Here is a piece of bad news to all those persons who love to watch television all day long. A recent medical study in Australia has revealed that spending too much time watching television could lead to a shorter life span. According to the research conducted by Australi an researchers those people who averaged six hours a day of TV lived, on average, nearly five years less than people who watched no TV.
For every hour of television watched after age 25, lifespan fell by 22 minutes, according to the research led by Dr. J. Lennert Veerman of the University of Queensland. Veerman explained although there is no direct link that watching too much television can lead to a shorter life span their study clearly shown that there is really harm into it. Medical experts said watching television can lead to a shorter life span since people usually spend their time eating mindless in-front of the boob-tube and spend less time doing some physical activities.
If the same person does this routine on a regular basis there is a big chance he ends up being obese or suffer from chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Another explanation for the possible link may be that people who watch excessive amounts of TV “are lonely, or isolated, or depressed, and these conditions, in turn, may be the real causes of premature mortality. To get the information in their research, the researchers took data from 11,000 people aged 25 and older from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study, which included survey information about how much TV people watched in a week.
Researchers also used national population and mortality figures. It was discovered that in 2008, Australian adults watched a total of 9.8 billion hours of TV. People who watched more than six hours of TV were in the top 1 percent for TV viewing. Moreover, the experts said the result from their study also suggest that that too much TV may be as dangerous as smoking and lack of exercise in reducing life expectancy. “While we used Australian data, the effects in other industrialized and developing countries are likely to be comparable, given the typically large amounts of time spent watching TV and sim ilarities in disease patterns,” the researchers noted.
The researchers explained smoking can shorten of life expectancy by more than four years after the age of 50 which represents 11 minutes of life lost for every cigarette and that’s the same as half an hour of TV watching. The group said without TV, researchers estimated life expectancy for men would be 1.8 years longer and for women, 1.5 years longer. To avoid early death, the researchers advised TV lovers around the world to engage in a regular exercise and not spend too much time on television.