A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has linked prolonged time spent watching a TV to high risks of killer diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, influenza/pneumonia, liver disease, and Parkinson's disease among others.
The researchers found out that 92% of Americans own a TV in their homes, and 80% of aging American adults spend over 3 ½ hours watching the TV every day.
"We know that television viewing is the most prevalent leisure-time sedentary behavior and our working hypothesis is that it is an indicator of overall physical inactivity," explained study author Sarah Keadle, a cancer prevention fellow at the US National Cancer Institute.
"In this context, our results fit within a growing body of research indicating that too much sitting can have many different adverse health effects," Keadle said.
Over 221,000 participants aged 50-71 years were recruited for the study, and these were tracked for about 15 years that the study lasted. The researchers found that the more the people watched TV, the more they ran the risk of developing any of the eight leading causes of death in the US.
The participants who watched TV for an average of 3-4 hours every day had a 15% chance of dying from the diseases than those who watched for only 1 hour every day, while those who watched television for 7 or more hours every day had 47% risk of dying by the killer diseases.
The authors of the study accounted for smoking, calorie intake, alcohol, exercise, and heart conditions in the research, yet the link between time spent before the TV screen and risks of death remained.
"Although we found that exercise did not fully eliminate risks associated with prolonged television viewing, certainly for those who want to reduce their sedentary television viewing, exercise should be the first choice to replace that previously inactive time," Keadle said
This is not the first time that researchers have linked TV time and rising risks of diseases.
"Given the increasing age of the population, the high prevalence of TV viewing in leisure time, and the broad range of mortality outcomes for which risk appears to be increased, prolonged TV viewing may be a more important target for public health intervention than previously recognized," Keadle concluded.