Each hour spent vegging out in front of television increases the risk of early death by up to 18 percent, according to researchers from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne.
Even healthy people who exercise increase the chance of premature death from heart disease by 18 percent for each hour spent in front of television. They have a nine percent increased risk of cancer and an 11 percent increased risk of death from all causes claim the Australian and French team, whose finding are reported today in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association.
However it is not television per se that is the killer, but long periods of sitting doing nothing, said David Dunstan of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute who led the research. Sitting for long periods in front of a computer was also bad for the health, but the research focussed on television viewing as that is the most common sedentary activity carried out in the home apart from sleeping.
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