It appears that playing the game Candy Crush too much is hazardous to your health, at least in the case of one man living in California.
The man played the game all day for six to eight weeks until he tore a tendon in his thumb from playing to excess.
According to CBS News, the doctors who treated his injury said he didn’t even notice the pain until he stopped playing and had trouble moving his tumb, which contributes to a larger issue that video games and other virtual pastimes can be numbing.
He said he was doing other things with his right hand while playing the game all day with his left hand. “Playing was a kind of secondary thing, but it was constantly on," he’s reported to have said.
After an MRI showed he ruptured a tendon, the 29-year-old had to undergo surgery to fix it. This case appeared in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, which looked at how harmful video games can be overall.
Daily Mirror reports the case report’s co-author, Dr. Andrew Doan, said “We need to be aware that certain video games can act like digital painkillers.”
Since it came out in 2012, Candy Crush has been downloaded a reported 500 million times.