I'm Gabe Garza with today's health news. Mom was right. It turns out watching too much
TV really might hurt your brain. A new study, which followed a large group of participants
for 25 years, found that watching a lot of TV and getting little exercise in young adulthood
may lead to poor cognitive function in midlife. For this study researchers used data from
the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study to look at the TV and
physical activity habits of just over 3,000 young adults from 1985 to 2011. These researchers
found that high TV viewing in young adulthood was tied to a 10.9 percent increased chance
of poor cognitive function in midlife. Low physical activity was tied to a 16.3 percent
increased chance. The odds of poor cognitive performance in midlife was almost twice as
high for young adults with both high TV viewing and low physical activity.