Mental and physical effects of gaming

Originally Posted by V7
How healthy is your diet if you're spending less? You'd need to be eating a lot of packaged/pre-prepared/fast food to get much under that.

Gotta agree with JDR here. I don't spend near 2 hours a day cooking and my diet is still healthy.

I think PJ just really likes cooking

Very interesting thread. Ironically enough gaming has the opposite effect on me.

I had a tough day my mood is not the best ever and I have a very light headache.. on top of that I feel stress and tension. After a session of gaming with one of my favourite game… I feel relaxed, my mood is greatly improved, and headache is gone… my eyes on the other hand feels not so great.

It might be crysis problem?? not gaming. Some people also get headache and other problems especially from FPS games, if you have a tunnel syndrome?? do you ever get sick in boats, flights or cars ???

If you regularly excersice especially your neck, but also other parts of your body a 1-2 hours gaming session a day should be no problem… and of course make sure to have a good chair and ergonomic position!

There is absolutely no correlation between how long you take to prepare your food, and how healthy it is.

You can prepare delicious and healthy food if you're efficient, at least that's what I tend to do.

That said, I don't obsess about what I eat - I just watch my calorie intake and I stay physically active. My "rule-of-thumb" is to eat different foods and make sure to get enough vegetables during the week.

I've never had a problem with my health, and I personally think mind and body is extremely closely related - which is why I fully believe in a relaxed yet informed disposition towards food and pleasure in general. If you obsess over your food, you're going to suffer due to the mental stress that goes with it - no matter how healthy your food is. That's just how it works, or so I've come to believe.

You can eat fast food and lots of sugar - as long as you don't overdo it - but you certainly should stay away from it, if you're the sort of person who feels guilty for indulging in stuff like that.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
It might be crysis problem?? not gaming. Some people also get headache and other problems especially from FPS games, if you have a tunnel syndrome?? do you ever get sick in boats, flights or cars ???

If you regularly excersice especially your neck, but also other parts of your body a 1-2 hours gaming session a day should be no problem… and of course make sure to have a good chair and ergonomic position!

I'm pretty certain that the effects were primarily mental; the relatively mild physical effects were almost certainly psychosomatic. The game made me stressed, nervous, and annoyed; this means that my posture slouched and my shoulders tensed, which gave me the mild headache and neck pains. (I don't get such symptoms from just sitting at a computer.)

I don't yet know if it was specifically Crysis that did it, or if it's more generally related to gaming, but I intend to find out.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
There is absolutely no correlation between how long you take to prepare your food, and how healthy it is.

Though there probably is some correlation with how many ingredients you use …

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Gotta agree with JDR here. I don't spend near 2 hours a day cooking and my diet is still healthy.

I think PJ just really likes cooking

Cooking *and* eating.

Breakfast: 10 minutes to prepare (and clear), 15 minutes to eat.
Lunch: at a café, takes about 30 minutes.
Dinner: 30 minutes to prepare (and clear), 30 minutes to eat.

On top of that, shopping for groceries (30 minutes about every other day).

So that makes about 1 h 10 minutes of eating a day, plus about 1 hour of shopping and cooking per day. Of course, we split the chores, so I only get about 30 minutes of shopping and cooking per day on average, for a total of 1:40 eating and preparation, so I guess my estimate was a bit high. (Then again, could be that this estimate is a bit low; it's not like I time myself with a stopwatch or something.)

I can easily spend two hours a day just cooking on weekends, though. I made wild mushroom soufflé on Saturday, and that took easily two hours, when I include going to the market to find the best mushrooms, cheese, butter, and eggs.

Is this a lot? Perhaps, I don't know. I do know that I couldn't seriously cut down the times without seriously compromising the enjoyment I get out of food. I don't like having to wolf down my food in a hurry, I don't like readymade food, I don't like stale bread, fish, meat, or veggies (i.e., I have to shop for grocieries at least every other day), and I like having a dinner that consists of a main dish, side dish, salad, bread, and wine (sometimes I combine some of them, though).

What do you folks do, who manage to eat healthily (and, presumably, enjoyably) while spending much less time?

I like taco bell because it's cheap and I can get food for a day and a half for ten dollars.

Originally Posted by Rithrandil
I like taco bell because it's cheap and I can get food for a day and a half for ten dollars.

Um … he said healthy. I think we can make a fair assumption that eating at McD / BK / Wendy's / TacoBell / etc … is pretty much like spooning lard & sugar, then adding loads of unhealthy chemicals on top.

As for us, with two kids and a busy schedule, it means boxed cereals to go with fresh fruit in the morning, and relatively simple lunches (again with fruit usually) and a decent balanced dinner that is not too complex.

I know. I just wanted to throw in my food preferences :C

Originally Posted by Rithrandil
I know. I just wanted to throw in my food preferences :C

I got that … but forgot my own smiley!

As an aside, we went to a pig roast this weekend … two thoughts:
- We are such city folk - my younger son wouldn't eat any of it after he saw the face when it came off the cooker.
- They only had normal non-diet soda and no water. It has been so long since I drank sugar-soda that I forgot how disgusting and non-thirst quenching it was. I think I downed a gallon of water when we got home.
- This was for a family birthday picnic that included one of my younger son's best friends, and it was on a farm … whole different world for us …
- The dad had put together a corn steamer that was really cool, using 18" galvanized tubing fed by a wood-fired steamer.

Originally Posted by Rithrandil
I like taco bell because it's cheap and I can get food for a day and a half for ten dollars.

It'll also save society your pension. Talk about a win-win!

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
It'll also save society your pension. Talk about a win-win!

Nah, I plan on taking everyone else out with me.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
Cooking *and* eating.

