Video game injuries

6 Real-Life Video Game Injuries and How to Avoid Them

Joe Keeley  14-04-2020

Video games offer a wonderful escape from the real world, and are a great way to have fun and relax. There’s no doubting the benefits of playing video games. However, video game injuries, if suffered, take the enjoyment out of gaming.Advertisementnull

While your characters will often die or be badly injured, it’s also possible for gamers themselves to suffer an injury while gaming. Some are more severe than others and common video game injuries include carpal tunnel syndrome and neck pain.

In this article, we list a number of video game injuries and explain how to avoid them.

1. Computer Vision Syndrome

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Computer vision syndrome isn’t specific to video games, but rather any extended periods of time spent looking at a screen close-up. However, since many games have that addicting “just one more turn” feeling, it’s likely that you will experience this: around 90 percent of people who spend more than three hours at a screen will.

It’s a condition caused by looking at a screen for so long without letting your eyes relax. Focusing on something nearby for so long puts tension on your eyes. You might notice dry or irritated eyes, blurred vision, headaches, and more as a result.Advertisementnull

The best solution is to not play games for hours on end. You should also consciously blink if you feel your eyes getting tired and employ the 20-20-20 rule. This means that every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet (6.1 meters) away for 20 seconds. This allows the eyes to relax.

2. Neck and Back Pain

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Sitting is a major killer and you won’t help the situation by slouching in your chair or couch. Sitting increases the pressure on your lower back at the best of times—if your posture is poor, that pressure is greater.4 Serious Health Issues From Sitting Too Long (And How to Avoid Them)Sitting too long at your desk or on your couch is a modern epidemic. Here are four deadly risks to a sedentary lifestyle.Read More

This increased pressure will wear down the bones and joints. You’ll feel the pain all over your body, but primarily in the back and neck.Advertisementhttps://31e2ad758672a2ad97ad0a9901ef633e.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

Ideally, you should do some exercise every day to keep your body fit. If this isn’t possible, at the very least take a break every half hour or so to get up and walk around. It will stop your body seizing up.

While gaming, ensure your posture is correct. Sit up straight, keep the TV or monitor at eye level, arms at 90 degrees, with your feet flat on the floor. You should also invest in a supportive chair if you can afford one.

3. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

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Carpal tunnel syndrome is when the bones and ligaments in the wrist have narrowed. This then causes the median nerve, which runs through the tunnel from your upper arm to the palm of your hand, to be pinched.Advertisementnull

This is an issue because that tunnel is very slim. Any strain is going to be felt in your hand and cause a tingling sensation. This will then progress to numbness and pain.

One way that carpal tunnel syndrome occurs is due to repeatedly bending the wrist, like when typing or clicking the mouse, or from holding a controller for a long time.

You can wear a wrist splint at night to help keep the wrist straight. Also, you can try wrist exercises, though there’s limited evidence to their usefulness. Ideally, buy ergonomic equipment such as vertical mice to reduce the wrist strain.The 7 Best Ergonomic Vertical MiceIf you experience wrist pain, a vertical mouse might be for you. Here are the best vertical mice to get you started.Read More

4. Seizure

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You might have noticed that many video games come with an epilepsy warning. This is because video games were medically recorded as causing seizures in the early 1980s, after which console manufacturers were required to include epilepsy warnings with their systems.

You are only at risk of a seizure if you suffer from photosensitivity. In video games, the seizure can be brought on by aspects like lights flashing repeatedly or stripes of contrasting colors. Some games do have a setting to turn off specific elements that might cause a seizure, so do check for this.

The chance of suffering a seizure is small, but it’s still a risk. You should know if this applies to you. Speak to a doctor if so. Advice they might give you, short of not playing video games at all, is to sit further back from the screen, adjust the screen’s brightness, and be surrounded by natural light.

5. Full-Contact Injuries

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Gaming used to be a sedentary hobby, but the advent of the Wii took many people off their couch… and swinging their bodies around wildly. News reports at the time talked of gamers who had fallen over or whacked someone in the face with a controller.

It wasn’t just people that were being damaged, but TV screens too! In fact, Nintendo had to issue advice on how to use the Wii controllers safely and started packing them in protective silicone to try to limit damage.

While the Wii is an old console now, similar physical injuries are still a risk. With virtual reality growing, it’s still possible to have a full-contact injury while gaming. Before playing, ensure that you have enough space around you and that you hold on to the controllers properly.

If you’re about to play an intense game, you might even want to stretch and warm up.

6. Obesity

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Being obese means that you’re severely overweight. While it isn’t an injury in itself, it is a condition that will lead to problems.

Children are spending less time outdoors and more time inside playing games. Leading a sedentary lifestyle is more likely to cause obesity due to the lack of physical exercise. There’s also some evidence to show that obsessive gamers eat more while gaming, even if they’re not hungry.

