A new study links our television viewing habits to poor health. Reporting in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers linked increasing hours spent in front of the television to eight leading causes of death.
“We know that television viewing is the most prevalent leisure-time sedentary behavior and our working hypothesis is that it is an indicator of overall physical inactivity. In this context, our results fit within a growing body of research indicating that too much sitting can have many different adverse health effects.
The study looked at 221,000 people aged 50 to 71 who had no chronic diseases at the time they started the study. Researchers established links between increased television watching and such ailments as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, influenza, Parkinson’s and liver disease.
The study found that people who watched three to four hours of television a day were 15% more likely to die from any cause than peers who watched one hour a day. Those who watched seven hours a day were 47% more likely to have died during the course of the study. more research is needed to replicate findings of this study.
