See home & office products
Home/Office
Product lines
AOC Guide to Healthier Gaming
We all love games so much, we could spend hours and hours playing. But unfortunately, excessive gaming can cause health issues and harm your body. Therefore, we have collected eleven very useful pieces of advice that can reduce health risks and prevent injuries drastically. Even better, sticking to these tricks you can enhance your performance, too! In this first part, we are going to introduce you to the first five tips.
1. The right posture
Your posture is one of the most critical things you should look after while gaming. Many gamers underestimate the importance of the right posture. Bad posture can lead to painful injuries over time. To avoid these, you want to pay attention to the following things:
- Your knees should be at a 90° angle, with your feet standing firmly on the ground
- Your back and neck should form a straight line; also readjust your spine from time to time to an angle between 90° and 135°
- To maintain an ideal position of your neck, make sure your eyes align with the top third of your screen
- Keep your shoulders relaxed at all times, your arms should be in a 90° angle as well
2. Relax your eyes!
Video games are primarily a visual medium and gaming for hours can be very exhausting for your eyes. Having a good monitor can reduce strain on your eyes and make a real difference. It should protect your eyes from harmful blue light which, during long sessions, has been shown to cause eye strain, headaches, and sleeping disorders. Also, your monitor should be flicker-free to further reduce negative long-term effects on your eyesight.
You should also keep an eye on these tips to lessen strain on your eyes. One of the easiest things you can do is to blink more frequently while gaming.
Another strategy is to close your eyes periodically for a few seconds and let them rest. Alternatively, you can stare at an object which is at least 20 feet away, which as a similarly relaxing effect. Also make sure that your screen is at least 20 inches away from your eyes.
If you experience symptoms such as fatigue, eye pain, headache or blurred vision, it is definitely time to stop playing and take a longer break.
AG352QCX - Low Blue light feature
3. Get up, move, stretch your limbs
Maintaining the same unhealthy position for a long time is quite common among gamers. To allow your body a short break, it is recommendable to get up every 25 to 30 minutes. During that time, you can do whatever works for you. What matters is that you move your body a little bit. Stretching your limbs, walking around, or doing little exercises works wonders.
4. Drink a Health Potion
While gaming, you should remember to drink from time to time. Your body needs a lot of liquids, especially if you are sweating or experience stressful situations. Not only is it important that you drink, but also what you drink. Drinks that contain sugar and caffeine are not what you want to consume while playing. The ideal beverages for your sessions are water or tea. If you don’t like drinking water because of its lack of taste, add slices of cucumber, lemon or ginger to spice up your drink.
5. The right snack
While gaming is not directly related to gaining weight as a recent meta study suggests, unhealthy food certainly is. You should consider some healthy power foods instead of candy, potato chips and other notorious snacks. Here are some alternatives:
- nuts; contain mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids
- fruits such as bananas, apples, pears, or grapes; contain vitamins, they are cheap and easy to prepare
- vegetables such as carrots or cucumbers; especially carrots are a good alternative due to their high amount of vitamin A which is great for your eyesight!
- dark chocolate; eating (a little!) dark chocolate has positive impact on your blood pressure thanks to its high amount of cocoa.
Listening to your body is really important while playing video and computer games. With these first five pieces of advice, however, you will mitigate negative effects of long-term gaming. Next time, we are going to give you six more really useful tips to help you improve your gaming experience.
Do have you any suggestions to keep yourself healthy while gaming?
There’s so much more within, so make sure to stay up to date on what’s happening over on Facebook and Twitter.
Find out how our products can awaken your Gamer Within right here >
Read more Gamer Within articles >