Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Gamers are scoffing at a recent Swiss study saying a new skin condition can be caused by holding the control of a PlayStation too tightly. But doctors say too much gaming can be tough on your hands.
Once they start, they don't want to stop
After all the hours Luke Kenyon puts into playing video games at work and at home, it's no wonder his hands hurt from time to time.
"I'm here [at work] for maybe six to eight hours a day and then I have time at home where I'm playing, I think maybe six hours at home," he said.
Once Kenyon starts playing, he doesn't like to stop, as you probably noticed. He says it interferes with the story line.
"You want to get to the point where you'll be able to stop without feeling like a Saturday morning cartoon where, ‘Oh here comes the very important part of the cartoon, but now we're going to have a commercial," he said.
A new problem?
Swiss doctors noticed a strange skin condition on a girl who played her PlayStation for too long. She had painful skin lumps on her palms. They named this condition PlayStation palmar hidradentitis. Here in Utah, doctors call them calluses, and it turns out you can get them doing a number of different things.
Sports Medicine and Pediatrics Dr. Jeffrey Cline said, "This could be from digging a ditch or gardening, mowing the lawn, it doesn't matter. Anything you do where your hands are un-calloused and sort of in a softer state and you start doing something for hours at a time, you're going to run into problems."
Swiss officials say the girl in their study stopped playing and the bumps went away within days, so PlayStation palmar hidradentitis might not be too dangerous. But, that's not to say you can't do other damage to your hands from too much gaming. Cline says tendinitis is a big concern.
"When you overuse them, they can get irritated and start to swell and be painful for use in any task, so if your thumbs are hurting it makes life pretty uncomfortable," he explained.
Cline says he's seeing kids on a regular basis with a slew of health problems linked to too many games.
"Poor physical activity, poor physical fitness, gaining weight, poor sleep, disturbed sleep, nightmares and anxiety from or related to those video games," he said.
Officials from Sony say they don't want to belittle the Swiss study, but millions of PlayStations have been sold, and they've only heard of one case of PlayStation palmar hidradentitis.
E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
