The average American watches five hours of television daily, making most of us officially “couch potatoes.” However there is a downside besides watching habits that lead to bad eating and sleep deprivation. Now according to a new study, TV time is also associated with type 2 diabetes and heart problems. Yikes.
Aside from sleep, watching TV is the most common daily activity for Americans. In fact, prolonged television viewing is the most prevalent and pervasive sedentary behavior in industrialized countries and has been associated with morbidity and mortality. The study’s team quantified for the first time how much the passive act of TV watching contributed to conditions like diabetes and heart disease, as well as to premature death.
For every two hours of TV watching, the researchers found the risk of type 2 diabetes increased by 20% over 8.5 years of follow-up, the risk of heart disease rose by 15% over a decade and the odds of dying from any cause increased 13% during a seven year follow-up.
Based on disease incidence in the US, the team estimates that among 100,000 individuals per year, each two-hour hike in TV viewing per day brings 176 new cases of type 2 diabetes, 38 new cases of fatal cardiovascular disease, and 104 new cases of all-cause mortality.
Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, who lead the analysis of past data sets, didn’t explicitly say why TV time was associated with poor health, but the potential connections are no mystery.
Hu explains:
“Excessive TV watching is related to decreased physical activity, decreased consumption of health foods, and increased caloric intake. Now we know that excessive TV watching may do more damage than other types of sedentary behaviors, so it’s a good idea to ask how much time people spend in front of the TV and for doctors to give advice not only about exercise but about how to reduce TV watching.”
Television watching tends to promote other unhealthy activities like snacking on junk food and eating fewer fresh fruits and veggies. All of these are known risk factors for diabetes and heart disease, conditions that can contribute to early death.
In 2008, there were an estimated 327 million television sets in the US. An adult who watches three hours of TV a day is far more likely to be obese than an adult who watches less than one hour.
A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey released in October 1995 found 4.7 million children between the ages of 6-17 (11% of this age group) to be severely overweight, more than twice the rate during the 1960’s. The main culprits: inactivity (these same children average more than 22 hours of television-viewing a week) and a high-calorie diet. A 1991 study showed that there was an average of 200 junk food ads in four hours of children’s Saturday morning cartoons.
Exercise doesn’t necessarily make up for long sessions in front of the tube. When comparing groups of adults who exercised the same amount, but watched varying amounts of TV, those who watched more TV were still at a higher risk of dying during the study.
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Written by Sy Kraft