Video Games: So Much Fun, It Hurts?

May 15, 2008 — -- A high-speed chase. Dodging police, drug lords and bullets. Running down a street and ducking into an alley, only to be sucker slammed by a 2-by-4!

A few hours of this and parents might expect their children to walk, or hobble, away with more than a few bumps and bruises -- unless, of course, the action is from a video game.

Games such as "Grand Theft Auto IV," the latest offering to the gaming world, provide plenty of opportunities to engage in brutal high-tech fisticuffs and frequent explosive use.

But now, some doctors are saying that even a virtual rumble can result in real chronic muscle pains.

Picture a gamer, tense, immobile and totally focused on the action on the screen. In all likelihood the pose is not a comfortable one, though the gamer may not realize it until the game is over.

"I guess you could put it that I play a lot," said Mitchel Gianoni, 21, an avid gamer from Massachusetts, who logs a few hours of video game play each day and counts the "Grand Theft Auto" games as some of his favorites. "Yeah, it hurts, if I'm sitting uncomfortably."

And those tense muscles, held in one position for a sustained period of time, can cause painful inflammation and sore areas. Trigger points -- tiny areas where the muscle spasms -- can occur, too.

"It's the muscle's way of saying 'whoa, we're stressed out!'" said Dr. Michael Schmitz, director of pediatric pain medicine at Arkansas Children's Hospital. "Eventually, you can't voluntarily relax that muscle."

And being immobile during play doesn't help. Muscles can lose their tone and conditioning very quickly. Schmitz said bedridden patients in hospitals are particularly prone to having painful muscle spasms from lack of use, sometimes within two or three days.

While it may be easier for a child or teenager to shake off a few hours of game playing with nothing more than a sore neck or back, it is far harder for an adult to do the same, so the pain problem may be worse for the growing number of adult gamers.