New Study Shows Active Gaming Helps Children Lose Weight

A weight management program that incorporates active video gaming into a pediatric weight management program has proven to be an effective way to increase physical activity among children.

JOIN for ME, a family-based weight management program developed by the health services company UnitedHealth Group, can help obese and overweight children adopt healthier eating habits and exercise more according to a new research published online today by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics.

The new research reveals that incorporating active video games into a 16-week child obesity intervention program resulted in clinically significant increased levels of physical activity and weight loss among the children who participated in the study. The results also showed that the use of active games in a pediatric obesity treatment program can effectively address the problem of childhood obesity and promote physical activity among overweight and obese children.

The children who participated in the intervention program were aged 8 to 12. Half of them completed a 16-week program without active games, while the other half got Xbox 360 consoles and used Kinect over the course of the program, with one active game at their first session and another one about halfway into the program. The participants in both groups were consistently given instructions by the research team as they explored the benefits of exercise and set goals for physical activity. The children who were provided with Xbox consoles did not get additional instructions on how much time to spend playing the games or how to use them.

The JOIN for ME program already showed promising results in a study published in October 2012 in Pediatrics and also in an 18-month follow-up study, which was published in Pediatric Obesity in August 2013. The latest research showed an increase of 7.5 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity among participants who played active games, compared with those who completed the program without Kinect. The study participants who played the games on Xbox spent a third of that extra time in vigorous exercise.

Children in both groups had clinically significant reduction in weight, which was consistent with previous studies conducted within the JOIN for ME program. However, participants who used the fitness gaming console had a significantly greater reduction in relative weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) percentile, by more than 100 percent. These results showed that the impact of the obesity intervention program more than doubled in the group that played active video games.

Deneen Vojta, a physician executive at UnitedHealth Group, said in a release, "Given the popularity of video games, it is valuable to see how active video games in an evidence-based weight management program can help make a positive impact on our national childhood obesity crisis. The results suggest that using active gaming in a weight treatment program may be an effective strategy to promote physical activity and healthy weight among overweight and obese youth."

"Adding a gaming component to JOIN for ME has made this program even more effective as a low-cost, scalable childhood obesity intervention that can be delivered to a much larger group of families than traditional, hospital-based interventions, which are often costly and hard to access," Vojta added. "We look forward to partnering with other organizations to help find creative approaches to address this public health crisis."

Stewart Trost, Ph.D., Center for Research on Exercise, Physical Activity and Health at the University of Queensland, was the lead author of the latest research article. He explained, "Considering that study participants were given no instructions related to gameplay suggests that if they were given specific goals for active gaming, the results could have been even more impressive."

Seventy five children participated in the trial study at their schools and YMCAs in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Texas. The children weighed between 123 and 132 pounds at the start of the program and about 67 percent of them had a BMI that classified them as overweight for their age group. The remaining 33 percent were obese.

Ravyn Hill, a 12-year-old who participated in the study as part of the Xbox group, lost almost eight pounds over the course of four months. She said, "I used to think exercise was boring, but when I play games with the Xbox, I don't think of it as exercise and I still get the benefits to my health. The Xbox Kinect helped me be more active, particularly during the winter when it can be harder to be outside. The program really worked for me."

Dennis Schmuland, M.D., F.A.A.F.P., chief health strategy officer, U.S. Health & Life Sciences at Microsoft, said, "We are pleased to partner with UnitedHealth Group and the academic medical community to use the Xbox 360 platform to make physical activity more fun, more natural, and more social for children, especially those with sedentary lifestyles. It is very promising to see that active gaming can help children become more physically active and reduce childhood obesity."

The study will be published in the May issue of JAMA Pediatrics.  

Source: United Health Group