Everyday Americans average 5 hours of watching TV or recreational computer use. Research has been telling us that this much TV is not good for our health and that we should be outside or being active instead. And now another study has just told us that too much TV time actually contributes directly to diabetes, heart disease or earlier death if you already have one of these diseases. Yikes.
Now, the TV or the computer screen is not actually doing the damage but it is the time spent slumped on the couch, the types of food we tend to eat in front of the TV and the amount of food we tend to eat in front of the TV that actually causes the significant damage.
Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health is the primary study author. He says, "the combination of a sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet, and obesity creates a 'perfect breeding ground' for type 2 diabetes and heart disease." From the over 200,000 people involved in this study, they found that every 2 hours of watching daily television increased risk of diabetes by 20% and increased risk of heart disease by 15%. The most sobering statistic is that every 2 hours of TV per day increased the risk of dying early by 13%.
From the study, Hu and his research team estimate that if 100,000 people reduce their daily TV time by 2 hours, they could prevent 176 new cases of diabetes, 38 cases of fatal cardiovascular disease, and 104 premature deaths -- every year.
