Feb 3, 2017

Healthy gaming

an article about health and playing games
Video-games make our life more interesting, and this is one side of the reality. Another side - it is commonly known, that a sitting for a long time near a monitor or TV has bad influence not only on eyes, muscles and the skeleton: it makes a brain stupid and in some cases useful only just as food for zombies!

Without health, even coolest virtual adventures will not bring a smile on a player’s face. Without health, a gamer just can’t become a happy gamer – where to find strengths to be happy with pains and suffers all around? So, if health is an essential thing for feeling the full happiness of being in this world and also essential for enjoying games, better to remember three rules of healthy useful gaming:

  • Play for a short, limited time and make breaks.

It is fully enough to dive into the virtual world for 40-45 minutes in one game session. Then, it is so nice to rest for at least 15 minutes, to relax the eyes, to stretch the body... Watch through a window to nature’s beauty. Walk a bit outdoor. Just lay motionless and relax in meditation. It will make the next 45-minutes game session even more exciting and efficient. And you will be protected from bad influences of the gaming.

Also, it is nice to follow an advice of modern scientists, which recommend the 20-20-20 rule. It means – 20 minutes of staring at a monitor should be followed by 20 seconds of relaxed watching on objects in 20 feet (6 meters) distance.

And of course, the number of 45-minutes game sessions should be limited! Four for a day is more than enough to have amazing adventures, free some locations from villains, develop your hero or empire, achieve a few prestigious badges, or set a couple of historical records. It’s even the maximum because we have to not forget about other exciting activities.

  • Walk daily. Exercise regularly.

It is good to control time of game sessions and to alternate them with nice rest. But it’s not enough for keeping health! The temptation to sit all the day at home is very dangerous. Concentration on virtual worlds may prevent much better enjoyments of the reality. Go outdoor, walk on streets and parks, visit wildness around your town, hang out with friends… Do it daily and for a long enough time to feel all the pleasantness of the life.

And don’t forget about developing your body! Do you remember how game heroes become stronger when they spend experience points on updates of different abilities? The same is true for the real world. But here, we have to spend time and efforts to make our bodies stronger, healthier and more beautiful. Workouts in gyms, playing real sports games, or doing yoga – these are nice examples of effective exercises.  And it’s not enough to do this one time for a while. Do it regularly!

  • Control what you eat and never eat while you play.

If not to take over control habits in eating, it will useless to control time of playing, to walk on fresh air and even to exercise. A lot of sugar, meat, fried and artificial foodstuffs will nullify efforts of keeping good health. Delicious fruits, fresh vegetables, nutritious cereals and nuts – these are examples of nice healthy food for smart gamers. 

Never eat while you play, because game process so existing, that you may lose control under eating process and start to eat more food than you need – this way your body may going to be fat. A fat gamer, that shovels muffins and chicken wings into him while sitting in front of a computer for hours – it’s not an example of a smart gamer at all!

Of course, Very Good Games is not a blog about diets, so we just recommend reading an appropriate book - for example, Allen Carr's Easyweigh to Lose Weight. It is good not only for fat people.

Good health it is normal! It depends on our daily habits. And there is a way to play games and not destroy health. It’s the way of a healthy useful gaming. So, let’s play games and live the life in a way that keeps health and makes it better! Following the simple rules, mentioned in this article, we can keep good health even at an old age.

After such inspiring information, it will be nice to begin an exciting adventure. We propose a nice start in the Minecraft game with our tutorial “How to play Minecraft free”!

How to play Minecraft