Do you take gaming-related health risks seriously?

ShiverinEskimo

Just wondering what gamers attitudes are to the inherant risks of long-term gaming.

I was playing the force unleashed last week and got into a bit of button-mashery and really felt the effects shortly afterwards all up my arm which must be carpal-tunnel or RSI-esque.

Was also having a conversation to friends about how with the latest generation of consoles and their wifi controllers you are essentially holding a low-powered microwave against your crotch for hours on end.

Add the long term effects of sitting stationary, eye-strain etc. and the amount of exercise I don't get because I get addicted to certain titles I'm beginning to re-evaluate my attitude towards the health aspects of being a gamer.

Thoughts?

SeantheMan

And I need to eat 5 fruits a day and not eat too many sweets and...

Enjoy life while you can... though in saying that once or twice I did get cramps in my wrists from sitting at the wrong height keyboard/mouse -vrs-chair ...but thats about it (I probably have Carpal Tunnel tbh...or will have...like pins+needles from wrist to elbow)

racso1975

I'm prob more concerned regarding the risk to my tele everytime i lash my controller at it!

On a seperate note your balls are probably already fried from havin your phone in your pocket

Ostrom

There are a good deal of articles across various medical journals, this one in particular stands out (New England Journal of Medicine, 2007)-

To the Editor:

A healthy 29-year-old medical resident awoke one Sunday morning with intense pain in the right shoulder. He did not recall any recent injuries or trauma and had not participated in any sports or physical exercise recently. He consulted a rheumatology colleague. The Patte's test was positive, consistent with acute tendonitis isolated to the right infraspinatus.

After further review of his activities during the previous 24 hours, the patient recalled that he had bought a new Nintendo Wii (pronounced “wee”) video-game system and had spent several hours playing the tennis video game. With the Wii system, the player faces a video screen and moves a handheld controller (approximately 14.5 cm by 3.0 cm by 3.0 cm, with a weight of approximately 200 g) containing solid-state accelerometers and gyroscopes that sense three-dimensional spatial movements. In the tennis video game, the player makes the same arm movements as in a real game of tennis. If a player gets too engrossed, he may “play tennis” on the video screen for many hours. Unlike in the real sport, physical strength and endurance are not limiting factors.

The final diagnosis for the isolated right shoulder pain was Nintendinitis. However, the variant in this patient can be labeled more specifically as “Wiiitis.” The treatment consisted of ibuprofen for 1 week, as well as complete abstinence from playing Wii video games. The patient recovered fully. Nintendinitis was first described in 1990,1 and there have been many case reports of injuries related to intensive use of recreational technologies, mainly in children and mainly from intensive use of the extensor tendon of the thumb.2-5

With the growing use of this new video-game system, the risk of the Wiiitis variant may be higher than that of Nintendinitis reported in the literature, especially among adults. The available games for the Wii system already include golf, boxing, baseball, and bowling. Future games could involve different and unexpected groups of muscles. Physicians should be aware that there may be multiple, possibly puzzling presentations of Wiiitis.

Julio Bonis, M.D.
Instituto Municipal de Investigación Médica, E-08003 Barcelona, Spain

The uniqueness of the condition seems to be accepted, this piece made it to the journal of Skeletal Radiology the following year (2008)

Abstract
We present the first reported case of acute “wiiitis”, documented clinically and by imaging, of the upper extremity, caused by prolonged participation in a physically interactive virtual video-game. Unenhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) demonstrated marked T2-weighted signal abnormality within several muscles of the shoulder and upper arm, without evidence of macroscopic partial- or full-thickness tearing of the muscle or of intramuscular hematoma

Add to that a good stock of violent image content analysis studies from psychiatry journals and games dont some off too good.

ShiverinEskimo

racso1975 wrote: »

On a seperate note your balls are probably already fried from havin your phone in your pocket

If the phone has them sterile I'm thinking the xbox controller will actually mutate them for the amount of time they spend together.

racso1975

ShiverinEskimo wrote: »

If the phone has them sterile I'm thinking the xbox controller will actually mutate them for the amount of time they spend together.

imagine how impressed the ladies are gonna be though!

heebusjeebus

I've lost all the feeling down the thumb side of my right hand (mouse hand). Its from working an office job by day and PC gaming by night.

That's probably the only injury I've sustained in 20 years of gaming. I've had far worse injuries dabbling in GAA, Rugby and even Golf.

Oh ya, are the PS3 controllers use blu-tooth tech? I wouldn't be concerned with what they transmit at all.

Retr0gamer

The wavelengths from wireless technology are very long so aren't absorbed by the body so not much risk of it affecting you.

I find my hands go numb when playing on the 360, DS and especially the PSP and I have to take a break and shake my hands to get the feeling back. also get bloodshot eyes from extended play. Haven't died yet!

Hercule

been gaming so long i have built up an immunity to RSI :pac:

maximoose

I currently have what im guessing to be a trapped nerve in my right pinkie thats been lingering there for about 10 days or so after a long session of playing the 360 leaning on my elbows.

other than that im not too concerned

SeantheMan

Hercule wrote: »

been gaming so long i have built up an immunity to RSI :pac:

"gaming" you say ? ,,,hmmmmm

I've lost all the feeling down the thumb side of my right hand (mouse hand). Its from working an office job by day and PC gaming by night.

