Excessive Television Viewing Increases Risk of Premature Death

Couched potatoes beware as prolonged television viewing ups the risk of premature death among adults, a new study reveals.

The average time an American adult spends watching televisions is more than four and a half hours a day. Excessive exposure to television viewing has long been associated with negative health consequences along with an impact on early brain development. Adding evidence is the new study led by researchers at the University of Navarra, Spain, which links watching TV for more than three hours to a two-fold increased risk of premature death from any cause.

"Television viewing is a major sedentary behavior and there is an increasing trend toward all types of sedentary behaviors," said Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., the study's lead author. "Our findings are consistent with a range of previous studies where time spent watching television was linked to mortality."

In this study, researchers evaluated 13,284 young and healthy Spanish University graduates. They wanted to determine the relation between three kinds of sedentary behavior including television viewing, computer time and driving time with risk of death from any cause. They followed the participants for around 8 years. During this period they reported 97 deaths in which 19 were due to cardiovascular causes, 46 were due to cancer and 32 were due to other causes.

Those participants who reported watching television for three or more hours had a two-fold higher risk of death compared to the ones who watched television for one or less hours.  However, there was no significant link between time spent using a computer or driving and higher risk of premature death from all causes.

"As the population ages, sedentary behaviors will become more prevalent, especially watching television, and this poses an additional burden on the increased health problems related to aging," Martinez-Gonzalez said. "Our findings suggest adults may consider increasing their physical activity, avoid long sedentary periods, and reduce television watching to no longer than one to two hours each day."

The American Heart Association recommends that one should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise every week. 

The finding was documented in the Journal of the American Heart Association.