In addition to an increased likelihood of achieving academic success, children that participate in game-based educational training also have a significantly lower risk of developing future cardiovascular disease, according to University of North Carolina researchers in a paper published this year in Science magazine.

Launched in the 1970s, the Carolina Abecedarian Project studied more than 100 children beginning when they were just over 4 years old. Fifty-seven focused on language skills while also receiving nutritional and health services. A control group received the same nutritional and health services, but not the early language education.

Early education turned out to be an indicator for significantly healthier individuals when they had reached the age of 30, with a lower average systolic blood pressure than those in the control group and no symptoms of metabolic syndrome—a condition related to diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Twenty-five percent of the control group had metabolic syndrome symptoms at age 30.