Video games can be good for health

It looks like video games aren’t that bad after all. After hundreds of reports about how video games have a bad influence on society, we finally have reports that they can actually encourage healthy living. Researchers have discovered that video games can help people going through physical therapy as part of the accident recovery process.

As we all know, physical therapy can be a long, challenging process that not many patients are up to – causing them to delay sessions or even skip them, which hinders their recovery. By using video games to disguise the fact that they are undergoing therapy, patients become more engaged in the therapy, and actually spend longer time in sessions than if they were to do it without the game. When people lose themselves in a game, time passes much more quickly, and people exercise more.

The video games also helped in other areas of recovery – cancer patients who played a specially designed game, Re-mission, at least one hour a week maintained higher levels of chemo in their blood and took antibiotics more consistently. While it’s good that video games help recovering people, hopefully in the future they find a way to implement it in the lives of people who don’t need therapy but want to play video games to improve their health.