Study Says Playing Candy Crush Acted As Painkiller For California Man Who Suffered Ruptured Thumb Tendon

Besides just being addictive and time-consuming, there is now another reason for parents to regulate the Candy Crush habit of their kids or themselves. It has now a recorded physical damage to the body directly due to excessive playing of the game.

It’s ruptured thumb tendon which a 29-year-old man from California suffered. The man was rushed last week to the emergency room after he tore his thumb. The victim played Candy Crush without stopping for six to eight weeks. He used his right hand for his daily tasks and his left hand for Candy Crush.

JAMA Internal Medicine journal explained that the continuous repetitive motion resulted in the rapture on the thickest part, not on the thinnest area which is usually the most accident-prone spot. The authors pointed out that playing too much video games has the potential to reduce perception of pain, reports Daily Times Gazette.

They said it was unusual and surprising that the injury was not felt by the man which they attribute to playing video games releasing chemicals in the brain that are linked to pleasure and excitement. That gives the chemicals the potential to act as painkillers.

While the California man’s injury is the first on record attributed to Candy Crush, previous studies have named the ailment from repetitive strain injuries as BlackBerry thumb. It occurs from “typing over and over on the tiny physical keyboard of BlackBerry smartphones.”

However, since owning a BlackBerry isn’t that hot anymore, there’s a chance that the ailment could be renamed in social media to something more up to date such as iPhone or Android thumb.

To avert that, Loughborough University professor of ergonomics Roger Haslam’s advice to video game and text message senders is to take a lot of breaks, stretch the fingers regularly, find a smartphone that feels comfortable and listen to what the body says when feeling aches and pains.

To contact the writer, email: v.hernandez@ibtimes.com.au