Effects of TV On The Brain

Studies show that the amount of TV time per day can affect the way you live. According to livescience.com, people who watch a lot of television and don’t exercise much at all may begin to see the effects of their unhealthy living habits on their brains as early as their midlife.

“Being physically active at any time in your life is good for your brain,” study author Tina D. Hoang of the Northern California Institute for Research and Education at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco said.

Not only does staying parked in front of the TV for hours affect your brain, but it could also increase the risk of dying from a blood clot in the lungs, a new study in Japan finds.

A pulmonary embolism is a blood clot in the lung that can be caused by sitting in front of the TV for five hours or more. Research shows that people who watch television longer than five hours every day are affected, rather than people who watch two-and-a-half or less.

These pulmonary embolisms can be deadly. According to APS Foundation of America, over 600,000 people have a pulmonary embolism each year, and more than 60,000 of them die.

To reduce the chances of blood clots and to get blood flowing, stand up after an hour or so, stretch, and walk around. You could also sit, tense, and relax your leg muscles for five minutes.

MRI scans prove that kids who spend more time in front of the television have greater amounts of grey in front of the frontopolar cortex, the area in front of the frontal lobe. The increase of TV watching has been linked with lower verbal intelligence, says authors from Tohoku University in the city of Sendai.

These authors suggested that this grey matter could be compared to body weight and says these brain areas need to be pruned during childhood in order to be operated officially later in their life.