Playing Tetris Reduces Cravings for Food, Coffee, Cigarettes

You want to quit, but it turns to be a hard thing as cravings always appear. This is a normal thing occuring in each smoker who wants to get rid of the habit. Cravings for cigarettes appear because smoker's body is addicted to nicotine and therefore craves for this substance.

Modern science tries to find ways to fight cravings so that a smokers could successfully stop the habit for good. Thus a new study comes with facinating results!

It was found that such a popular game as Tetris can be a great tool against nicotine addiction. In the course of the study scientists discovered that playing Tetris just three minites at a time helps to weaken cravings not only for cigarettes but also for alcohol, food and even such activities as sex and sleeping.

The main peculiarity of the research was that it was made not in a lab, but outside it, and it helped to monitor smokers in their ordinary everyday lives. Scientists were interested in their cravings and how they fluctuated in comparison to playing Tetris.

Tetris is one of oldest video games. It was released in 1989 and in short time became popular. It is still popular these days - in 2009 there were sold more than 35 million copies.

As you probably know, playing this game demands quick-thinking and patience to place tens of little coloured blocks on top of each other in a small screen.

The study was made by scientists from Plymouth University and Queensland University of Technology, Australia, who found that playing Tetris for several minutes affected smoker's desires for food, coffee, alcohol and cigarettes. The study lasted one week and during this period scientists discovered benefits of playing this game.

The results of the study show that playing Tetris helps to manage cravings! There was noted a reduction of cravings from 70% to 56%. Scientists suggest that Tetris effect occurs because during cravings a man imagines the object of his craving, and here the game helps to occupy the brain with a mental activity which reduces the craving.

These may be good news for those wanting to quit, because if Tetris proves its effectiveness in further studies then it will become a cheap cessation tool available to everyone.