'Tetris' Game Can Reduce Cravings for Food, Drugs, According to New Study
People who are looking for ways to reduce cravings may want to try grabbing a video game controller, according to a new study. Researchers have found that playing Tetris for as little as three minutes could help lessen cravings for food, drugs, sleep and sex. The study showed that the tile matching puzzle video game is said to provide a visual distraction that can decrease cravings by as much as 24 percent.
The study was conducted by a group of psychologists from the University of Plymouth and Queensland University of Technology. They were searching for intervention techniques that can help cut down urges for drugs, like cigarettes, alcohol, and coffee, and even some activities like sexual intercourse and sleeping.
According to a theory called Elaborated Intrusion, cravings are induced by visual images that often appear into the mind. With this concept, psychologists Jessica Skorka-Brown, Jackie Andrade, and Jon May pondered if a visually based task, like playing a video game, could trim the frequency of craving imagery, and with it, the craving themselves.
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The study, which was featured in the "Addictive Behaviors" journal, involved 31 undergraduate participants aging between 18 and 27. They were asked to play the popular block-shifting puzzle video game throughout the course of seven days. Craving levels were monitored by the researchers through reports of the participants that they send in via text message.
Out from the total number of participants, 15 of them were instructed to play Tetris on an iPod for about three minutes before having them report their cravings again. The researchers found out that playing a bit of Tetris did indeed decrease cravings by one-fifth, or from 70 percent to 56 percent. Participants played the game 40 times on average and the effect of playing Tetris remained to be a consistent craving blocker.
More research is required on more serious patients to find out whether Tetris could be used as a serious intervention method, according to Geek.
