Can lead to a lot of television to dementia?

There is a TV-related dementia?

A study has shown that daily, long television leads in the elderly a reduction in verbal memory. According to scientists, a new disease image: shown here may be TV-related dementia.

Watching television makes you sick

Who sits every day for a long time in front of the TV, endangers his health. Recently, American scientists reported that the long Sit in front of the TV, the risk for colon cancer increases. And Dutch researchers found that as a result, the type-2-Diabetes-risk increases. In addition, long hours of stay will be brought in front of the boob tube often with complaints of back pain. But that’s not all. In a new study showed that daily, multi-hour television leads in the elderly a reduction in verbal memory. Possibly a new disease image: shown here are the TV-related dementia.

If information cannot be adequately processed

TV makes you stupid? In a way, one could summarize the findings of a recent study, writes the German society of neurology e. V. (DGN) in a message.

Because most of the people will not be referred to as stupid, are able to process information adequately.

You said something – for example: “turn right!” – but you are not able to understand what is being said and implement it and then turn wrong, or continue straight ahead.

As the experts explain, this is not a question of intelligence quotient, but may mean that the linguistic memory is weak.

If they had given these people the directions as a sketch of the Hand, arrived the Information for you probably.

But verbally mediated content “does not reach” Affected to a sufficient extent. This is true for the announcement at the station that the train from another Track, as well as the verbal invitation of a friend.

When you consider how much the modern world is in the form of verbal Information, it is clear that people with a weak verbal memory remain quickly disoriented.

The verbal memory is extremely important in today’s information society, to navigate.

Removal of the verbal memory

A in the journal “Nature Scientific Reports” published a study from the UK showed that a high TV consumption of more than 3.5 hours results in about a 50-Year-old to the degradation of the verbal memory.

Were observed a total of 3.590 study participants, which were at the beginning of the study, about 50 years old (the average age was 67 years), and no dementia.

After six years of the subjects in terms of cognitive abilities were examined and asked about their TV times.

A “dose showed a dependent” effect: the more TV watched one of the participants, the more the verbal memory had degraded in comparison to the output value.

The critical threshold was not 3.5 hours of television consumption per day, less had.

Cognitive Removal

According to DGN this result persisted and remained statistically significant after certain influence had been calculated, factors such as demographic variables (gender, age, relationship status, social status, profession, life/pension) and health data (the Presence of a Depression or vascular disorders, tobacco and alcohol consumption).

The scientists corrected the findings against the Seats, so the lack of movement of people that watch a lot of television – and even then, results remained robust.

The degradation of the verbal memory, therefore, can not be explained alone with too little exercise.

Earlier there have been studies that showed that a lot of television is associated with a cognitive decline, but other sedentary leisure activities, such as, for example, on the Internet browsing.

Researchers had the view of the with the high a stimulant, and the fast change of the sense perceptions (and Hear) and the simultaneous passivity of the spectator explains, the view of the TV.

However, only the verbal memory from the TV-consumption-related degradation was affected, not the so-called word liquid (“semantic fluency”), which is reduced, for example, in Alzheimer’s patients.

“Several studies had established the Thesis that much TV could promote the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease,” said Prof. Peter Berlit, Secretary-General of the DGN.

“Alzheimer’s patients also have cognitive deficits beyond the verbal short-term memory loss. Nevertheless, these study results are disturbing, there may be a unique disease entity, the TV-related dementia develops,“ said the DGN expert.

Average TV consumption in about three hours

Already now, the average TV consumption of German is about three hours.

The present study had also shown that people who are not living in the professional, watch more TV.

In Addition, female gender, lower education level, lower social Status and social Isolation (alone alive) with increased television consumption.

“Older people should avoid to stay long mentally fit, too much watching TV,” says Berlit. (ad)