Is your child’s TV time setting them up for a lifetime of health problems? Discover how TV turns kids into muscle flops FOR LIFE
Why too much TV as a tot makes you a muscle flop
s your child’s TV time setting them up for a lifetime of health problems? Discover how TV turns kids into muscle flops FOR LIFE
Screens are always available, entertaining, educational and cheap baby sitters.
But they may end up being, a very expensive proposition.
You see screens send the bill for their services, years later as part of an obesity package, the reason, they “wired” your little one to be, a couch potato.
“Growing” muscle
Your muscle framework i.e. the number of muscle fibers, is pretty much set up at birth, they will lengthen and thicken i.e. increase in volume, but you won’t get any more per se. The increase in volume is facilitated by special little muscle stem cells (called satellite cells) that hang around on the edges of muscle fibers.
They exist in a sleepy stupor most of the time.
What gets them out of “bed” is a muscle injury.
Injury – don’t panic, we are not talking about some horrendous event that leads you incapacitated for months.
No pain no gain
Every time you work out HARD, a little damage happens. This is why you wake up stiff and sore when you do something out of the ordinary.
The muscles got injured.
In these moments, satellite cells come to the rescue. They don’t do the job alone, macrophages assist in patching up the muscle.
You didn’t get NEW muscle.
You maintained the muscle that you had.
Testosterone’s role in “building” muscle
Maybe you’re thinking, hang on a minute, surely dudes using anabolic steroids are getting NEW MUSCLE !
Actually they’re also not getting more muscle.
Testosterone does love to torment those little sleepy satellite cells, so in his presence new muscle cells are made and the merge into the already existing muscle fibers.
Anatomy of a muscle fiber
You see a muscle fiber is not 1 cell, with 1 nucleus. It is a conglomerate of cells with hundreds to thousands of nuclei – the official name for these nuclei are myonuclei.
And satellite cells are the source of these myonuclei.
Testosterone (natural and exogenous) cause more myonuclei to join the muscle fiber.
Do they all stick around………NO !
A fleeting benefit
Myonuclei do have an expiry date, so their presence is fleeting but having more is most advantageous. You see each myonuclei has a sphere of influence…..
It is only able to service and support the organelles in it’s immediate vicinity.
A muscle with fewer myonuclei has less resources to grow and prosper, whereas a muscle with lots of myonuclei is strong, healthy and WELL ENDOWERED.
Back to the kids in front of the TV
In the window between birth and puberty, the little stem cells that make muscle don’t just hang around in a sleepy nirvana, they are actively dividing to ensure the muscles get longer and thicken up to support your expanding frame.
So the number of myonuclei increase, the terminology for this is accretion.
The details of the window are still a little sketchy in humans, but researchers are confident it exists in mice and it shuts off when puberty commences. It’s assumed the situation is similar in humans.
Muscle expansion is a given
Now it is a developmental process……so it is going to happen whether you are sitting on the couch watching TV or playing soccer every waking moment.
But it is influenced by muscle activity.
And this is where the TV baby sitter BITES, tots watching too much TV end up being muscle flops. This was shown in the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, this study documented the TV habits of little ones.
TV habits of Canadian kids
This study found the average viewing time of Canadians toddlers (2½ year olds) clocked in at 8.8 hours, bumping up to 14.8 hours as the kids got older. But, this is average – some little TV addicts were pulling in over 18 hours of Barney and friends, along with adverts for junk food.
It was the 18 hour tots that were wired to be muscle flops.
The TV disadvantage
When these little ones reached the ripe old age of 10, they were called in for a fitness-cum-fatness assessment.
As expected, the BIG TV addicts at 4½ years old, were a little BIGGER, than the children who were spending less time in front of the TV. Probably not a BIG SURPRISE, but not the most interesting finding of this study, this was….
The big TV watchers were pretty lousy on the sports field.
Standing long jumps (a good indication of overall athletic ability) became shorter, by a couple of centimeters, with each additional hour of TV watched at the age of 29 months i.e. they were muscle flops.
Now if you’re not good at something, do you want to do it ? Probably not, logic says……….
Muscle flops HATE physical activity !
PERMANENTLY.
Timeout the baby sitter
As tempting as it is, to park the little one in front of a screen – be weary of that FREE baby SITTER. Remember, for the most part, there is no such thing as a FREE lunch, there is always a price to pay, don’t let your child pay the price because of poor muscle tone.
It is important to ensure your little one develops the right muscles and moves. A child with properly developed muscles, is going to find it a whole lot easier, to get moving and stay moving.
NOTE : Official guidelines suggest limiting screen time for tots, to no more than 2 hours a day.
What if you NEED a baby sitting service ?
Some suggestions……….
Make TV watching UNCOMFORTABLE and frequently interrupt the sitting, these simple moves will help mitigate some of the risk.
Further reading
Metabolic syndrome is not a fat thing, it’s a muscle thing
Teens with metabolic syndrome, that are not obese are slightly muscle deficient. Obese teens also have low muscle mass – suggesting metabolic syndrome is a muscle thing
How to make learning to walk, easier
What baby is wearing matters – diapers, affect infant walking because they load up the legs, making getting mobile a lot HARDER.
Why being a working Mom puts your child at risk of childhood obesity
It’s got nothing to do with dietary habits, meal time routines, frequency of family meals, time spent watching TV or physical activity, the problem is….