Pokemon Go is a lovely thing. It provides exciting challenges, it gets your rump out of the house and it’s even benefited the globe’s many hardworking perverts! (That last one is more of a stay inside kind of thing.) One of the things attached to the rise of Pokemon Go during mobile game’s rise to cultural phenomenon status in 2016 was the potential health benefits of getting your knees in the breeze and enjoying the spin-off benefits of Pokemon-assisted exercise. Initial research of how the game could be a healthy plus painted an optimistic forecast, but a study published in the British Medical Journal suggests the exercise perks were just a fad.
As reported by the hoser hutch that is CBC News, researchers monitored 1,000 people users between the ages of 18 and 35 last summer and monitored their physical activity for six weeks. The initial results in the first week were promising. It was once that initial buzz wore off that the physical activity seemed to taper off too.
Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario research scientist Jean-Philippe Chaput noted to CBC that like a lot of exercise trends, there’s struggle in having to continue through.
“So yes, it worked for the first week, but then after a month and a half, people were not walking more or moving more.”
“I think people look for a quick fix, so … they can lose weight quickly,” Chaput said. “We know that we have a lot of different kinds of diets and they don’t work.
“So it means that [Pokemon Go] fits with all of the other physical programs — it works over the short term, but even after a month and a half it doesn’t work well … we can say that Pokemon Go is a fad as well.”
Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t physical health benefits to playing Pokemon Go. It’s just about a matter of consistency in maintaining the exercise end of things. With events and block parties being part of the 2017 Pokemon Go landscape there’s more opportunities to embrace the physical and social aspects of the game. Just like pretty much any form of exercise, the benefits are what you make and take from them.
(Via CBC News)