The Nintendo Wii has been working miracles again, this time it’s been helping the elderly in a care home in East Kilbride, helping to prevent falls.

Residents of the Whitehills care home would take morning exercises to keep their joints moving, but now that the care home has a Nintendo Wii the residents are using that to keep fit instead.

Jim Faith, a resident of the care home, stated:

I’m recovering from a stroke and the messages from my brain to my hands don’t always get there in the right sequence.

Sixty-eight-year-old Jim was using the ten-pin bowling game on the Nintendo Wii for his daily exercise.

This helps you coordinate your eyes, your hands, your brain.

According to NHS Scotland, 50% of all pensioners living in care homes have suffered a fall of some kind, which is obviously very dangerous at that age. The news resulted in Janice McEwan, the manager of the Whitehills care home, to buy a Nintendo Wii so that the home’s residents can use the console for their exercise.

It’s partly to do with coordination and also the residents now look forward to that time in the morning and know their morning exercises are coming along. And they just get great benefit from it.

I think because they’re actively moving muscles and things it reduces the risk of their falls.

After borrowing a Wii for a few weeks, they liked the console so much that they raised money through sponsorship to purchase their own console, and then they bought three!

Not all of the home’s residents were convinced of the Wii though. Ivy Kelly, ninety-four-years-old, said:

I was just bewildered in a way. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

It doesn’t really bother me what kind of exercise I do, as long as I’m doing it.