5 Health Benefits of Online Gaming

Health

5 Health Benefits of Online Gaming

Published

2 years ago

October 4, 2022

Online gaming is now the new deal. People love and are gradually adopting this gaming method because of its ease of access and convenience. For instance, you can access the best online poker rooms in CA or play your favorite virtual competitive games with other gamers across the world from the comfort of your room and money. It is that easy, and the gaming experience remains the same, if not better.

Despite the great experience gamers derive from online gaming, some people have often thought the activities could be detrimental to an individual’s health in various ways. However, this is not the truth, as it will be shown in this article.

Sure, the fear of online gamers becoming addicted, lethargic, antisocial, and depressed, among other things, is real. But then, you would have to admit that gaming is an essential aspect of their lifestyle. Since this lifestyle is continuous, just like exercise, it has some health benefits. In the next paragraphs, we will examine five health benefits of online gaming.

It Relieves Stress and Stimulates Happiness

People have different methods of relieving stress. To some, a simple vacation will do the trick. To others, a couple of hours playing their favorite online games will do the magic. It has been proven that recreational gaming relieves stress and stimulates happiness. This happiness also improves the brain’s functions.

Many people suffer various ailments because of stress, for instance, mental degradation, retardation, and depression. A simple gaming session can divert their minds from whatever they are dealing with. The suspense, thrills, fun and delight that come from online gaming keep the brain lively, sharp, stress-free, and ready for another working day.

Although you may lose money sometimes if you play real money games like poker, it does not take away the fun, happiness, and entertainment the activity has provided. The joy and excitement that comes from gaming are on another level. When you add the suspense of waiting for the outcome to the mix and competing with your mates, you have a fantastic combo that will captivate and excite you and relieve just about any stress you have been hoarding.

Sharpens the Mind

Research shows that those who engage in online gaming have more functional and responsive brains. This is because online games are not only exciting but naturally keep the brain engaged. So, when you play these games, they train your brain to focus on strategies, solutions, and things you can do to win.

Whenever you play, one of the things you learn is how to be observant. Observation is good for your mental health. Studying patterns and numbers keeps your brain focused and engaged. That way, you do not only have to remember things easily to win but will also have a sharp memory outside the online gaming world.

Furthermore, some studies have shown that gaming activities may help reduce the risks of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. This disease is brought about by brain deterioration and can lead to memory loss. Since online gaming activities stimulate the brain cells and help them to function correctly, it can be a way to avert Alzheimer’s disease in your old age.

Improves Decision Making

Online gamers are often fast decision makers. You can say it is something they pick from playing games. In most cases, gaming requires you to quickly assess your situations, which are usually rapidly changing, and make a fast decision to win. These decision-makings and judgements can be helpful in the long run.

Some studies by Cognitive neuroscientists in America suggest that playing fast-paced games serve as helpful exercises for the brain to assimilate information from the surrounding to make clear decisions quickly. So, when you play online games, you subject your brain to cover many things at a short interval.

The decision-making process will test your brain’s cognitive ability and flexibility. If you make the right decisions, you win. If you don’t, you lose. Outside of the gaming world, you can also apply this ability to different facets of life.

Enhanced Social Networking

One of the most prominent benefits of online gaming is its social aspect. Many online games allow gamers to connect with other like-minded people located in different parts of the world. Whether you team with them or against them, what is most important is that you would be socializing or networking.

Socializing with other people has numerous health benefits. It can generally help lighten your mood by making you feel happier. It can also help reduce the risk of dementia, build a sense of belonging and security, etc. The benefits are enormous.

To help gamers enjoy many of these benefits, many online games are built in a manner that allows players to communicate and even forge vibrant communities. From there, they can build solid friendships. Maybe even romance, who knows?

Improves Vision

You probably wouldn’t believe it when someone tells you that playing online games will help improve your vision. Many people actually think the reverse is the case since gamers are constantly staring at their smartphones or PC screens for the most part of the day.

But, look at it this way, fast-paced games such as first shooter games require intense focus. This focus requires intense attention and can train the eye to view objects and other sights more smartly than before. For a great gamer, nothing slips by their frames without getting noticed.

