Too much TV could kill you according to a new study that linked long TV watching hours to eight major diseases. It seems that watching more than 3.5 hours of television a day can lead to an increased risk of death at the hands of eight major causes such as heart disease, liver disease or cancer.
A recent research ran by the National Cancer Institute in Michigan followed up on over 221,000 people that had not been diagnosed with any chronic illnesses when they began the study, all with ages between 50 and 71. Researchers then linked higher mortality rates and leading causes of death in the U.S. to people’s excessive TV watching and sedentary lifestyles.
The information gathered and analyzed then brought scientists conducting the study to the conclusion that people who watch between 3 to 4 hours of television a day have a 15 percent higher risk to succumb to one of eight leading causes of death than those who spend less than an hour a day in front of the television set.
Many physicians rightly associate watching television with a sedentary behavior and inactivity, and so connect it to an ill effect over a person’s general health when watched in excess. The study has also found that exercise alone cannot always compensate for the adverse effects of prolonged television viewing as both active and inactive people suffered the consequences of the excessive habbit.
This is of some concern as, in the U.S., 80 percent of adults watch at least 3.5 hours of TV a day on average and it is one of the most prevalent pass times. At least half of people’s free time is allocated to watching television and that’s no surprise considering that, according to statistics, about 92 percent of American households have a television set.
As the study has found connections between excessive TV watching and new dangerous afflictions that were not known to be linked to this habit, researchers stated that additional information is required to identify and underline the exact report between many hours spent in front of the TV and the onset of diseases such as diabetes or Parkinson’s disease.
Although the connections between the huge amount of TV watching and the body’s negative responses make sense from a medical perspective, scientists need to conduct additional research in order to be able to verify the results they have had so far and reinforce the discoveries made with new data to support their claims.
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