Television and Alzheimers: The Link
How much time do you spend time in television? Correct me if I am wrong but a bachelor’s life basically runs like this: you wake up in the morning, prepare and go to work. When the day is done, and you have nowhere to go, no date to spend time with, no buddies available for a night out, you go home and click on that remote. Let’s estimate you got home around 6 in the evening. From that time on until you go to sleep, you spend time watching the tube. Am I right? So if you get sleepy by 10, that means you spend a minimum of 4 hours on the television.
Now, do you know that television is the only mid-life recreation positively linked to developing Alzheimer’s disease? Alzheimer’s affects one in 20 aged over 65 and nearly a quarter of those over 85, causing bouts of dementia, loss of memory, wrenching personality changes and, eventually, death. The study found that the disease was linked to those less involved in recreation between the ages of 20 and 60 than healthy people of similar background.
In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Robert Friedland reports with colleagues at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the University Hospitals of Cleveland: It is possible for television to be intellectually stimulating but probably that is not what is happening most of the time, especially in America, where people watch an average of four hours a day. I think it is bad for the brain to watch four hours of television a day. When you watch TV you can be in a semi-conscious state where you really are not doing any learning.” The results suggest that recreational inactivity in mid-life may be either a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, a consequence of early, undetected symptoms of the disease, or both.
April issue of the Journal of School Health says children who reported watching TV or playing video games 2 or more hours a day were 73 per cent more likely to be at risk of type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, watching a lot of television and other sedentary behaviors increase women’s risk of both obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to data analyzed in April 2003 from the Nurses’ Health Study. Diabetics have a significantly greater risk of dementia, both Alzheimer’s disease — the most common form of dementia — and other dementia, reveals important new data from an ongoing study of twins. The risk of dementia is especially strong if the onset of diabetes occurs in middle age, according to the study.
The adverse affects of television could occur decades prior to a person developing Alzheimer’s symptoms. Doctors confirm that by keeping Alzheimer sufferers brains active, progression of this disease is slowed down, decreases depression related to the disease and enables sufferers to live for much longer periods of time at home. Doctors have now found links between people who spend hours in front of television screens and people who are obese and get very little physical exercise. These risk factors all increase the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
So basically excessive TV watching is a very important contributor to obesity and diabetes, and diabetes is a very important risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s. It is no wonder that scientists have found a link between excessive TV watching and Alzheimer’s.
Photo by KaiChanVong