That's probably the only injury I've sustained in 20 years of gaming

Thats a pretty serious side affect in fairness....is it a constant thing ? like if we were to stick a pin in it or.. ? Have you gone the doctor about it ?

RedXIV

As someone who spent days on end playing games, I have conclusive evidence that the wi-fi in controllers does not make you sterile.




She's 3 months old next week :P

ShiverinEskimo

I wonder with all the battle scar stories coming in would any of us ever remotely consider getting checked out by a doc?

I mean I play football and have been injured many times. When this happens I stop playing until i'm 'fit' again.

With gaming I feel pain, I adjust myself to increase comfort and play on. I don't think I'm ever stopped gaming for any reason other than tiredness, having to be somewhere else or getting too pissed off with a certain level/scene that any further playing puts my TV at risk.

o1s1n

My ring finger (snigger) on my right hand gets very sore. I'm pretty sure it's from holding a mouse in work all day.

Don't get this at all really from a control pad. I do get sore thumbs if I'm pressing combos though. Recently played through Arkham Assylum and it wasn't the most pleasant experience for my thumbs. Actually be honest, most games that require a lot of thumb use do cause me pain after a while. I combat that by trying to use an arcade stick as much as possible in my old age.

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Haven't died yet!

Even in Radiant Silvergun? :P

I don't know, I tend to play in moderation (very rarely over two hour sessions) so I like to think I approach gaming sensibly enough. I'd like to think if I was ever giving over to outright gaming addiction, I'd be able to stop myself and cop on.

I would, however, love developers to stop putting in button mashing bits. I'm looking at your torture scenes, Hideo Kojima!

Refusing to play MMORPGs helps :pac:

o1s1n

I also defy all health warnings and sit about two-three feet away from my CRT TV when playing older games. Find I'm much better at shooters that way Feel more like an arcade cabinet too!

deathrider

I remember getting a few blisters on my right thumb from playing the Street Fighter Alpha collection disc on PS2 a few years back, but I really blame the PS2's D-pad for that. It's not very well made for fighting games. Glad that it's all analogue work these days instead. Apart from that, I get the occasional back-ache if I'm playing for too long, but that's my own fault for... well, for playing too damn long. All in all though, nothing really worth writing home about.

However, I've often wondered if you can severly damage your hands (internally, I mean) from constant gaming. Holding a pad in the one position for hours on end, on a daily basis is bound to have some side effect. I've been a victim to "The Claw" once or twice myself. We've all heard of Atlete's Foot, perhaps there is a version of Gamer's Hand recorded somewhere?...

Retr0gamer

I've hair on the palms of my hands.

Liber8or

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I've hair on the palms of my hands.

L33t!

pdbhp

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I've hair on the palms of my hands.

Thats not from gaming:P

My main health concerns when gaming come not from the controllers but from the quantity of alcohol and drugs consumed whilst at play especially when I play Xbox as there's no point in even attempting a game unless high enough

Agricola

No, because Im not even remotely hard core enough of a gamer to worry about it. Even when I was younger and could play games for 12 hour sessions if i wanted to, I never really did. I never had that obsession that Ive seen others get. Sure, i got very excited about an imminent release, but when the game arrived Id play it for a couple of hours and just pick it up the next day.

Retr0gamer

pdbhp wrote: »

My main health concerns when gaming come not from the controllers but from the quantity of alcohol and drugs consumed whilst at play especially when I play Xbox as there's no point in even attempting a game unless high enough

Drunkenly winding up people on xbox live that take online gaming far too seriously, nothing better

AlmightyCushion

RedXIV wrote: »

As someone who spent days on end playing games, I have conclusive evidence that the wi-fi in controllers does not make you sterile.




She's 3 months old next week :P

You're assuming she's yours.

Silverfish

I don't take the health risks seriously, no.
Although I have noticed after playing the xbox for a while I'm not able to straighten out my fingers for a while afterwards, and I don't take the breaks they recommend either- which was why I ended up puking my way through HL2.

Eyesight is gone to the dogs as well, but I don't think that's from gaming, that's from internetting.

o1s1n wrote:

I also defy all health warnings and sit about two-three feet away from my CRT TV when playing older games. Find I'm much better at shooters that way Feel more like an arcade cabinet too!

You'll go blind! My mam used to beat us around the place if we did that, of course then when she wanted to play Columns she sat exactly that distance from the screen for up to 8 hours.

Leeg17

For a while I was really addicted to an MMORPG (not WoW ), would play for as long as my parents would let me during the summer (didn't play during school year as much, none during LC and I got 2nd highest points in my year), up to 12 hours a day if they were gone on hols. Would go to bed absolutely shattered, with a headache sometimes and the odd bloodshot eye.

Though now I have an almost daily shoulder pain (kind of a numb one), which I can only presume is from the many many hours on my laptop (gametime clocked as 125 days... 3,000 hours on that 1 game alone!), with my neck strained up on a pillow. Probably wouldn't be like that if I sat up straight in a chair so much away from the laptop yada yada.

Thankfully I'm not as bad anymore (quit that MMO) on the playstation, I'd play for maybe an hour or two, get bored then do something for a while, and either go back or not later on.