To Your Health
July, 2014 (Vol. 08, Issue 07) |
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Is Your TV Killing You?
By Editorial Staff
OK, so we're not questioning the safety of the actual television itself, although these days, TVs are so high-tech that one wonders if any of the features could be putting your health at risk.
And yes, we do recognize that the TV can be unsafe when used improperly; e.g., thrown through a window in a moment of anger or unceremoniously dropped during a moving-day fiasco. No, we're talking about television viewing time and a recent study that suggests death may be the ultimate consequence of spending too much time in front of the boob tube.
In the study, adults who watched three or more hours of television per day had approximately double the risk of early death from any cause compared to adults who watched less than one hour daily. What's more, every two-hour increment of TV viewing was associated with a 40 percent increased risk of death compared to those who watched less than an hour.
It's important to note that the researchers took a variety of other health variables into account that also could have contributed to death, including diet, age, weight, smoking status and physical activity, to be certain their findings were justified. And their results support several previous investigations that yielded similar results: Too much TV can kill you – literally.
