Deep vein thrombosis (DVT)—otherwise known as blood clots in the legs—is a potentially dangerous condition. It interrupts blood flow and can become life-threatening, especially if the clot travels to your lungs. DVT was mainly associated with older people who don’t move around much or those who travel on long flights. But today, DVT is becoming a diagnosis medical professionals are seeing more often in a particular group of people—video gamers. Gamers have almost twice as much risk of having blood clots as nongamers.
Market research showed that in 2020, 75% of people in the U.S. played video games regularly, for an average of about 14 hours a week. That’s a lot of sitting. Studies have shown that sitting for too many hours each day isn’t good for our health, in part because it interferes with healthy blood flow. Sitting has even been called the “new smoking.”
Not only that, but gamers’ sympathetic nervous systems become more active during a gaming session. That means they’re engaging in a lot of intense mental energy, which, when combined with minimal physical activity, can cause more physiological stress, such as increases in heart rate and blood pressure, coinciding with an accumulation of blood clotting factors (or blood coagulators).
Research recently published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology found that there are a couple of simple fixes that can protect gamers from developing DVT. The research team studied college-aged gamers, all of whom were ranked esport players with more than 500 hours of playing time. The volunteers participated in three different gaming sessions, each two hours long. In one session, they sat and played without a break. In another session, they got up after an hour and walked around for six minutes. In a third session, the gamers wore knee-high compression socks designed to improve blood flow while they played.
Knowing that many gaming sessions last more than an hour or two, the researchers had the volunteers walk after an hour to realistically reflect the gaming experience (think getting up to use the bathroom or get a snack without experiencing a major disruption to the game). They found that the walking break and compression socks both improved blood flow after long periods of sitting, but walking delivered better results.
When the gamers took a survey after their sessions, 78% of them said the walking break was a good experience, and more than half said they thought it helped them play better. Almost 90% said they liked wearing the compression socks and would wear them again during gaming. That’s a win even before the game starts.