January 18, 2010 
This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 12:27 pm and is filed under General health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Lounging in front of the tube not only eats up hours in your day, it may also shorten your life, according to a new study.
The study, which looked at the connection between watching TV and death for 8,800 Australian adults, found that each hour of TV-viewing was associated with an 11 percent increased risk of death from any cause, and an 18 percent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease. These findings held true even after the researchers took into account other factors that could raise the risk of dying, such as age, gender, waist circumference and exercise habits.
While the study included only Australians, the findings likely apply to Americans, who spend even more time watching TV, the researchers said. The results could also apply to any sedentary activity – yes including sitting in front of a computer all day – not just TV-watching. And skinny people could be victims as well, the researchers say.
The researchers suggest this link between TV-time and early death could be partly due to the fact that sitting in front of the tube may take away from time a person might otherwise spend moving about, engaging in light activity, which has been shown to reduce the risk of developing certain biological indicators of cardiovascular disease. The new results agree with those of another recent study, which showed that adults who watch less TV also burn more calories.
So get off the couch, stop watching somebody else’s life and start living your own life!