The easiest way to combat this is to get outside and work out. Go for a run, play a sport, or hit the gym. To ease into this, you could try some physical fitness video games, like those that get you dancing or exercising.

Work Out and Stay Active

While there’s no doubting the joys of gaming, it isn’t a hobby you should do all of the time. Many of these injuries can be avoided simply by spending less time playing games and more time being physically fit.

Rotator Cuff Tendonitis

Rotator Cuff Tendonitis Fundamentals

The rotator cuff is a group of four tendons that covers the humeral head and controls arm rotation and elevation. These muscles and their tendons work together with the deltoid muscle to provide motion and strength to the shoulder for all waist-level and shoulder-level or above activities.

Rotator cuff tendonitis is an inflammation of a group of muscles in the shoulder together with an inflammation of the lubrication mechanism called the BURSA. In fact, ‘bursitis’ should not be considered a diagnosis but rather a symptom of rotator cuff tendonitis.

This condition is often caused by or associated with repetitive overhead activities such as throwing, raking, washing cars or windows and many other types of highly repetitive motions. It may also occur as a result of an injury. Rotator cuff injuries are the most common cause of shoulder pain and limitation of activities in sports in all age groups. Rotator cuff tendonitis is the mildest form of rotator cuff injury.

The shoulder has a unique arrangement of muscle and bone. The rotator cuff (which is muscle) is sandwiched between two bones much like a sock lies between the heel and the edge of a shoe. In the same way that repeated walking eventually wears out the sock, the rotator cuff muscles fray with repeated rubbing on the bone. As the muscle begins to fray, it responds to the injury by becoming inflamed and painful. With continued fraying, like a rope, it may eventually tear.

What are the symptoms?

The classic symptoms include a ‘toothache’ like pain radiating from the outer arm to several inches below the top of the shoulder. Pain may also occur in the front and top of the shoulder. It may interfere with sleeping comfortably. It may even awaken people from a sound sleep with a nagging pain in the upper arm.

The symptoms are usually aggravated by raising the arms overhead or in activities that require reaching behind the body, such as retrieving an object from the back seat of a car. Furthermore, reaching behind the back to fasten underclothing or to pass a belt may aggravate the arm and shoulder pain.

A clicking in the shoulder may occur when raising the arm above the head.

What are my treatment options?

A thorough history and physical examwill nearly always lead to a correct diagnosis. X-rays will often show changes on the arm bone where the rotator cuff muscles attach, but an MRI provides the definitive diagnosis. This test clearly shows the muscles and indicates if the muscle is inflamed, injured or torn.

Medical

The following steps should be taken as a conservative approach to treating rotator cuff tendonitis:

• Stop or markedly decrease the activity that required the use of the shoulder at or above shoulder level.
• Apply ice to the affected area.
• Take anti-inflammatory medicationto reduce arm and shoulder pain.
• Begin an exercise program to maintain flexibility.
• Avoid carrying heavy objects with the affected arm or using shoulder-strap bags on the affected side.

In the early phases, over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medications may provide benefit. However, to allow the inflammation to resolve, it is vital to curtail any repetitive activity and it is equally important to try to keep the elbow below the shoulder level when using the arm.

Daily stretching while in a hot shower is also beneficial. If shoulder pain becomes more severe, prescription strength medication or a cortisone type injection may help.

Cortisone injections can be very effective in the treatment of the pain. When used, injections should be done in conjunction with a home exercise program for flexibility and strengthening, modification of activities and ice. Other pain controlling options include heat, ice, ultrasound and therapeutic massage.

For a young patient under the age of 30 and with a first time episode of rotator cuff tendonitis that is treated immediately with the above protocol, the average length of time for rehabilitation is two to four weeks. For those with recurrent episodes of tendonitis and some risk factors, rotator cuff tendonitis may take months to heal and in rare cases may require surgery.

Surgical

If symptoms persist, surgery to remove a spur on the acromion can increase the space available for the inflamed tendon and may prevent further fraying or complete rupture. If an MRI shows a complete muscle injury, surgical repair may be required.

Surgery for recurrent rotator cuff tendonitis (bursitis) is occasionally performed to:

• Remove a prominence or spur on the undersurface of the acromion.
• Remove chronically inflamed, thickened and fibrotic bursal tissue.
• Inspect the tendons and tidy up and sometimes repair a tear in the tendons.

These procedures are often done in combination. This can be done either through an open or an arthroscopic approach with the start of an early rehabilitation program one or two days after surgery and advancing to a more comprehensive program between two and five weeks after surgery. The initiation and progression of these exercises is dependent upon the patient’s findings at surgery, surgical procedure and rate of healing.

• Download a Free Guide on Shoulder Pain

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Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans

Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids.

