Pokemon Go Rethink: Physical Health [Part 1]

Source: http://bit.ly/2aGcfk0

Today marked it as the fifth day that Pokemon Go was launced in Hong Kong while people started playing it in US 20+ days earlier therefore I had been actively visited Google Play to check the availability of Pokemon Go Apps in Hong Kong for 25 days. After playing it for 5 days actively, I would like to give some comments and concerns about Pokemon Go.

My comments can be classified in these aspectss:

1. Physical Health
2. Mental Health
3. Social Benefit
3. Economic Benefit and Potential Abuse

With all these aspects above, there are the good and the bad. Today, I would like to focus on the Physical Health

The Good:

Cannot deny that most people learn that walking can be a tiring exercise. In the game, it really encourage players to walk very often. For example, you need to walk in order hunt your desired Pokemon and secondly you would receive Eggs sometime whenever you paid a visit to the PokeStop, the only way to hatch the eggs is walking from 2km, 5km and 10km.

For me, I spent average 5km a day to play the game. Walking for 5km a day really burns a lot of calories. According to Calorie Calculator , I lost 295 calories per day. Is it a lot? For a person who never have routine exercise, 295 calories per day is really a lot.

For your information, it is Summer Vacation now, children and teenagers may spend more time so it is not surprise that they may walk more than 10 km per day.

The Bad:

This game is very influential to convince otaku (who spent most time in the room obsessed with social media, cybergaming, etc alone) to leave their room and explore their neighbourhood. Even a loner is willing to call up his/her friend to hunt Pokemon together.

The downside is those people who spend almost no time for exercise before the release of Pokemon Go, their obsession for this game will give them a terrible physical pain on their knee and feet. Human body are programmed to be adaptive but only under routine condition.

I had been practice Chinese Martial Arts for more than 10 years, I always model human body like a rubber. Most Chinese Martial Artists have a very flexible body to bend their body because flexibility improve agility and minimize injury.

Just like rubber, the rubber become more flexible and tougher when it was stretched frequently whereas rubber that never experience stretching for a very long period of time, it will be more brittle and easily broken when it was stretched due to natural decay.

For the feet, otaku who rarely walk a longer distance do not realize the important of high quality shoe. If you wore a shoe with less elastic, each step your feet would suffer the impact on the floor. As Newton's Third law told us that, how much impact force that your feet will experience from the ground is the same as how much force your feet exert on the ground each step.

For example, my flipflop's bottom was harder than my running shoe. If I played Pokemon Go with my flipflop, my feet will be very painful after I decided to rest whereas my running shoe's bottom was softer and elasti, it reduced the impact from ground for each steps I walk.

On the other hand, for frequent walkers or sportsperson, we normally suffered the pain on our arm and our necks because it is more convenient to look down on our phone than placing our phone in front of our face to maintain our neck straight. That only convenient when it is short term. For longer term, you will feel the pain on the neck and the arm that was holding your phone for 5km. Once again, you will be more tiring and exhausted after you ended the hunting. In a longer period of time, it might try to reshape your healthy posture.

Therefore, it isn't that healthy after all.

Furthermore, experienced exercise practitioners are able to resist the temptation to consume high calories food. Unlike those who never spent anytime on exercise, they might consume high calories food after they stopped the game due to tiring. Apparently, the calories burning efficiency is dropped. To be honest, I rarely take coke and soft drink when I realize the bad impact on our tooth however I always be tempted to have a coke after the 5km walk.

Lastly, it is also depend on what device are you using. When you runs the apps with data and GPS were active, the processors did more work and released a lot of heat. As an engineer, this is a big problem.

If your device has a bad heat insulation, your hand will feel the heat while playing the game. Long term exposure to hot device may be bad for your cells on your palm.

On the other hand, if your device has good heat insulation, the heat cannot escape away inside the device then your device was building up the heat. It is true that your palm won't feel the heat however it is not only threaten your health, it is also threaten your safety.

When your device reached high temperature, you should realize that your device cannot function properly which is warning to you that stop using the phone and let it cool down. Otherwise, you are boiling your lithium ion battery which is highly explosive therefore it is common to hear that some people was killed by their own phone/notebook when they charged it on the bed.

Please use your common sense, stop hunting the Pokemon when it is really really hot. Probably switch off the Apps and take a break for 10-15 mins to cool down your device and do some simple stretching to minimize the pain and injury.

Conclusion:

It is true that it burned calories that encourage players to walk from 2km - 10km or perhaps even more due to obsession. The price is you may lose your healthy posture in long term. Even though it really burns a lot of calories, it also depend on the player's temptation to consume high calories food and drinks. Finally, the device will be getting hotter that may fry your cells or has the potential to explode to take your life.

Advice:

Don't be too obsessed, sometime you need to learn how to take a break for you to regain a healthy posture and cool down your phone.
Secondly, select a good shoe to hunt your Pokemon.