For many people, television is the only way to spend leisure time. The desire to sit in front of him, pointlessly switching channels, is akin to drug addiction. This e-mail box for many becomes not only a source of news, but also the best, authoritative friend with whom you can sit long after midnight.
But these night gatherings in front of a flickering screen are far from as harmless as it might seem. Psychiatrists have long noticed that watching TV at night leads to depression, as people who are obsessed with this kind of mania often come up with this problem. And more recently, this theoretical version has been confirmed in practice.
Scientists from Ohio American University have published the results of their long-term studies on the effect that dim light has on the psychic state of a living being. Fortunately, the subject of the study was not humans, but two groups of ordinary domestic hamsters. At the same time, the first group lived in standard conditions of existence similar to the natural day cycle: they spent 8 hours in the dark, and 16 in the conditions of illumination of 150 lux, close to daylight. The second group, 16 hours a day, also lived in daylight. The remaining 8 hours they spent not in the dark, but in the light of 5 lux, equivalent to the illumination from the TV screen.
Of course, the hamsters from the second group did not begin to complain to the scientists about the bad mood and unwillingness to live. The researchers realized that they were experiencing stress from the fact that these hamsters became indifferent to the sweetened water, which they loved so much earlier. Life ceased to please them, they began to behave less actively and apathetically, began to copulate less often. In contrast, hamsters from the first group, continuing to be interested in the opposite sex and love sweet water.
The head of this interesting study, PhD student at the Department of Neurology at the University of Tracy Bedrosyan, believes that a certain protein called the tumor necrosis factor becomes the cause of depression. It begins to be produced in the body of a living creature, under the influence of weak artificial lighting. Fortunately, scientists have left a chance to those who like to sit at night in front of a computer monitor or TV. Studies have shown that when hamsters of the second group were returned to normal habitat, the symptoms of depression disappeared after a while.