TV Linked with Alzheimer's:

"Engaging in a hobby like reading a book, making a patchwork quilt or even playing computer games can delay the onset of dementia, a US study suggests. Watching TV however does not count - and indeed spending significant periods of time in front of the box may speed up memory loss, researchers found." - BBC  ( Feb 2009)  and  Medical News Today  (Feb 2009)

In this study, scientists compared a group of Alzheimer's patients with a matched group of elderly people.  They specifically looked at the hobbies and activities (26 types) that each group had engaged in.

According to Dr. Robert Friedland "...watching TV was the only recreational activity, out of those studied, that Alzheimer's sufferers were more likely to participate in. " BBC (March 2001)  and  Neurological Foundation of New Zealand

Effects of TV on Cognition

"The cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants is in hot water from a study suggesting that watching just nine minutes of that program can cause short-term attention and learning problems in 4-year-olds." -  USA Today (Sept 2011)  and  Science Daily (Sept 2011)  and  Mail Online (Sept 2011)  and  NewsFeed Researcher (Sept 2011)  and  PsychCentral (Sept 2011)

"Middle-class 6-year-olds matched for sex, age, pretest WPPSI IQ, and TV-viewing time were blindly assigned to a restricted TV-viewing group or an unrestricted group. Restricted parents halved subjects' previous TV-viewing rates and interacted 20 min./day with subjects for a 6-week period. Unrestricted TV parents provided similar interactions but did not limit viewing. Results tentatively suggest that TV restriction enhanced Performance IQ, reading time, and reflective Matching Familiar Figures scores." - Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (Winter 1980)

"Subsequent work by Malach and colleagues has found that, when we're engaged in intense "sensorimotor processing" - and nothing is more intense than staring at a massive screen with Dolby surround sound while wearing 3-D glasses - we actually inhibit these prefrontal areas. The scientists argue that such "inactivation" allows us to lose ourself in the movie" - Frontal Cortex (Jan 2010)

"There was greater frontal lobe activation in children when they were engaged in a picture book reading task with their mothers, as opposed to passive viewing of a videotape in which the story was read to them. Social and verbal engagement of the mother in reading picture books with her young child may mediate frontal brain activity in the child." -  Pubmed (Oct 2009) 

Physical Health, TV  and Alzheimer's

The link between diabetes and Alzheimer's:

"A Surprising Link Between Diabetes and Alzheimer's" - The New York Times (Feb 2009)

"Diabetics have a significantly greater risk of dementia, both Alzheimer's disease — the most common form of dementia — and other dementia, reveals important new data from an ongoing study of twins. The risk of dementia is especially strong if the onset of diabetes occurs in middle age, according to the study." - Science Daily (Jan 2009)

"Diabetic individuals have a significantly higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease" - Science Daily (May 2008)

And Diabetes is also linked to television watching:

"Too much TV ups the risk of type 2 diabetes in women" - Prevention (Oct 2004)

Risk for Type 2 Diabetes... "Children who reported watching TV/playing video games 2 or more hours/day were 73% more likely to be at risk." - Journal of School Health (2006)

"Diabetic children who spent the most time glued to the TV had a tougher time controlling their blood sugar, according to a Norwegian study that illustrates yet another downside of too much television." - CBS News (May 2007)

Also, TV is associated with Obesity, and Obesity is associated with Diabetes:

The Role of Media is Childhood Obesity - Overview of the Research - Kaiser (Feb 2004) (pdf)

"Adults who watch more than 21 hours of TV a week were 80 per cent more likely to be obese than people who watched five hours or less television." - CTV News (June 2008)

"How much TV children watch accurately predicts whether they will go on to become overweight, a study suggests." - BBC (Sept 2005)

See also: Obesity & TV

TV is associated with Obesity, and Obesity is also associated with Alzheimer's:

"The link between obesity and the subsequent development of dementia later in life is well documented in the medical literature.  A new study suggests that being just overweight instead of obese in midlife can increase the risk of subsequently developing several types of dementia."  -  Drsamgirgis.com (May 2011)

An Active Lifestyle, Good Diet Helps Prevent Alzheimer's

"Older women who did an hour or two of strength training exercises each week had improved cognitive function a year later, scoring higher on tests of the brain processes responsible for planning and executing tasks, a new study has found." - The New York Times (Jan 2010)

Evidence Growing that Alzheimer's Risk Greatly Diminished by Exercise -

Senior Journal (Oct 2005)

"Evidence that diet plays a major role in causing Alzheimer's disease was released yesterday after scientists found that African Americans were more than twice as likely to suffer from the condition as people of similar age in Nigeria." - Guardian (Feb 2001)

Cognitive Stimulation and Alzheimer's

"An excellent review has just been published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience on the relationship between enriched environments and the onset and severity of nervous system diseases. A consensus seems to be emerging: putting rodents in enriched environments - cages with space for foraging, toys and social interaction - not only delays disease but reduces the symptoms. The list of diseases for which this effect has been verified is staggering. It reads like a who's who of neural nightmares: Alzheimers, Huntington's, Parkinson's, epilepsy, stroke, traumatic brain injury, Fragile X syndrome and Down syndrome. One leading theory is that having more neuronal connections and dendritic spines simply means that you are able to lose more neurons before you notice the loss. Enriched environments, then, act like a buffer. While they don't prevent disease, they do slow the damage." - Frontal Cortex (Sept 2006)

"Among the most striking new evidence is a report published in a recent issue of Experimental Neurology showing that even in old age the cells of the cerebral cortex respond to an enriched environment by forging new connections to other cells." - The New York Times (July 1985)

"Engaging in a hobby like reading a book, making a patchwork quilt or even playing computer games can delay the onset of dementia, a US study suggests. Watching TV however does not count - and indeed spending significant periods of time in front of the box may speed up memory loss, researchers found." - BBC News (Feb 2009)

"The study found that for each additional year of formal education, the onset of memory loss was delayed by more than two months. The report, led by Charles B. Hall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of Neurology." - The New York Times (Nov 2007)

"While a higher level of education may help lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease, new research shows that once educated people start to become forgetful, a higher level of education does not appear to protect against how fast they will lose their memory." - Science Daily (Feb 2009)

(see Brainwaves & TV for more on how TV understimulates the brain)

Preventing Alzheimer’s

"A special report on Alzheimer’s disease, a supplement to the October issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter, describes focus areas in prevention research. They include:

- Physical activity and healthy living

- Diet

- Drugs

- Mental Fitness  -  Science Daily (Oct 2008)

"In addition, few scientists believe brain health activities prevent dementia, only that they might delay it. The strongest evidence suggests that cardiovascular exercise also probably helps the brain, by improving blood circulation, experts say." - The New York Times (Dec 2006)

"...our findings suggest that having a calm and outgoing personality in combination with a socially active lifestyle may decrease the risk of developing dementia even further"  -  Science Daily (Jan 2009)

Delaying Alzheimer's

Can you delay dementia? - Tips from How Stuff Works

"The study found that for each additional year of formal education, the onset of memory loss was delayed by more than two months. The report, led by Charles B. Hall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of Neurology." - The New York Times (Nov 2007)

"The theater group improved significantly more compared to the control group in each of the measures" - Cognitive Daily (July 2009)

"You can teach an old dog new tricks, say UCLA scientists who found that middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning after just one week of surfing the Web." - Physorg.com (Oct 2009)

"A new study of people in their 60s and 70s has found that playing a strategy video game focused on conquering the world appears to improve some of the cognitive skills that naturally decline during aging." - The Dana Foundation (Feb 2009)

"Instead of TV" - As part of an active lifestyle...