I guess Mom knew best

“Don’t sit so close to the TV, you’ll ruin your eyes,” Mom used to say back in my childhood.

Little did she know that she was only partly right. For, according to an item in today’s newspaper, TV also raises the risk of, aside from messing up your eyes, obesity, premature puberty and yes – autism. Autism, while being a genuine affliction for those genuinely afflicted, seems to have become the new ADHD in diagnostic circles.

But, back to the evils of TV matter. Odd that the study said nothing about really terrible programming rotting the brain and destroying all critical abilities, but that’s neither here nor there.

But wait, there’s more. The study, published in the science journal Biologist, found that watching television inhibits the production of melatonin, which negatively impacts the immune system; sleep cycle, and the onset of puberty. It also causes a propensity to believe that assorted non-talents on American Idol are going to be the next best thing. Well, no, it didn’t make the latter point, but I think it should have.

Oh, and the study also deduced that older folk aren’t going to get off the hook easily if they devoted an inordinate amount of time in their youth to perusing the old cathode ray tube – and it takes as little as just one extra hour of TV a day – for TV might be a contributory cause of Alzheimer’s. Or maybe, if you watch too much TV, you’ll just give the appearance of having Alzheimer’s.

But wait, there’s still more. TV is not only associated with irregular sleeping patterns, it also significantly increases the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

The author of the study, psychologist Aric Sigman, issued a caveat against those who might see his findings as kind of ovestating the obvious and not really being worthy of a hell of a lot of attention, and suggested they are playing a foolish game. He warned that ignoring what he has found could “ultimately be responsible for the greatest health scandal of our time.” That's right, screw HIV-AIDS, malaria, rampant tuberculosis in some parts of the world, and all the other afflictions we might see as health scourges and focus (using the term advisedly) on TV.

At the end of it all, and after having found his watershed study of the evils of television – late comic Ernie Kovacs once said that television is referred to as a ‘medium’ because it’s hardly ever rare or well-done – to be even more riveting than the accompanying article pondering the increase of cancer in Tasmanian Devils, I am left with a couple of questions.

They are: 1) did Sigman watch a lot of TV in order complete his study? And 2), does watching very little TV lead to excessive outpourings of ego over simplistic findings? Just wondering.