It’s too little, too late. Donate: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr… (100% of donations go to translation, further articles and viewing & maintaining wide distribution)

Interview with Jeff, Michael, and Ozzie (1hr 16min): https://youtu.be/HBGcEK8FD3w Hill TV Response to critics with Jeff, Michael and Ozzie (17min): https://youtu.be/Bop8x24G_o0 FAQ, Discussion Guide, Media: https://planetofthehumans.com/

Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars? No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine”).

This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late. Featuring: Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Richard Branson, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Vinod Khosla, Koch Brothers, Vandana Shiva, General Motors, 350.org, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nature Conservancy, Elon Musk, Tesla. Website: https://planetofthehumans.com/

Cognitive Biases

How Cognitive Biases Influence How You Think and Act

Verywell / Elise Degarmo 

A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments that people make. Some of these biases are related to memory. The way you remember an event may be biased for a number of reasons and that in turn can lead to biased thinking and decision-making. Other cognitive biases might be related to problems with attention. Since attention is a limited resource, people have to be selective about what they pay attention to in the world around them. Because of this, subtle biases can creep in and influence the way you see and think about the world.

How Do Cognitive Biases Work? 

A cognitive bias is a type of error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them. The human brain is powerful but subject to limitations. Cognitive biases are often a result of your brain’s attempt to simplify information processing. They are rules of thumb that help you make sense of the world and reach decisions with relative speed.

When you are making judgments and decisions about the world around you, you like to think that you are objective, logical, and capable of taking in and evaluating all the information that is available to you. Unfortunately, these biases sometimes trip us up, leading to poor decisions and bad judgments.

Causes 

If you had to think about every possible option when making a decision, it would probably take a lot of time to make even the simplest choice. Because of the sheer complexity of the world around you and the amount of information in the environment, it is necessary sometimes to rely on some mental shortcuts that allow you to act quickly.

Cognitive biases can be caused by a number of different things, but it is these mental shortcuts, known as heuristics, that often play a major contributing role. While they can often be surprisingly accurate, they can also lead to errors in thinking. Social pressures, individual motivations, emotions, and limits on the mind’s ability to process information can also contribute to these biases.How Heuristics Help You Make Quick Decisions or Biases

These biases are not necessarily all bad, however. Psychologists believe that many of these biases serve an adaptive purpose—they allow us to reach decisions quickly. This can be vital if we are facing a dangerous or threatening situation. If you are walking down a dark alley and spot a dark shadow that seems to be following you, a cognitive bias might lead you to assume that it is a mugger and that you need to exit the alley as quickly as possible. The dark shadow may have simply been caused by a flag waving in the breeze, but relying on mental shortcuts can often get you out of the way of danger in situations where decisions need to be made quickly.

Types 

Learn more about a few of the most common types of cognitive biases that can distort your thinking.

• Confirmation Bias: This is favoring information that conforms to your existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform.
• Availability Heuristic: This is placing greater value on information that comes to your mind quickly. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.
• Halo Effect: Your overall impression of a person influences how you feel and think about his or her character. This especially applies to physical attractiveness influencing how you rate their other qualities.
• Self-Serving Bias: This is the tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and give yourself credit when good things happen. When you win a poker hand it is due to your skill at reading the other players and knowing the odds, while when you lose it is due to getting dealt a poor hand.
• Attentional Bias: This is the tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others. When making a decision on which car to buy, you may pay attention to the look and feel of the exterior and interior, but ignore the safety record and gas mileage.
• Actor-Observer Bias: This is the tendency to attribute your own actions to external causes while attributing other people’s behaviors to internal causes. You attribute your high cholesterol level to genetics while you consider others to have a high level due to poor diet and lack of exercise.
• Functional Fixedness: This is the tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way. If you don’t have a hammer, you never consider that a big wrench can also be used to drive a nail into the wall. You may think you don’t need thumbtacks because you have no corkboard on which to tack things, but not consider their other uses. This could extend to people’s functions, such as not realizing a personal assistant has skills to be in a leadership role.
• Anchoring Bias: This is the tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of information you learn. If you learn the average price for a car is a certain value, you will think any amount below that is a good deal, perhaps not searching for better deals. You can use this bias to set the expectations of others by putting the first information on the table for consideration.
• Misinformation Effect: This is the tendency for post-event information to interfere with the memory of the original event. It is easy to have your memory influenced by what you hear about the event from others. Knowledge of this effect has led to a mistrust of eyewitness information.
• False Consensus Effect: This is the tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with you.
• Optimism Bias: This bias leads you to believe that you are less likely to suffer from misfortune and more likely to attain success than your peers.
• The Dunning-Kruger Effect: This is when people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are when they can’t recognize their own incompetence.

Cognitive Bias vs. Logical Fallacy 

People sometimes confuse cognitive biases with logical fallacies, but the two are not the same. A logical fallacy stems from an error in a logical argument, while a cognitive bias is rooted in thought processing errors often arising from problems with memory, attention, attribution, and other mental mistakes.

By Kendra Cherry Reviewed by Amy Morin, LCSW Updated on February 03, 2020