Recently Internet addiction was described as a disease and in another case Sonoma County rejected Sonic.net’s offer of rolling out city-wide Wi-Fi on health related concerns.  Now a new injury has been discovered amongst Nitendo Wii players named Wiitis which has been documented and reported in an article titled Magnetic Resonance Imaging of acute Wiitis of the upper extremity.

Three researchers from Mayo Clinic, Michael P. Nett, Mark S. Collins and John W. Sperling, have published this article presenting the case of a 22-year old male who reported shoulder soreness after playing Wii Sports Bowling .  According to the article, prolonged participation in a physically interactive virtual video game can cause abnormalities in muscles of the shoulder and upper arm which leads to physical discomfort and pain.  The reason behind this kind of injury, as quoted in the report, is

the lack of resistance offered by the light 200 g handheld controller to the aggressive maneuvers made by the participant leads to awkward deceleration forces being applied to the upper extremity.  It is likely that, during the deceleration phase of swinging the Wii controller, there is significant eccentric loading on the participant’s muscle groups, causing the ultrastructural damage, as demonstrated in this case.

I get to read about lots of these problems anticipated by the use of technology but at this point in time people are hooked onto these services and just can’t do away with it.  Moreover, the report is based on a study on an individual and may not be applicable to all Wii users.  But, the users need to be cautious and take care of their posture and actions to prevent any injury.

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