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Health Warning: Watching TV Can Kill You

Written by Robin Hague

Television causes heart diseases, strokes, cancer and terminal boredom

In his 1983 splatter-fest Videodrome, director David Cronenburg depicted a time when shadowy organisations would use violent TV broadcasts to eliminate so-called low-lifes. Now, a major new study from Australian researchers warns the very act of watching television can lead to terminal diseases.

The peer-reviewed report, from the Melbourne-based Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, is published in the latest issue of the American Heart Association’s journal, the aptly named Circulation and has been widely reported in mainstream media around the world.

The Australian researchers spent six years tracking 8,800 people, so it is a study rich in serious data. At essence the research shows of those who watch TV for more than four hours a day, a chilling 46%, were more like to die of any cause and a full 80% were more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than people who watch less than two hours of TV a day.

Interpreted another way, each hour spent in front of the television increases the risk of death from any cause by 11%. Each hour watched raises the risk of dying from heart-disease by 18% and from cancer by 9%.

The scientists followed 4,954 women and 3,846 men aged 25 and older. They were identified as watching up to two hours a day, between two and four, or more than four hours a day.

People with a history of cardiovascular disease were excluded from the study, which found that 284 of the participants died, 87 from cardiovascular disease and 125 from cancer.

In some cheer for couch potatoes, even those who exercise regularly are not protected from the health risks associated with watching TV, for it is the very act of sitting in front of the tube that breeds the danger. Those studied reported getting between 30 and 45 minutes exercise a day.

It actually doesn’t even matter if a viewer is obese. A healthy person, of normal body weight is still at risk. “Even if someone has a healthy body weight, sitting for long periods of time still has an unhealthy influence on their blood sugar and blood fats,” said lead researcher Professor David Dunstan.

It is in this sedentary behaviour that lies the danger. “A lot of the normal activities of daily living that involved standing up and moving the muscles in the body have been converted to sitting, “ said Professor Dunstan.

“Technological, social and economic changes mean people don’t move their muscles as much as they used to [and] consequently the levels of energy expenditure as people go about their lives continues to shrink.

“For many people, they simply shift from one chair to another, from the car to the office to the chair in front of the television. When we’re in that sitting posture, we’re not using our muscles and we know from extensive evidence that muscle contractions are important for the body’s regulatory processes.”

The Australian study puts a new focus on the viewing figures we reported last November, with TV viewing at an all time high. In the UK, weekly figures (October 26-November 01) from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), showed UK viewers watching just over 28 hours of television a week, four hours a day.

In the US, the latest Nielsen figures, for the 2008-2009 season, showed Americans spent an average 4 hours and 49 minutes a day watching television, a whopping 20 percent more than ten years ago.

It’s even worse if you consider this behaviour starting at an early age. Nielsen reports American children aged between 2 and 5 now spend more than 32 hours a week on average in front of a TV screen, with 6 to 11 year olds sat in front of the TV for more than that critical four hours a day.

In the Wall Street Journal, Marc Hamilton, a scientist at Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Baton Rouge, is quoted: “if you’re not up on your feet moving around, you’re sedentary”.

He says after a few hours of inactivity, an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase shuts down. This enzyme pulls fat from the blood, so instead of fat being burned in muscle tissue, TV watching, and other sedentary activity, causes the fat to accumulate in the blood stream, where it can damage arteries and lead to cardiovascular disease.

After just one day of inactivity, Dr Hamilton warns levels of HDL, the so-called “good cholesterol,” which transports the bad LDL cholesterol out of the blood stream, can fall by as much as 20%.

What to do? Right now, the Australia study is the first to link prolonged television watching with increased risks of disease and death. However, it ties in with other research into the effects of sedentary lifestyles on human health.

Cigarettes, alcohol and even flying in aircraft now carry warnings. Most airlines currently supply demonstrations of simple exercises by which passengers can ward-off the threat of Deep Vein Thrombosis, a potentially dangerous condition caused by prolonged immobility.

There might come a time soon when TV channels either volunteer, or are instructed to issue health warnings during their programmes, counselling viewers to get up out of their seats and walk around a bit.

Simply getting up to change channels on the TV set itself can help, but in this day and age, complex sets, PVRs and set-top boxes are pretty well impossible to operate without a remote control.

Standing up during TV watching is recommended, so content producers might involve themselves. Despite their best efforts, their often crushingly boring programmes still induce mass couch-sitting. Randomised insults directed at the potential fatness, laziness or general good-for-nothingness of their audiences might rouse the odd viewer into a much needed and healthy bout of indignant and upright fist-shaking.

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