(FWIW, I personally think of it analogous to psychosomatic side effect of allergies - I can be induced into sniffles by convincing me my pillow is stuffed with cat hair, and there's a legitimate underlying physiological thing :).
(and to clarify, I personally had about 2 runs of the above game before my brain caused stress/anxiety that I'm wasting my time and life is limited and I'm not using it productively and I'm not accomplishing anything meaningful aaaaaaack; not sure if that's ultimately healthier or not - clearly, spending time on hacker news doesn't trigger the same reflex :-)