10:37am Friday 18th December 2009
There’s no doubt the Wii will be one of the top-selling Christmas games this year, but could it be bad for your health. Kate Hodal reports.
THINKING of investing in a Nintendo Wii this Christmas?
It might seem like the perfect gift, but the video game console could leave you with more than just a £199 dent in your finances.
Experts warn that inflammation of the wrist, knees and shoulders – as well as torn ligaments – can be the result of hours spent playing Wii games. They’ve coined ‘Wii-knee’ and ‘Wii-itis’ to describe the phenomenon.
Wii-related injuries were found to have hospitalised up to ten people a week in the UK last year. And with the growing popularity of Wii sales, partly thanks to adverts fronted by Geordie stars Ant and Dec, doctors could see more patients with Wii-related problems this year, too.
Video games generally have long been touted for their allegedly detrimental effect on the mind, with antisocial behaviour and social alienation often cited as the result of too much time spent ‘gaming’.
But medical reports over the years have also highlighted concerns over the physical ailments caused by ‘total gaming immersion’ – or long hours spent in front of video game screens – such as deep vein thrombosis, poor memory function, loss of sleep, faecal incontinence, an inability to control urination, and epilepsy.
Injuries specific to the games themselves began appearing not long after the first video game, the Magnavox Odyssey, launched in 1972. Within a decade, “Space Invaders wrist”became the symbol of over-enthusiastic gaming. It was followed by “Nintendinitis”, coined in 1990 to describe a repetitive straintype injury on the wrist and elbow, and ‘Nintendonitis’, the result of pressure injuries induced by repeatedly pressing the same buttons. “PS2 Thumb”, a flaky and blistered thumb resulting in over-punching of Playstation buttons, was a popular complaint until the advent of the Wii in 2006.
And then Wii-itis was born.
Unlike its predecessors, the Nintendo Wii boasts accelerators and infrared, 3D motion detectors on its wireless computer console, which renders the game more physically challenging than its standard counterparts.
Users can play simulated games like tennis, bowling, boxing, golf and baseball, or be taught how to hula hoop or do a ‘downward dog’ in yoga.
But all this fun hasn’t been without its drawbacks.
While the games have been praised for encouraging people to be more active, playing them incorrectly, or for sustained periods, can lead to injury – especially for those unused to exercise.
One such injury, Wii-itis, is characterised by pain in the shoulder or wrist and is usually the result of sudden movements incurred during tennis or running games, which can then stretch or tear tendons.
Some doctors, such as Dr Dev Mukerjee of Broomfield Hospital in Essex, have warned that gaming in such a way could also cause damage further down the line.
“It’s possible Wii-itis may lead to rheumatism or arthritis later in life,’’ he says. ‘‘Patients often have inflammation of the shoulder or wrist.”
But it’s not just Wii-itis that gamers need to look out for. ‘Wiiknee’ – the inflammation or tearing of ligaments (or, in extreme cases, the dislocation of the kneecap) – is another potential health hazard.
Coined after a 16-year-old boy tore several knee ligaments, Wii-knee is thought to be the result of the Wii Fit game, which requires standing and bending on a special platform to perform yoga and strength-training moves.
Then there’s a round-up of more mundane, but equally painful, accidents, says Dr Thomas Fysh of the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, who has seen firsthand the effects of Wii gaming.
“Many of the injuries can be attributed to gamers sometimes falling over furniture or flinging their hands upwards into light fixtures,”
he says. Dr Fysh has recently written a report A Wii Problem, which was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
EVEN the controls can be dangerous.
The British Society for Surgery of the Hand (BSSH) has seen patients with fractured bones due to controls being flung around incorrectly, while one eightyear- old girl suffered deep scalp lacerations because of a flying remote, according to Dr Fysh.
Indeed, Wii injuries are so common that several websites and blogs have been set up to account for them, such as Wii Injury – wiiinjury.com – and Wii Have A Problem – wiihaveaproblem.
com.
On the sites, users are encouraged to send in their photographs and tales of their latest Wii injuries – one recent post describes how a drunken game of Wii tennis led to a black eye.
“To be fair to Nintendo, they do provide good safety advice in the product itself and if you follow it you shouldn’t get into trouble,” says Dr Fysh. “Just don’t let grandpa lose after too many sherries.”
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