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Wednesday, March 07, 2001
So it's true. Television really does rot your brain. Not only that, it doesn't appear to matter what kind of television it is. "Masterpiece Theater," "Gilligan's Island," "The Sopranos" or the evening news, it's all the same: most terrible, as Hercule Poirot would say, for the little gray cells.
The evidence comes from a new survey of people in their 70s. Those who spent their earlier adulthood reading, working jigsaw puzzles, playing chess or indulging in other intellectually challenging pastimes were 2 1/2 times less likely to have Alzheimer's disease. Those whose primary leisure activity consisted of TV-watching, on the other hand, were more likely to develop the fatal, brain-destroying disorder.
Researchers are attributing this apparent correlation to the "use-'em-or-lose-'em" paradigm. Activity that forces the synapses to fire off lots of directed impulses and connections appears to keep the brain cells fit and limber, warding off their demise.
Activity that demands nothing more than holding one's eyelids open in front of the screen seems to pummel the cells into a weakened state, rendering them vulnerable to Alzheimer's onslaught.
So says an article by Dr. Robert P. Friedland, a neurologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the primary author of the findings, published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
These findings have a couple of scary implications. One, they looked at how subjects spent their leisure time between the ages of 20 and 60. That means that the older you are, the less time you have to make up for all those brain-rotting hours you spent in front of the boob tube.
So, say a 50-year-old goes cold turkey today, trading the NFL season for The New York Times crossword puzzle and the NBA playoffs for the cello. He may be able to save some brain cells for his retirement, but what if they're the ones with the words to "Feelings," instead of the ones that know how to drink a beer?
And then there's this. When today's 70-year-olds were 20, the year was 1951. Television was entering its so-called Golden Age, with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca delivering material written by Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen. This was the age of Ernie Kovacs and Lucille Ball, "Playhouse 90" and Jackie Gleason.
If that could turn your brain into mush a half-century later, imagine what effect a nonstop diet of Jerry Springer, MTV, Martin Lawrence and WWF Smackdown will have on today's 20-year-olds when they're ready for Social Security.
The next phase of this research should focus on producing an equivalency scale. You know, 60 minutes of NASCAR poses the same brain-destroying risk as five reruns of "Gomer Pyle;" one evening of CNN equals the combined network coverage of the Kennedy assassination; one Christina Aguilera video equals a dozen appearances of the June Taylor Dancers on "The Jackie Gleason Show."
What's especially interesting about this information is that it comes at a time when television is more invasive than ever. Many American homes have large-screen TVs in the living room and smaller sets in the children's rooms. Bars and restaurants feature looming TV images that are impossible to ignore.
Tiny little hand-held sets enable fans to take Howard Stern along wherever they go. Minivans are being outfitted with TV monitors to keep small passengers quiet. Health clubs have banks of screens in front of the treadmills and stair climbers. Even hospital waiting rooms, which ban smoking as hazardous to your health, have soap operas blaring in the foreground.
Sometimes it seems there is no escape, that our entire nation has become a couch potato's entertainment center. But now, armed with this new information about the brain-cell bill that might come due in our golden years, I expect that we Americans will move with our usual lightning speed to pull out of this collision course.
I predict a spate of helpful TV reports, maybe even a four-part series with Dan Rather and Mike Wallace, detailing the dangers that lie ahead.
They will rivet our attention as we sit there, immobile, taking it all in. This is assuming that the two of them can get through it, of course. They've watched an awful lot of TV.
Sally Kalson's email address is skalson@post-gazette.com