Studies show video games can prevent eating and weight disorders

Video games are proven to prevent eating and weight disorders

By Phoebe Dinner

In the United States 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder during their lifetime, according to a Textbook in psychiatric epidemiology. The journal titled Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking proves that augmented reality and virtual reality impacts eating and weight disorders.

                                                                                        photo by: Getty Images

Surprisingly, it has been proven that there is potential that the social virtual world can increase an overweight adult’s desire to exercise and improve their diet.

This result confirms that people who like virtual reality video games are able to improve exercise efficacy and support weight loss. Another study supported this with evidence that people who viewed their weight-reduced avatars ate less ice cream in a taste test and was more likely to choose a sugar-free drink as a reward.

This study shows that people are more inclined to conform to his/her digital representation, which means that virtual reality could help shape peoples behavior.

Even avatars that are not human can positively impact the gamer. A study showed that even a virtual pet in the form of a mid-sized dog could improve fruit and vegetable consumption for young children.

 

Virtual reality can alter the mood of the participant

There have been test results that conclude virtual touch could be a good method to measure attitudes, emotion and social interactions that individuals have with overweight people.

Augmented reality food stimuli were proven to be as satisfactory as real food and it triggered a similar response.

 There is potential for virtual reality to actually enhance attention distraction in overweight children. This causes overweight children to better enjoy exercise.

According to data from the Gallup Organization in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, the US adult obesity rate in 2013 was 27.2%. Showing that there is a problem in obesity numbers.

Eating and weight disorders treated with virtual reality

Findings revealed that after participants embodied a skinny virtual body there was a decrease in the ratio between estimated and actual body measures.

A specific study aimed at assessing the experience of the body and its behavioral and emotional correlation in a virtual reality module showed that the virtual reality model addressing negative experience of the body would potentially enhance the long-term desire of standard cognitive- behavioral therapy.