Can interactive video games benefit a child's health?

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Can interactive video games benefit a child's health?

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One of the big developments in the video game industry has been the interactive video games to get our kids and adults moving. The Wii Fit, Kinect, our interactive games that provide a video virtual space for you to be moving. Some of them are very, very useful. Dance Dance Revolution is one of the first games of the distant past where it really got the kids' heart rates up, which is what we really need to do when we're exercising. And they use it as a standard in some of the states where they have a real problem with childhood obesity, in West Virginia and in Wisconsin for instance, every elementary and middle school has Dance Dance Revolution in their classrooms to help foster an interaction with movement and the video screen. They're co-opting the video games.

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John Ratey, MD

Psychiatrist & Author

John J Ratey, MD, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Research Synthesizer, Speaker, and Author, as well a Clinical Psychiatrist maintaining a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has lectured and published 60 peer reviewed articles on the topics of Aggression, Autism, ADHD, and other issues in neuropsychiatry.

Dr. Ratey has authored A Users Guide to the Brain and co-authored Shadow Syndromes  with Catherine Johnson, PhD. From 1994 to 2005 he co-authored Driven to DistractionAnswers to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction with Edward Hallowell, MD. Additionally, he has edited several books including The Neuropsychiatry of Personality Disorders. Most recently, Dr. Ratey has penned, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain published by Little Brown. In Spark, Dr. Ratey guides the reader to an understanding of neurobiology and inspires the reader to reach for their potential, and embrace exercise that is crucial for the brain and body to operate at peak performance.

Spark is fueling a movement to re-engineer school practices and medical recommendations to establish curriculum, lifestyles and corporate practices based on scientific principles. Providing the scientific foundation and research data, Dr. Ratey has been drafted into the groundswell of those whose mission it is to revitalize schools, combat the obesity crisis, stave off the encroaching epidemic of Sedentarism, by returning to evolutionary principles of physical exercise and proper diet thereby combating syndrome X, the underlying causation of much chronic disease.

Each year since 1995, Dr. Ratey has been selected by his peers as one of the Best Doctors in America. In his dedication to changing the world, Dr. Ratey has founded The Ratey Institute whose mission is to broadcast life changing science and establish the best practice policies first in our school and then other organizations to reclaim human health.

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, released in 2008, is the culmination of years of experience with the brain body connection, new research data, and the synthesis of biological sciences. Spark is revolutionizing how we see the human species. A call to return to our evolutionary roots; to get in sync with our metabolic design honed through eons of survival to optimize mental and physical health. 

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