Reduce Stress by Playing Games 5 Minutes a Day!
July 15th, 2009 | by support |
Dr. Mark Baldwin asked:
Just about everybody is familiar with the damage caused by long-term stress, be it nagging worries, lost sleep, or even the early onset of health problems. In today’s modern life it is almost taken for granted that any given individual shoulders more stress in conducting their lives than is considered ideal or even healthy.
While a good deal of stress is caused by worrying about important things like paying the bills or meeting that next deadline at work, recent psychological research has demonstrated that a significant portion of an individual’s stress comes from social anxiety, or the time and energy spent worrying about how one is perceived by others. The problem with this kind of stress is that it does very little to help an individual meet any particular goals and yet it carries with it just as much negative impact on mental and physical health.
Mind Habits, a video game designed to help train people to change their perception of social threats and boost their self-confidence has now also been shown to reduce the production of the stress hormone cortisol. Through repetitive playing, the game trains the mind to orient more toward positive aspects of social life, reducing the impact of related stress.
“There are many possible applications for this kind of game,” said Prof. Baldwin, the principal designer of the games, “from helping people cope with the social anxiety of public speaking or meeting new people, to helping athletes concentrate more on their game rather than worrying about performing poorly.”
In a recent study at McGill University, Mind Habits recruited 23 employees of a telemarketing call centre to play one of their games, which involves clicking on the one smiling face among many frowning faces on a screen as quickly as possible. The new findings appear in the October issue of the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The call-centre employees did this each workday morning for a week. They filled out daily stress and self-esteem questionnaires and had their cortisol levels tested through saliva analysis on the final day of the experiment. These tests showed an average 17 percent reduction in cortisol production compared to a control group that played a similar game but without the smiling faces. Since cortisol is associated with heart-related conditions, there could be immediate health benefits to go along with the emotional well-being from reduced stress!
These award-winning games and their beneficial effects have been written about everywhere from ABC News to the National Review of Medicine. But you don’t have to take our word for it—read more and play a while for free at www.mindhabits.com.
JEAN
Just about everybody is familiar with the damage caused by long-term stress, be it nagging worries, lost sleep, or even the early onset of health problems. In today’s modern life it is almost taken for granted that any given individual shoulders more stress in conducting their lives than is considered ideal or even healthy.
While a good deal of stress is caused by worrying about important things like paying the bills or meeting that next deadline at work, recent psychological research has demonstrated that a significant portion of an individual’s stress comes from social anxiety, or the time and energy spent worrying about how one is perceived by others. The problem with this kind of stress is that it does very little to help an individual meet any particular goals and yet it carries with it just as much negative impact on mental and physical health.
Mind Habits, a video game designed to help train people to change their perception of social threats and boost their self-confidence has now also been shown to reduce the production of the stress hormone cortisol. Through repetitive playing, the game trains the mind to orient more toward positive aspects of social life, reducing the impact of related stress.
“There are many possible applications for this kind of game,” said Prof. Baldwin, the principal designer of the games, “from helping people cope with the social anxiety of public speaking or meeting new people, to helping athletes concentrate more on their game rather than worrying about performing poorly.”
In a recent study at McGill University, Mind Habits recruited 23 employees of a telemarketing call centre to play one of their games, which involves clicking on the one smiling face among many frowning faces on a screen as quickly as possible. The new findings appear in the October issue of the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The call-centre employees did this each workday morning for a week. They filled out daily stress and self-esteem questionnaires and had their cortisol levels tested through saliva analysis on the final day of the experiment. These tests showed an average 17 percent reduction in cortisol production compared to a control group that played a similar game but without the smiling faces. Since cortisol is associated with heart-related conditions, there could be immediate health benefits to go along with the emotional well-being from reduced stress!
These award-winning games and their beneficial effects have been written about everywhere from ABC News to the National Review of Medicine. But you don’t have to take our word for it—read more and play a while for free at www.mindhabits.com.
JEAN
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