Playing Tetris can get rid of your cravings

Playing Tetris can lessen the urge for a doughnut, chocolate, a cigarette or maybe even sex, a new study has found.

The Plymouth researchers, led by Jessica Skorka-Brown, tested the effects of Tetris on individuals who reported "natural" cravings of varying degrees-as opposed to cravings deliberately generated by researchers with chocolates, for instance.

One group of cravers played Tetris and the other waited as a computer program loaded and never finished loading. After the screen time the subjects again were asked to rate their cravings.

They found that the Tetris players experienced 24 percent weaker cravings than those who waited unsuccessfully for the game to load, Discovery News reported.

The reason for the lower cravings, Skorka-Brown and her colleagues said, is that Tetris is a fast-moving visual game that requires attention to shapes and positions.

That distracts the part of the brain that produces imagery of the thing you crave and therefore makes it harder to crave. It's an aspect of the game that anyone can test.

The game also has another quality that makes it particularly useful in distracting cravers - It's fun.

The study is published in the journal Appetite.