Too Much TV Linked to Leading Causes of Death

The findings were determined after analyzing around 221,000 subjects, aged 50 to 71, who had been free of any chronic conditions at the beginning of the study.

The study found that by watching 3-4 hours of TV per day, there is a 15% increased chance of developing one of the deadly diseases in comparison to watching 1 hour or less.

“Given the increasing age of the population, the high prevalence of TV viewing in leisure time, and the broad range of mortality outcomes for which risk appears to be increased, prolonged TV viewing may be a more important target for public health intervention than previously recognised”.

It was determined that those who spend a greater part of their time watching television are more likely to die prematurely as a result of the 8 leading causes of death in the USA, which include diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney disease, pneumonia and influenza, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

A study found evenings in front of the box leave us more likely to die from cancer, liver disease or Parkinson’s, even if we are active for the rest of the day. But a new study links many hours of this sedentary behavior to increased risks for eight of the major causes of death. About 80 percent of Americans, on average, watched 3.5 hours of TV per day.

Worryingly, each day train was not sufficient to mitigate the dangers related to extreme TV watching- energetic and inactive individuals each noticed elevated threat.

However, the association seen in the study does not mean that watching too much TV causes death from these diseases.

“In this context, our results fit within a growing body of research indicating that too much sitting can have many different adverse health effects”, said Keadle. However, with time, they were able to eliminate all other health factors, such as smoking, drinking, and caloric intake, to zero-in on the issue of watching television.

However, researchers said that there need to be further studies to explore the link between TV viewing and death rate and if these links are found when we consider sitting in other contexts, such as driving, working, or doing other sedentary leisure-time activities.

“Though we discovered that train didn’t totally get rid of dangers related to extended tv viewing, definitely for individuals who wish to scale back their sedentary tv viewing, train must be the primary selection to exchange that beforehand inactive time”, said Dr. Keadle.

Keadle cautioned that although each of the associations observed have plausible biological mechanisms, several associations are being reported for the first time and additional research is needed to replicate these findings and to understand the associations more completely.