Whenever I would end up doing some thing silly as a child and hurting myself, my father would tell me to simply just “walk it off,” that pain was simply in the mind. Now for someone in pain, it sounds ridiculous to simply “think” your pain away, but people have sworn that it’s true. Is pain really all in the mind? Some doctors and scientists agree. And they’ve found a new way to deal with pain in what some would consider a childish way – through virtual reality video games.

Apparently, using virtual reality can help lessen pain. They’ve found that with people going through physical therapy and rehabilitation, while they would be in immense pain while going through it, immersing themselves in a virtual reality world inside a video game can actually lessen pain! For one patient, while his body goes under normally intense pain for physical therapy for his burned and scarred body, he lessens it by entering a virtual world of snow and ice, throwing snowballs at penguins.

While virtual reality video games are kind of inappropriate for personal every day use for pain relief, it’s good news that experts are finding ways to distract our brains from pain. Still, video games? Who would have thought?