Watching Too Much TV Linked to Early Death

If you watch television for three or more hours a day, your risk of premature death is double that of someone who watches only one hour or less, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The health risks of too much sedentary behavior, including too much sitting, are now widely known.

An earlier study, published in 2009, also linked sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, showing how total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other prevalent chronic health problems, which explains why it could easily increase your risk of premature death.

What’s interesting about the current study, however, is that it didn’t compare television watching to other more active activities… it compared it to computer usage and driving time – two activities that also involve sitting.

Somewhat surprisingly, computer use and driving time were not associated with an increased risk of death the way television watching was, which begs the question, is TV damaging to your health in other ways beyond sitting?

How Does Watching TV Damage Your Health?

While no link was found between using a computer or driving and premature death, for every two additional hours spent watching TV, a person’s risk of death from heart disease rose by 44 percent and risk of death from cancer climbed by 21 percent.

The researchers were skeptical, so they set out to examine other variables that might be driving up death rates linked to TV watching, like increased consumption of processed foods and sugary drinks (widely known to rise with television viewing), smoking, an unrelated serious illness, following (or not following) a Mediterranean diet, age, sex, and weight.
The results linking television time and premature death still held strong, which suggests television may be uniquely damaging. The study’s authors suggested part of the problem may be the extremely sedentary nature of television watching. When you’re driving or working at a computer, your body moves (albeit minimally) and your mind is engaged, which are not the case when watching TV.

Although not addressed in the study, exposure to light at night, even from your television, can also interfere with your body’s circadian rhythm and hormone production, wreaking havoc on your health. So this may be yet another way television is associated with chronic disease.
Furthermore, watching TV actually has a major impact on your brain chemistry, and the longer you watch, the easier your brain slips into a receptive, passive mode, meaning that messages are streamed into your brain without any participation from you. Dr. Aric Sigman, a British psychologist, analyzed 35 different scientific studies on television and its effect on the viewer.

He found the damage comes not from the TV programs themselves, but from the vast amount of time kids, in particular, are spending watching television and computer screens. This activity produces an almost narcotic effect on your brain, actually numbing areas that would be stimulated by other activities, like reading. Dr. Sigman has identified 15 negative effects that he believes can be blamed on watching television, stating:

“Watching television, irrespective of the content, is increasingly associated with unfavorable biological and cognitive changes. These alterations occur at viewing levels far below the population norm.
Given the population’s sheer exposure time to this environmental factor it is more than puzzling to consider how little awareness and action has resulted.”

The risks Dr. Sigman revealed include:

TV Increases the Time You Spend Sitting in a Completely Relaxed State

Too much sitting, whether in front of a computer, in your car or watching television, should be avoided for optimal health. And it makes sense that TV watching may be the worst of the sitting offenders, drawing your body and mind into a completely sedentary, passive state. At least with driving and computer usage, the study’s author explained:

“You have tension in your muscles. You are moving little parts of your body, like your hands. You are not completely relaxed as you are when you are watching television.”

Instead of parking yourself in front of the TV at night, consider doing something else, or at the very least engage in some minor activity while the TV is on. The reason this is so critical for your health is that when you move, you increase the force of gravity on your body.

Anti-gravity environments speed up cellular deterioration; this we know from astronauts in outer space. Dr. Joan Vernikos,former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, was in fact one of the primary doctors assigned to keep NASA astronauts from deteriorating in space.

In an anti-gravity situation, your body deteriorates at a far more rapid pace, and interestingly enough, sitting for an extended period of time simulates a low-gravity type environment for your body. The key is to disengage from this low anti-gravity situation as much as possible using intermittent movement.

The Health Damage of Too Much Sitting Is Well Established

There may be some differing health effects between sitting for different activities (television versus reading, for instance), but as these continue to be explored, know this: even if you are a fit athlete who exercises regularly, you may still endanger your health simply by sitting too much. For example, one 2012 analysis that looked at the findings from 18 studies found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least.
Besides increasing your risk of metabolic problems, researchers warn that the combination of sitting too much and exercising too little can more than double the risk of heart failure in men. Last year, a Swedish study also concluded that those who live a generally active life have better heart health and live longer than those who remain sedentary for most of the day. This held true even for those who didn’t engage in a regular exercise routine. The study revealed:

• Those who reported overall higher levels of daily intermittent movement suffered fewer heart-related problems
• For every 100 of the sedentary people who experienced a heart attack or stroke, only 73 of the highly active group had such an event
• For every 100 of the least active who died, only 70 of the most active died
• Those who had high daily activity levels and engaged in a regular exercise program had the lowest risk profiles overall