In addition, many gamers with ‘lazy eyes‘ have been found to have an improved ability to discern different shades of specific colors compared to their non-gamers counterparts. So, you see, playing online games does help improve your vision. However, you also need to protect your eyes adequately with the right gadgets.

Conclusion

People often amplify the hazardous effects of online gaming. Thanks to this article, you now know that it’s not always about the negatives, gaming activities also have some health benefits.

These benefits make the whole process more enjoyable. However, you must also endeavor to keep your gaming activities in check, as the adverse effects typically come when the process becomes addictive. Game moderately and have fun!

Health

Canada Falling Short in Adult Vaccination Rates – VOCM

Published

1 hour ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

Canada is about where it should be when it comes to childhood vaccines, but for adult vaccinations it’s a different story.

Dr. Vivien Brown of Immunize Canada says the overall population should have rates of between 80 and 90 per cent for most vaccines, but that is not the case.

She says most children are in that range but not for adult vaccines and ultimately the most at-risk populations are not being reached.

She says the population is under immunized for conditions such as pneumonia, shingles, tetanus, and pertussis.

Brown wants people to talk with their family physician or pharmacist to see if they are up-to-date on vaccines, and to get caught up because many are “killer diseases.”

Adblock test (Why?)

Source link

Health

Bird flu virus found in grocery milk as officials say supply still safe – The Washington Post

Published

3 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

Viral fragments of bird flu have been identified in samples of milk taken from grocery store shelves in the United States, a finding that does not necessarily suggest a threat to human health but indicates the avian flu virus is more widespread among dairy herds than previously thought, according to two public health officials and a public health expert who was briefed on the issue.

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it had been testing milk samples throughout the dairy production process and confirmed the detection of viral particles “in some of the samples,” but it declined to provide details.

The presence of genetic fragments of the virus in milk is not unexpected. Pasteurization typically works to inactivate pathogens, said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. It generally does not remove genetic material, Nuzzo said, but typically renders pathogens unable to cause harm to people.

The greater concern, however, “is that it’s showing up in a lot more samples, meaning the infection is more widespread in dairy herds than we thought,” said one public health official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share information not yet made public.

In a four-page statement, the FDA said some of the samples collected have “indicated the presence” of the bird flu virus based on testing that detects viral particles but does not distinguish whether they are active or dead. The finding of virus “does not mean that the sample contains an intact, infectious pathogen,” the agency’s statement said.

Additional laboratory testing is underway to grow the virus in cells and in fertilized eggs, the latter being the “gold standard” for sensitive detection of active, infectious virus, the FDA said. “Importantly, additional testing is required to determine whether intact pathogen is still present and if it remains infectious, which determines whether there is any risk of illness associated with consuming the product,” the FDA statement said.

FDA officials said results are expected in the next few days to weeks.

“To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the agency said in its statement.

Officials and experts did not have additional details about the number of milk samples that were positive for particles of bird flu or where the samples originated.

Although this strain of avian flu has been circulating for more than 20 years, its leap into cows is of substantial concern, surprising even longtime observers of the virus. More than two dozen livestock herds in at least eight states have been infected with avian flu since March 25, prompting investigations by federal and state officials.

For weeks, key federal agencies have expressed confidence in the safety of the commercial milk supply, including pasteurized products sold at grocery stores. The FDA has highlighted data showing pasteurization inactivates other viruses and pointed to studies showing that the pasteurization process for eggs — which occurs at a lower temperature than what is used for milk — deactivates the highly pathogenic avian influenza.

The International Dairy Foods Association, which represents the nation’s dairy manufacturing and marketing industry, said that viral fragments are “nothing more than evidence that the virus is dead.”

“Milk and milk products produced and processed in the United States are among the safest in the world,” spokesman Matt Herrick wrote in an email, adding that “viral fragments are simply indicative of pasteurization doing its job effectively and protecting our commercial milk supply.”

In recent weeks, multiple experts expressed confidence that the pasteurization process ensures there is no threat to the safety of the nation’s milk supply but said the federal government should still perform tests to confirm that is the case.

Flu is a “fairly wimpy virus,” meaning it is “fairly readily inactivated,” said Richard J. Webby, a virologist at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “But that’s something that has to be tested.”

