Recent studies have shown the long-term impact of a couch-potato lifestyle of a person who is in the 20s bracket.
It has been common knowledge that spending too much time in front of a computer screen causes harmful effects to a human's body. There has not been a study that pin points the relationship between a lazy lifestyle and poor cognitive skills during mid-50s.
Studies have proven the link between couch potato lifestyle and increased risks of fatal blood clots and a few more studies about the effects of being a couch potato have been conducted since then.
With the advancement of technology, humans have built a comfort zone that pushes the environment to adjust for them in order to live a sustainable life with less effort. The dominance of computers and digital software in an average person's working habit can greatly affect the person's health in a long term.
In an interview with Telegraph, Dr Tina Hoang of the Northern California Institute for Research and Education said, "We found that low levels of physical activity and high levels of television viewing during young to mid-adulthood were associated with worse cognitive performance in midlife," she continues, "These behaviors were associated with slower processing speed and worse executive function but not with verbal memory."
During the mid-1980s, Hoang and her team conducted a study with 3,247 respondents between 18-30 years old. Hoang's team has been updating their charts with the medical records of each person every two to five years.
In 2011, the study had enough data to come up with a reliable result. The team evaluated each respondent's cognitive processing speed, executive function and verbal memory.
According to Sci-Tech Today, 11% were qualified as having "a long-term pattern of high television viewing. The tests show that the people in this 11% bracket had a 64% chance to have poor cognitive performance. Also, 16% of the participants qualified as having "a long-term pattern of low physical activity."
There was also a separate study conducted by the University of Boston University School of Medicine. The findings indicate people who exercised more had a more developed entorhinal cortex, which is the area of the brain responsible for memory.
In this age of technological advancement, people are still advised to exercise and do bootstrapping work. The comfortable life lived by couch potatoes today will eventually haunt the 20 years after.
