Wii Helps With Chronic Pain

[MirandaMW87]

Originally Posted by canada.com

Video games beat drugs for chronic pain
Published: Monday, December 17, 2007
VANCOUVER - In pain? Skip the morphine, and try a video game.


A Simon Fraser University professor is trying to understand why experiments consistently show people who suffer serious pain often find more relief in virtual reality environments than drug-based treatments.


Helen Bradham, 79 left, gives Cecil Canavan, 84 moral support while he tackles the Nintendo Wii video bowling game at the Millennium Trail Manor retirement home, in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Canwest News Service

"There is a real demand for this kind of therapy," said Diane Gromala, founding director of SFU's BioMedia lab. "As Canada's baby-boomers enter old age, pain management looms as a huge public-health issue."


Gromala, who suffers from chronic pain herself, is working with doctors to learn how virtual reality therapies can give people ways to express and keep track of their pain. The therapies also can give them a way to gain some control over their suffering while waiting for treatment by specialists, she said.


Controlled experiments consistently show subjects who are distracted in a fully-immersive virtual reality world, such as a three-dimensional skiing adventure computer game, report less pain than their counterparts using drug-based pain therapy.


One of Gromala's goals is to find new ways to use computer technology to help people improve their health through education, experience, and physical expressiveness.


About one in five Canadians experiences chronic pain. Some must wait an average of two to five years to see a specialist.


"Controlling pain through computerized VR and biofeedback meditation therapies has the promise of providing successful, cost-effective alternatives to pain medications," she said.

I can see it now

"Wii Can Save The World From Asteroids!"
but seriously I am reading article after article about how many ways the Wii is helping people. Pretty awesome

P.S that picture is hilarious

[Momma Bear]

That is an awesome picture. There are great benefits to the Wii and I really think they are opening the door for future consoles to be made to help people. Virtual Reality you scoff, I say wait for it in your living room or gym in the near future. And for it to be done right