According to Juegaterapia Foundation’s study, gaming is objectively good for kids who are fighting cancer. It was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
This scientific research was arranged in the Hospital La Paz (Madrid) and came up with the following points:
- 20% less morphine while playing games
These children felt objectively reduced pain and it was measured a 20% decrease in the daily usage of morphine. This refers to basal pain, but also, it’s the general mood, with a 44% reduction in incidental pain. With the help of the Visual Analogue Scale, this was measured.
- 14% increase in parasympathetic tone, which favors recovery
When a human body faces a physical threat, it activates the sympathetic system to help the body flee the perceived aggression. But, due to an increase in heart rate and arterial tension affects the human body negatively at the same time. To counter the situation, the way is to activate the parasympathetic system that favors physiological recovery.
- 14% decrease in pain
Those children with cancer who were suffering mucositis were offered to play video games while they were monitored by two devices: one is the Analgesia-Nociception Index (ANI R), which measures heart rates, and video-pupilmetrics Algiscan R. The result shows a pain relief of 14% and increase of parasympathetic tone by 14%.
Francisco Reinoso-Barbero, Head of the Pain Management Unit in the Children’s Hospital La Paz (Madrid) and co-author of this research, said, “The medical implication of these discoveries are important because video games could become a part of the non-pharmacological therapeutical plan against pediatric cancer mucusitis.”
Mario Alonso Puig added (M.D., public speaker, and honorific trustee of the Juegaterpia Foundation), “When a child is engrossed in a game they love, this whole process of generating disturbing thoughts, pain, and anxiety stops. Thanks to being fully wrapped up in the game, children activate their parasympathetic system. This second area of the vegetative nervous system has two functions: on the one hand, it favors social interaction; on the other, it helps to keep the internal balance of the organism, the homeostasis, which in turn reduces the wear of other body organs.”
Now related to this study, there is a documentary film named “When you play chemo flyes by”. This documentary is available on Filmin and Amazon Prime Video.
