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New breakthrough research: video games to activate people with ME

Invisible Woman

Senior Member
Messages
1,267
Exactly. The authors have very strange views on this illness. It's almost as if they think that laziness and lack of motivation are perpetuating factors.

I think it demonstrates that they have no true concept of what it is actually like to live with a debilitating health condition. Also that they are smug, self serving, patronizing so-and-sos who somehow believe that they are superior to the patients.

After all, they could never be in our shoes. They could fix themselves by buying toys:rolleyes:.
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
Pacing is a common strategy used to manage available energy and complete activities of daily living; yet little research has investigated this as a strategy to increase physical activity levels.
Actually it has been researched in the real world, and it doesn't work, not as an activity increasing strategy ... it's an energy management strategy.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Please tell me it's a joke!
No, its something many advocates have been against for quite some time. Yet there is a joke on them, as their ideas will most probably only work (except pacing if done right) if they recruit poorly diagnosed patients.

I am an ardent video gamer, but I am forced to avoid video games that involve any adrenaline, or too much physical activity, and even the very low activity games I have to pace. I fail very often because I love to play some games, especially in coop with other ME patients, and I overdo it.

My prediction, if they ever complete the study, is they will fail. The biggest worry appears to be a dearth of objective outcome measures. Subjective measures in an ME or CFS intervention should be considered highly unreliable.

The other problem is that at the mild end of the severity spectrum ME patients are not less active than sedentary controls. They just operate in short bursts, and have to rest between bursts. I think this showed up in some actometer study many years ago.
 
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alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
They're using 2-day CPET only for baseline, and not as an outcome measurement:
It needs to be an outcome measure as well.

I would be excluded I think. Many games I can only handle for seconds, though some games I can play for up to six hours (with consequences). I rate games by how long I can play.

I get symptoms from less than two minutes of very light physical activity. Excluded again.
 

Forbin

Senior Member
Messages
966
As an objective measure, you could give people this video game - and then see how far it flies when it is thrown away. :)

Etvideogamecover.jpg


E.T. is often cited as one of the worst video games of all time and one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)
 

Forbin

Senior Member
Messages
966

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
2,984