Too Much TV Can Cause Death

Too much TV just like smoking is bad for the health and can cause early demise by nearly five years, research says.

According to a research released in Australia and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, every hour of TV watched after the age of 25 may shorten lifespan by 22 minutes.



Dr. Lennert Veerman, one of the report's author from the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland, says that it puts long hours spent in front of television "in the same ballpark as smoking and obesity". "While smoking rates are declining, watching TV is not, which has implications at a population level," he said





Here are the 3 dangers of watching too much TV:



1. Diabetes: Prolonged television watching could increase your chance of getting Type 2 diabetes. According to a recent research review, more than three hours of television watching a day may put you at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. “While the associations between time spent viewing TV and risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease were linear, the risk of all-cause mortality appeared to increase with TV viewing duration of greater than three hours per day.”



2. Weight Gain: Another new study suggests that all that time in front of the tube is becoming a health concern. Being a television-watching couch potato may be partially to blame for weight gain, high blood pressure and heart disease risk. The study collected information from thousands of Australians about their health and lifestyles, then collected the same data from these subjects five years later in order to identify any changes. For both men and women, people who increased their TV viewing similarly increased their waistlines.



3. Headaches and Back pain: Recent research suggests that spending an excessive amount of time on screen-based activities may be bad for your back. The results show a consistent association between time spent on screen-based activities and incidences of headache and backache among the youths.



Photo credit: FotoSearch