Study confirms: TV could be the death of us all

William Atkins
Saturday, 16 January 2010 19:07

Science - Health

According to an Australian research study, sitting in front of the boob tube for long periods of time is likely to shorten one's life due to cardiovascular (heart) disease. Actually, any sedentary inactivity for long periods of time is bad.


The article “Television Viewing Time and Mortality. The Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab)” was published online on January 11, 2010, in the journal Circulation (a journal of the American Heart Association).

It is authored by David W. Dunstan, E. L.M. Barr, G. N. Healy, J. Salmon, J. E. Shaw, B. Balkau, D.J. Magliano, P. Z. Zimmet, and N. Owen (all from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia); and A. J. Cameron (from the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia).

The Australian researchers state in the abstract to their paper: “Television viewing time, the predominant leisure-time sedentary behavior, is associated with biomarkers of cardiometabolic risk, but its relationship with mortality has not been studied.”

Consequently, they examined the relationship in Australian adults between watching TV for long periods of time and cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and non-CVD/non-cancer mortality.

The researchers studied 8,800 adults (3,846 men and 4,954 women) over the age of twenty-five years who were taking part in the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab).

Over a 6.6 years period (between 1999 and 2006), the researchers found that 284 deaths occurred within the participants. Of this total number of death, 87 deaths occurred because of CVD and 125 from cancer.

They adjusted the results to take into consideration such external factors as gender, age, waist size and body mass index (BMI), exercise habits, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, diet, etc.

Page two shows the results of the study on TV watching for extended periods of time (or any sedentary activity such as sitting in front of a computer screen) and cardiovascular disease.