Too Much TV May Have Deadly Toll

Jan 11, 2010 -- Watch out, couch potatoes!  A new study says that every
hour of TV you watch daily may increase your risk of early death from
cardiovascular disease.
Australian researchers, reporting in Circulation: Journal of the American
Heart Association, studied the lifestyle habits of 8,800 adults. They found
that each hour spent watching television on a daily basis is associated with an
18% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
They also say an hour a day spent in front of the tube is associated
with:

An 11% increased risk of death from all causes
A 9% increased risk of cancer death

 
Human Body Needs to Move
The human body evolved to move, not sit still for extended periods of time,
says David Dunstan, PhD, lead author of the study and head of the Physical
Activity Laboratory at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria,
Australia. So sitting in front of a TV or a computer screen for too long poses
serious risks to health, and to life, the researchers say.
“What has happened is that a lot of the normal activities of daily living
that involved standing up and moving the muscles in the body have been
converted to sitting,�? Dunstan says in a news release. “Technological, social,
and economic changes mean that people don’t move their muscles as much as they
used to -- consequently the levels of energy expenditure as people go about
their lives continue to shrink. For many people, on a daily basis, they simply
shift from one chair to another, from the chair in the car to the chair in the
office to the chair in front of the television.�?
Dunstan and his team of researchers looked at 3,846 men and 4,954 women ages
25 and older to find out what happens to people who sit too much.  They
were asked about their TV viewing habits and were grouped into one of three
categories: people who watched less than two hours of TV daily, those who
watched between two and four hours of television daily, and those who spent
more than four hours in front of the tube.  The researchers excluded
people with a history of cardiovascular disease, and the entire group was then
followed for more than six years. During the study period, 284 of the people
died, 125 from cancer and 87 because of cardiovascular disease.
Dunstan and his colleagues write that the link between cancer and TV viewing
was only modest, but that there was a direct association between television
time and elevated cardiovascular death, as well as death from all causes. This
was true, they say, even after accounting for typical cardiovascular disease
risk factors and other lifestyle practices.
http://www .webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20100111/too-much-tv-may-have-deadly-toll?src=RSS_PUBLIC