Video gaming with Wii burns significant number of calories, supports weight loss

A recent study has found that new gaming technology that requires user movement burns a significant number of calories in gaming enthusiasts. The study, conducted by researchers at the Liverpool John Moores University, concluded that regular users of the Nintendo Wii gaming system have a higher heart rate during interaction, increased physical activity and burn 40 percent more calories per week than do gamers using conventional pad-controlled systems.

The study, which found that the average UK gamer spends 12.2 hours per week playing video games, compared the energy expenditure in seven boys and five girls between the ages of 13 and 15 while playing on both traditional game-pad interfaced gaming consoles and the Nintendo Wii, a gaming system in which the user directs the game by moving a “remote” around in the air.

Although researchers found that the male group had, on average, higher rates of energy expenditure, they noted that both males and females had a 156 percent increase in energy expenditure over resting values during a fifteen minute Wii session. Over the same time period, users interacting with the traditional pad-controlled system only experienced a 60 percent increase in energy expenditure.

“Through our testing it is clear that the motion sensor controlled console can make an impact on a child’s heart rate, energy expenditure and the amount of calories burned,” said lead researcher, Professor Tim Cable. “Parents should encourage other physical activities and outdoor pursuits in order for their children to lead well-balanced lives,” added Cable.

Conventional medicine astonishingly slow to adopt online technology, e-mail

Despite the spread of increased internet availability, e-commerce, and a whole system of global communication made available by the internet, many doctors seem reluctant to offer online services to their patients.

A study conducted in 2005 by Harris interactive for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal found that only 8 percent of respondents had ever received an e-mail from their physicians.

According to a 2006 survey conducted by Manhattan Research, only 25 percent of doctors said that they had any internet communication with their patients.

Some doctors are reluctant to conduct an online relationship with patients because they fear that they will be inundated with patient e-mails, or that patients will e-mail reports of potentially serious symptoms of a health emergency, and that doctors may not read them in time.

Meanwhile, some patients are reluctant to utilize online medical resources for fear of compromised patient confidentiality.

According to Debra Roter, who researches communication between doctors and patients at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, the medical field “has been astonishingly behind the rest of the world,” when it comes to communications.

However, some health services offered online are beginning to gain popularity.

“Patients are much more careful about using e-mail than we thought they’d be,” said Kate Christensen, medical director of KP.org, a secure website that provides services to 600,000 Kaiser Permanente patients.

“To me it saves a lot of time. You can get right to the point,” said Doris Taylor, a retired nurse who uses the service to communicate with her Kaiser Permanente internist.

“Conventional doctors are not only a decade or more behind the times when it comes to technology, they’re nearly a hundred years outdated when it comes to nutritional knowledge,” said Mike Adams, consumer health advocate and founder of NewsTarget.com. “Conventional medicine is an industry that insists on living in the past, refusing to embrace new technology, new knowledge or new therapies that might actually help patients.”