During the course of an extended study, physicians found that long TV watching hours are linked to intellectual problems, so being seated all day and watching TV, while not performing any exercising as a teen may lead to a decrease in brain activity. This happens earlier than specialists had believed, according to the new studies, since American doctors examined information from a 20-year-long research on more than 3,000 people with the ages between 18 and 30.
People who reported the longest periods of watching TV (over three hours daily) and having the most sedentary way of life (less than three hours per week week) present the most severe decrease in intellectual performances during the extended length of research, even before its members were significantly older.
The prolonged inactivity has a negative impact on the cognitive functions, even at younger ages than it was initially believed by the experts. The authors of the study, doctors with relevant experience in the neuroscience field, discovered that subjects who watched long hours of TV and then reported a low level of exercising had a sluggish memory capacity. Their symptoms were slower thinking rate and poorer professional operations (the capability to plan or finish various assigned tasks) in comparison to their colleagues, even in the educational subjects.
The verbal skills, however, appeared to be unchanged. Individuals having the least effective way of life (both low exercising and prolonged TV watching periods) were much more predisposed to have inadequate intellectual capacities, says the research, which discovered that these subjects were more likely to perform badly on assessments of mind efficiency than other people who were more active.
They believe that this represents one of America’s first reports that show how damaging the mixture of extended TV watching periods and no physical activity could be for the younger people who are still in the development phase. Past studies have proven that both lack of exercise and long TV hours were associated with intellectual problems later in life, but they did not studied people who were involved in such detrimental actions while in their younger years.
And since inactive behavior is increasing on a global scale, particularly among the game player segment, there should be conducted further studies about the association between these two activities. Specialists must take into consideration different categories of display behavior such as the time using the computer, game playing and mobile displays.
They think that it is possible that workouts bring higher neurogenesis, meaning the growth of nervous cells, in addition to more synaptic connections, the capability of our brain’s sensory connections to keep modifying and increasing. It is also plausible that some TV programs may be more harmful for intellectual incapacity than others are.
Image source: Theatlantic