People these days take a lot of pleasure in being able to shut their brains off at the end of a hard work day and watch some TV. Unfortunately Australian researchers have discovered that like many of the other pleasures in life, watching T.V. can shorten your life span.
The study is the first of it’s kind to analyse the impact of television viewing on life expectancy, and will be appearing the upcoming October issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Using compiled data from the National Bureau of Statistics and data from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle study the researchers generated life-expectancy tables based on the viewing habits of Australians. The tables ranged from someone who watched an average of 6 hours of television a day to someone who watched no television at all.
The results of the study were shocking: For every hour of television viewed by a person over the age of 25, their life expectancy is reduced by 22 minutes.
The study found that T.V. viewing time may be associated with a loss of life that is comparable to other major chronic disease risk factors such a physical inactivity, smoking and obesity. The finding suggest that substantial loss of life may be associated with prolonged T.V. viewing time among Australian adults.
Essentially the sedentary lifestyle that people adopt through viewing copious amounts of television are as bad for your health as smoking and obesity. Mostly because of the dangers posed by inactivity and the fact that most people have a habit of snacking on junk food while sitting in front of the tube.
It was also revealed that in 2008, Australians aged 25 and older had watched a total of 9.8 billion hours of television that year alone. In the U.S. recent study concluded that the average citizen watched tv for about 35.5 hours a week.
The findings have led the study to call for a public health case to warn adults of the risks of watching too much television.
Question:
After hearing about this nation, will you be watching less TV?
