Watching television for too long increases risk of early death, a new research shows.
The study found that watching TV for more than three hours ups the risk of early death by two times.
For the study, researchers assessed 13,284 healthy Spanish students. The median age of the participants was 37 and 60 percent of them were women. The researchers measured the time spent by the participants watching TV, using computer and driving for an average of 8.2 years. Researchers noted that there were 97 deaths in total. Of these, 19 were due to heart disease, 46 from cancer and 32 from other health complications.
The findings showed that people who watched more than three hours of TV per day had double risk of premature death as compared to those who watched TV for an hour or so less per day. Even though spending time in front of a computer or behind a wheel is also sedentary, researchers did not find a link between these behaviors and premature death.
"Television viewing is a major sedentary behavior and there is an increasing trend toward all types of sedentary behaviors," said Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., the study's lead author and professor and chair of the Department of Public Health at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. "Our findings are consistent with a range of previous studies where time spent watching television was linked to mortality," Martinez-Gonzalez said in a press release.
"As the population ages, sedentary behaviors will become more prevalent, especially watching television, and this poses an additional burden on the increased health problems related to aging," Martinez-Gonzalez said . "Our findings suggest adults may consider increasing their physical activity, avoid long sedentary periods, and reduce television watching to no longer than one to two hours each day."
The researchers said they although they did not get any cause and effect relationship, people should be aware of this strong correlation.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
