Can playing video games really make us healthier?

MORE THAN A GAME: Kathy Palmer, a senior research assistant at Lifespan, demonstrates how Wii video games attempt to improve health. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
MORE THAN A GAME: Kathy Palmer, a senior research assistant at Lifespan, demonstrates how Wii video games attempt to improve health. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

More than 50 adults are on a waiting list for the next round of a $2.6 million research study now under way at The Miriam Hospital’s Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine to test and document whether virtual video-exercise games can offer real physical-fitness benefits.
Folks from as far away as North Dakota have volunteered for the first such national study, according to Beth Bock, the principal investigator in charge of the study. Unfortunately for those out of state, proximity to Providence is one of the criteria for acceptance, enabling the study’s participants to be in the “exercise laboratory” three times a week for an initial 12 weeks.
The research, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes for Health, is taking place in three nondescript, 10-foot by 15-foot office spaces on the third floor of 1 Hoppin St., the headquarters of Lifespan’s burgeoning research division in the former Coro building. The division, with more than 1,000 employees in 2011 and a yearly revenue stream of more than $80 million, has emerged as one of the anchors of the city’s Knowledge District.
Two groups – one working out with Wii exercise games, such as tennis, kung fu, yoga, golf, an obstacle course and Zumba, a second working out on a treadmill – will have their physical efforts tracked over a 12-week period, measuring their exercise output. A third, serving as a control group, will maintain their normal patterns of exercise.
At the end of the 12-week period, each of the participants will be asked to maintain a diary of their home-exercise routines for six months. At that time, the study participants will all be tested – for cholesterol, blood-sugar levels, body-composition scan, blood pressure and cardio-vascular performance – repeating tests that were done at the beginning of the study. “We want to find out how well these games compare to exercise – both under the best, optimal laboratory conditions, and whether people will stick with it with a home-based program,” explained Bock.
In total, the study will follow a total of 300 participants, conducted in three consecutive study- group sessions.
The demographics of the first study group are roughly 50-50 male and female, ages between 20 and 55, according to Bock. In an initial pilot study conducted last year, Bock said that about one-third of the video games that were tried out provided a “vigorous-enough quality of exercise.”
Excluded from the study are people who have known diseases, such as diabetes or pulmonary problems. Also excluded, Bock said, were the very physically fit. “We’re not too keen on people who are already healthy. We are looking to see if [video-exercise games] are able to produce fitness and metabolic changes in a regular population.”
As Kathy Palmer, senior research assistant, demonstrated her techniques in Wii boxing for a photographer, Victoria Cobb, another senior research assistant working with the study, said that video-exercise games have developed a strong, inter-generational appeal. Cobb’s father, 58, has become a big fan, after he received the Nintendo Wii platform and games as a Christmas present two years ago. “He loves to play it,” she said.
Citing statistics that only an estimated one-third of Americans are active, and that millions of video-exercise games are annually sold across the country, Bock said she is “very interested in how technology can change healthy behaviors.” As a state, Rhode Island’s population is considered pretty typical in its “sedentary” nature, she said. Participants will choose the game they want to use from about 25 to 30 games on hand, according to Bock. “People will decide for themselves what to play; it depends on what they like to play. Some are surreal and fantasy-based, others are more well-known, such as Wii tennis,” she said.
Because the length of enrollment in the study is almost 12-months long, Bock said that there were some very modest stipends offered at the end of the study, including $80 towards a gym membership. Participants also received some “small compensation” for completing some of the testing, as well as for turning in their physical-activity diary at the end of six months.
Was there worry that Nintendo would exploit the results of the study as an endorsement of its Wii product?
“If the results show that Wii isn’t particularly good, they won’t want to talk about it,” Bock responded, with a laugh. “Our funding is from the National Institutes of Health, and they are fine with [our using Wii].” The process of getting an NIH grant is very rigorous, with only 10 percent of all proposed grants funded, she emphasized.
Bock sees any number of potential applications worthy of study, if the research demonstrates that regular use of video-exercise games produces metabolic and fitness changes in a regular population, such as cardiac rehabilitation, or even workplace-wellness efforts.
“There are all kinds of ways to build in physical exercise as part of work,” Bock said. “There are now work stations with built-in treadmills.”
Part of the challenge, she continued, is for businesses to make facilities and resources available to the workforce. In the future, it’s possible that “playing vide-exercise games will be integrated into corporate culture and made accessible, and not seen as goofing off.” •

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