As PJ said cooking and eating - its not particularly healthy to be spending much less than half an hour eating main meals so thats at least an hour just eating every day and if your eating fresh food you're not going to get much under half an hour prep and cooking no matter how efficient you are, so thats at least 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 hours a day. I suppose you could go faster if you're on one of those odd raw vegetable or straight fruit diets but thats not what most people would call eating or very healthy without careful monotoring.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
Nine hours of work a day (including commute), eight hours of sleep, two hours of cooking and eating, leaves five hours for other stuff. How much time do you spend working anyway?

(BTW, if you're completely inactive physically, it's likely that you'll be dead by the time you would retire, so that strikes me as a pretty stupid trade-off. What's more, starting to exercise at 65 after a life of inactivity is going to be no fun at all.)

You lead a pretty charmed life if that's all you have to do each day. When I get up in the morning, I feed my cats, scoop their litter boxes, shave, shower, get dressed, and prepare my lunch to take to work. All that takes at least an hour. Then it's a half hour drive into work, work for 8.5 hours, then another half hour drive home. Once home, I change out of my work clothes, feed the cats, scoop the litter boxes, make dinner, eat it, wash the dishes, take out the garbage, floss and brush my teeth, brush the cats, go through my snail mail and e-mail, and pay any bills I may have received. By the time I get all that done, I have about 1 - 1.5 hours to do anything I actually enjoy (assuming a full 8 hours of sleep). Exercise is not something I enjoy, so it's not part of my daily routine.

Weekends are better, but there's grocery shopping, laundry, errands, cleaning, etc. that take up a large part of them, too.

Originally Posted by Necrosis
You lead a pretty charmed life if that's all you have to do each day. When I get up in the morning, I feed my cats, scoop their litter boxes, shave, shower, get dressed, and prepare my lunch to take to work. All that takes at least an hour. Then it's a half hour drive into work, work for 8.5 hours, then another half hour drive home. Once home, I change out of my work clothes, feed the cats, scoop the litter boxes, make dinner, eat it, wash the dishes, take out the garbage, floss and brush my teeth, brush the cats, go through my snail mail and e-mail, and pay any bills I may have received. By the time I get all that done, I have about 1 - 1.5 hours to do anything I actually enjoy (assuming a full 8 hours of sleep). Exercise is not something I enjoy, so it's not part of my daily routine.

Weekends are better, but there's grocery shopping, laundry, errands, cleaning, etc. that take up a large part of them, too.

Of course it's not all I do -- however, it's, more or less, all the mandatory stuff I do. The rest is time that's mine to spend.

Here's what a fairly typical day would look like:

* Wake up at 7:00. Stretch, meditate, shower + shave, breakfast. Leave for work around 8:30 (if it's a nice day an I want to walk or ride my bike) or 8:40 (if it's not and I want to take the metro).
* Work from 9 to 5, including a half-hour lunch break.
* Shop for groceries on the way home. Arrive home around 6 pm. Walk the dog (45 min).
* Prepare dinner at around 8:30 pm, eat around 9 pm.
* Go to bed around 11 pm.

We alternate chores with my wife, meaning that on every other day (more or less) I walk the dog on mornings and evenings and clean the cat litter at the same time, whereas she does dinner and the dog's day walk. We clean the house on the weekends (that takes about one hour). I'm generally responsible for the dishes, whereas she does the laundry.

That leaves 3 1/2 hours a day of "unscheduled" time, which I use for gaming, reading, gym, playing billiards with friends, the Internets, and what have you. Weekends are mostly unscheduled.

Is this a charmed life? Yeah, I rather think it is. I'm lucky to be able to live this way, and I recognize it.

Just a thought… What do you have your refresh rate set at for 3D applications?

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
Cooking *and* eating.

Breakfast: 10 minutes to prepare (and clear), 15 minutes to eat.
Lunch: at a café, takes about 30 minutes.
Dinner: 30 minutes to prepare (and clear), 30 minutes to eat.

I assumed you just meant dinner.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Just a thought… What do you have your refresh rate set at for 3D applications?

Generally, all LCD displays for computers run at 60Hz - and can't technically run at anything else. So it likely won't matter. It's different from traditional refresh rates and basically just means how often an image is received from the video card.

Unless, that is, he has a CRT screen.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
I assumed you just meant dinner.

Well, yeah, two hours every day just to make and eat dinner would be a bit much. I do sometimes spend that much, but rarely on weekdays.

@JDR, DA: yep, that's correct -- I have an LCD (a rather a nice one from Eizo), and it refreshes at 60 Hz. It's conceivable that some of the negative effects were due to stuff like the frame rate my rig can deliver -- it's definitely closer to 30 than 60 fps -- but I'm inclined to think it's primarily psychological; Crysis is a tense and adrenaline-driven game with few let-ups, and being tense and adrenalined-out for sustained amounts of time probably messes with my laid-back personality.

I have a quite different theory nowadays.

With the only shooter I'm currently playing (it's Star Wars Battlefront I), I'm feeling what I call an "adrenaline rush".

I can definitively feel that there is something there, but I have nothing to measure it against, so I'm unsure. So my "adrenaline rush" is in principle nothing but a proposition.

But - my theory goes like this: If gamers can also feel this "adrenaline rush" … Can they get used to it ? Can this "adrenaline rusht" act like / become like some kind of "doping" ? Of a drug ?

If a body can become used to it, can it develop some kind of addiction ? Just to feel good (afterwards) ?

Could then some kind of gaming become a new kind of *indirect* "drug addiction" ? An addiction to this propsed "adrenaline rush" ?

I have heard of hooligans who go out beating people just for this: An "adrenaline rush", which makes them feel good (and powerful).

Could it happen that in gaming, a similar thing might evolve ?

Questions, questions, nothing but questions. Alas ! I'm not a medicine professor !