/joints are less taxed and my overall integrity is better. I still pop and slip around when I'm tired, or when I don't exercise, but the issue is 90% resolved with minimal time at the gym.

Nike is absolutely right that strengthening your muscles, whether at a gym or doing another strengthening activity you enjoy, will stabilize your structure and reduce excessive popping and crunching. If you have lax ligaments, you especially want to have strong muscles. But your pops may be good pops. If two bones that have been jammed together finally ease apart, this creates a vacuum into which air rushes, creating a pop. In general, the pops that come with lengthening the spine gently are good pops. The pops that come with distorting the spine are harder to evaluate - these are better left to the expert bone crackers, the chiropractors. And in my opinion, you don't want to have those kind of pops repeated too often or you risk loosening your ligaments. If you find that your spine pops very frquently, whether from distorting it or from lengthening it, you need to ask yourself what you are doing or not doing) in between time. You don't want to jam, decompress, jam, decompress,..again, some additional strength can really help here.

It may just be that you are staying lengthened more consistently, so there isn't as much further lengthening to be had. I figure one lengthening pop per day at each vertebral level is fine. More is too much; less may mean, though not necessarily, that you are remaining compressed.