'Exergames' Can Be Enjoyable Way For Type 1 Diabetics To Stay Active: Study

"Active" video games can be as beneficial for type 1 diabetic people in managing their condition as traditional exercises, a new study has found. Researchers hope it could encourage the patients to be more active.

Exercises have been recommended as non-medication treatments for type 1 diabetes, but these can be rather hard to adhere to and may not be enjoyable, the researchers of a new study, published in Games for Health journal, said.

Recently, younger healthy people, in particular, have used active video games (AVGs) or "exergames" to reduce sedentary behaviors which may aggravate conditions such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes, the researchers say.

In AVGs, the players use their bodies to play the game, and it can help "acutely" increase measurements such as blood pressure and help reach the metabolic equivalents in exercise recommendation guidelines, the researchers noted. However, previous studies on AVGs' impact have focused primarily on healthy individuals.

For their study, the researchers looked at the effect of AVGs and traditional running exercises in type 1 diabetes patients, some of whom were assigned to an AVG session and others with treadmill running.

They ran the trials twice weekly for three weeks, and those who played the AVG played the Microsoft Xbox Kinect Adventures game.

The researchers collected the participants' cardiovascular effects such as heart rate, blood pressure efficiency of oxygen consumption and endothelial function, the University of Bath noted in a news release. They collected these before, right after, 30 minutes after, and 24 hours after the game or running at moderate intensity.

"Our results showed similar responses between AVG and the running session in majority of the cardiovascular responses," the researchers wrote.

Another important factor that the researchers looked at is the participants' enjoyment, which was rated from zero (very boring) to 10 (very enjoyable) immediately after the sessions. They found that the enjoyment levels were higher for the AVG sessions compared with the running sessions. This suggests that AVG is more motivating to the patients than traditional exercise, the researchers said.

"The game element of scoring points, earning badges and being rewarded for effort also helped encourage the participants to repeat the exercise and try and improve their performance over time," the University of Bath noted.

In fact, some volunteers noted that they did traditional exercises because it was necessary, but that they "did not like it as much as the AVG session."

"Therefore, health professionals who work with T1DM patients can use our results for including AVGs as complementary management tools that provide cardiovascular benefits with great enjoyment levels," the researchers wrote.

"Exercise is already recommended by doctors as a drug-free way of managing diabetics' blood sugar levels, along with diet, but it can be difficult for people to stick to exercise routines long term," study co-author Pooya Soltani of the University of Bath, said in the news release.

"Whilst it's not the magic solution to keeping active, we found that players enjoyed playing exergames way more than running. This is really important when adherence to traditional physical activities is generally low in diabetic patients."

The researchers' hope, according to the university, is that even if AVGs are not a replacement for exercise, they would help motivate diabetics to become more active.