Scientists have confirmed that watching TV reduces brain size

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These studies have shown that the more people watch TV, the less gray matter remains in the brain. And this area contains neurons that are responsible for the main part of mental processing.

Ryan Dougherty, a research fellow at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, emphasized that people who watched TV for an average of about 1.5 hours longer than their peers had a decreased brain volume in middle and old age. This reduction was approximately 0.5%.

This number may seem insignificant, but most scientists argue that it is very important to keep the brain in the state in which it was in youth, right up to old age, writes Medical Xpress. This will help slow the deterioration of mental abilities with age.

As part of the new study, a team of scientists used data from the study “Development of Coronary Artery Risk in Young Adults”, which was launched in 1985 by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. More than five thousand people from four cities in the United States took part in this study.

On average, the participants watched 2.5 hours of TV per day. Moreover, this figure remained stable for 20 years. It turned out that those who devoted 1.4 hours a day or more to watching TV, had a gray matter decrease of 0.5% by the age of 50.