Video Games Used for Pain Management

People who live with chronic pain from injuries or medical conditions such as certain autoimmune disorders or fibromyalgia know that the constant pain can wear down the body, mind and spirit. Living with chronic pain can become unbearable at times, resulting in long-term use of pain killers, muscle relaxers, and even sleeping pills in order to rest.

Some people, concerned about the long-term effects of taking so much medication for chronic pain, or those who do not like the adverse side effects of harsh medication, have opted to find more natural ways to manage chronic pain without taking all the pills. Meditation, aromatherapy, massage, relaxation techniques and the like have shown moderate help in reducing pain short term.

Another way of controlling chronic pain or minor temporary pain from injury or surgery is, are you ready for this? Video Games!

When my daughter was seven years old, she had to have four major surgeries at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, Texas, and they fully understood that distracting the brain could help with healing and pain from surgical procedures. They had video games (the Nintendo 64, anyone remember those?), on carts that they would push into the patient's rooms with a selection of games to play. They also had large projection screen televisions in the Life Center with video games that were played at near life size. Can you imagine Mario actually being a foot tall on the screen?

They knew that distracting the children with an activity that engaged their brains and kept them active could actually lower the amount of pain medication the child needed, and reduce the child's rating of the severity of pain. This doesn't just work for kids, though. Adults can receive pain reducing benefits from playing video games too!

To understand why video games can help with pain management, it's important to understand how the body senses pain. When an injury occurs, the body senses the pain first in the nerves and it runs through the nervous system and eventually sends an electrical signal to the brain, and that signal is translated into the ‘experience' of pain.