Living Well

What's causing our kids to become autistic, fat, near-sighted and sleep deprived?

TV!  This latest study found that watching TV lowers melatonin levels which can create all sorts of nasty side effects in children.  This study (as others) linked TV watching in kids to:

• autism
• obesity
• trouble sleeping
• eye problems
• lower melatonin levels
• early puberty

In adults, "the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease increases with each extra daily hour of television viewing among people aged 20 to 60."

Watching TV must give people immense pleasure ... otherwise I can't imagine why they would expose themselves and their kids to so much of it. We spend nine months of pregnancy trying to eat right, drink no alcohol, get all sorts of prenatal tests and then we plop our toddlers down in front of another round of SpongeBob or Thomas the Tank Engine without a second thought.

Brain injury causes some to quit the smoking habit immediately

People who smoke who suffer an injury to a specific part of their brain (near the ear) immediately and very easily quit smoking.  While nobody is suggesting that smokers who want to quit should try to induce a stroke or hit themselves over the head with a baseball bat, this does give scientists a very concrete area of the brain to look at in order to study addictions.  This could lead to easier and better therapies for breaking addictions like smoking, alcoholism or gambling.