One case of avian flu has been reported in a Texas farmworker in recent weeks, only the second human case ever of bird flu in the United States.

So far, the virus has not acquired the ability to spread efficiently in people.

But as it is able to jump from animal to animal, prospects increase for it mutating to cause sustained person-to-person transmission — a development that could fuel a pandemic.

State health officials have tested 23 people with flu-like symptoms, but only the dairy worker in Texas has tested positive during the current outbreak. Ongoing surveillance of emergency department visits and flu tests in regions where bird flu has been detected has not flagged unusual trends in flu-like illnesses, or eye inflammation, the only symptom experienced by the dairy worker, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who say the risk to the general public of bird flu remains low.

The lack of more human cases is a good sign, health officials say.

The key to containing the outbreak resides in livestock herds. Testing of cows is voluntary. U.S. Department of Agriculture protocols restrict testing to cows with specific symptoms and limits the number of tests per farm.

Adblock test (Why?)

Source link

Health

Avian influenza spread: WHO gives public health warning as FDA calms food safety concerns – Food Ingredients First

Published

10 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

23 April 2024 — The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the ongoing spread of avian influenza poses a “significant public health concern” and urged health authorities, especially in the US, to closely monitor infections in cows. However, the US FDA maintains that the virus is not currently a concern to consumer health and downplayed its impact on commercial milk production.

Earlier this month, the largest producer of fresh eggs in the US halted production at a Texas plant after bird flu was detected in its chickens. Cal-Maine Foods said that about 3.6% of its total flock was destroyed after the infection.

However, the virus, also known as H5N1, has now been found in at least 26 dairy herds across eight US states, marking the first time this strain of bird flu has been detected in cattle, according to officials.

At least 21 states have restricted cattle importations from states where the virus is known to have infected dairy cows.

The US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service strongly recommends minimizing the movement of cattle, but has not issued federal quarantine orders.

Public health threat
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed this month that a dairy worker in Texas, who reportedly had exposure to dairy cattle presumed to have had avian influenza, contracted the virus and is now recovering.

“This infection does not change the H5N1 bird flu human health risk assessment for the US general public, which CDC considers to be low,” the agency said in a press release, while acknowledging that people who come into more frequent contact with possibly infected birds or other mammals have a higher risk.

Meanwhile, WHO’s chief scientist, Dr. Jeremy Farrar, told reporters recently in Geneva, Switzerland, that H5N1 has had an “extremely high” mortality rate among the several hundred people known to have been infected with it to date.

US health officials have downplayed the impact of bird flu on food safety and industry production.However, no human-to-human H5N1 transmission has yet been recorded.

“H5N1 is an influenza infection, predominantly started in poultry and ducks and has spread effectively over the course of the last one or two years to become a global zoonotic — animal — pandemic,” said Farrar.

“The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens — but now increasingly mammals — the virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans.

“And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission.”

Concerns with cattle
US health officials have stressed that bird flu’s risk to the public is low, and the country’s food supply remains safe and stable.

“At this time, there continues to be no concern that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health or that it affects the safety of the interstate commercial milk supply,” the FDA said in a statement.

According to officials, farmers are being urged to test cows that show symptoms of infection and separate them from the herd, where they usually recover within two weeks.

US producers are not permitted to sell milk from sick cows, while milk sold across state lines must be pasteurized or heat-treated to kill viruses, including influenza.A dairy worker in Texas reportedly contracted the virus after exposure to cattle.

“We firmly believe that pasteurization provides a safe milk supply,” Tracey Forfa, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, told a webinar audience last week.

However, WHO’s Farrar has urged further caution by public health authorities “because it [the virus] may evolve into transmitting in different ways.”

“Do the milking structures of cows create aerosols? Is it the environment which they’re living in? Is it the transport system that is spreading this around the country?” he said.

“This is a huge concern, and I think we have to…make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.”

According to a new European Food Safety Authority report, outbreaks of avian influenza continue to spread in the EU and beyond.

By Joshua Poole

To contact our editorial team please email us at
editorial@cnsmedia.com

If you found this article valuable, you may wish to receive our newsletters.
Subscribe now to receive the latest news directly into your inbox.

Adblock test (Why?)

Source link