Playing games is as effective as jogging

Liputan6.com, Jakarta – Want to go for a lazy jog out of the house? You can still do activities that are just as effective as jogging. One of them by playing games.

The reputation of the game has been seen as bad. Parents are usually worried about letting their children play games too much. In fact, a Michigan Medicine survey of nearly 1,000 parents reported that 86 percent believed their teens were spending too much time on video games.

While it’s true that spending all day playing video games is a bad idea, there is a scientific reason that video games, in moderation, can be beneficial from a cognitive perspective. This study, published in a scientific journal Behavioral Brain Research, even reported that gamer better at learning quickly and adapting to new situations quickly.

Even researchers from the University of Bath explain in Games for Health Journal that “video game being active” can help many people exercise more consistently and can even be as effective as jogging.

Quoted Eat This, the study authors report that active video games offer very similar health benefits to more traditional forms of exercise such as jogging in the gym treadmill.

Research on Diabetes Patients

What exactly is meant by “active video game”? This video game variety tracks the player’s full body movement via a camera, which is then used to control the game and score points. More specifically, this research was conducted using the Kinect Adventures game with the Kinect system on Xbox.

The research team conducted a randomized trial that compared the physiological effects of jogging on a treadmill versus playing multiple rounds of active video games. All participants included in this study were people with type 1 diabetes. Diabetes patients were selected because exercise is very important to manage their condition.

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Heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption efficiency, and endothelial function (considered as markers of blood fluidity) were all measured among participants after playing an active video game or running in the gym. treadmill at medium speed.

Health readings were collected on three occasions: immediately after the activity, 30 minutes after, and 24 hours after the event. It lasts for a total of three weeks, with each week consisting of two training sessions.

Benefits of Playing Games for Health

In the end, all of those health tests paint a very similar picture in terms of the physiological health benefits between the two types of exercise (active video games vs treadmill). Blood glucose levels among the participants decreased to safe levels after performing both activities.

“Exercise is already recommended by doctors as a drug-free way to manage blood sugar levels in people with diabetes, along with diet, but it can be difficult for people to stick to an exercise routine in the long term,” comments Dr. Pooya Soltani.

While it’s not a magic solution to staying active, researchers found that players enjoyed playing sports more than running. This is especially important when diabetic patients are less compliant with traditional physical activities.

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