HEALTH HAZARDS OF WATCHING TELEVISION FOR TOO LONG

Health Dangers of watching television for long.

Adults who watch TV three hours or more a day may double their risk of premature death from any cause. Researchers suggest adults should consider getting regular exercise, avoiding long sedentary periods and reducing TV viewing to one to two hours a day.

Adults who watch TV for three hours or more each day may double their risk of premature death compared to those who watch less, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

 “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 and professor and chair of the Department of Public Health at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. “Our findings are consistent with a range of previous studies where time spent watching television was linked to mortality.”

 “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.”

What can be your favourite pastime when you think of unwinding? What do you do when you are alone at home? You spend hours in front of your television set.

Right? And you think that the TV shows are giving you quality time and a healthy company!

In reality, television viewing is always considered to be bad for your health. You cannot accept this fact readily, but watching TV for a long time can put your health at risk. It is accepted that you can gain a lot of knowledge from a few television shows, but still the disadvantages outweigh these benefits with a big margin! TV serves as a medium of entertainment and education for all, but it is associated with a number of physical and mental health problems such as:

1. Increase in the risk of heart diseases

Based on the analysis of the data collected over a period of six years from 8,800 Australian men and women (over age 25 with no history of heart disease), researchers found that every hour of TV watching increased a person's risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 18 per cent, and increased the risk of death from cancer by 9 per cent.

This means that people who watched more than four hours of TV had an 80 per cent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease over the 6-year time period as compared to people who watched two hours or less each day. The problem normally crops up from a sedentary lifestyle which television offers to you.

According to researchers, the human body evolved to move, not sit still for extended periods of time. So sitting in front of a TV or a computer screen for too long poses serious risks to health, and to life.

2. Disruption of sleep

The light emitted from the television can prove to be too stimulating to our systems. This can reduce the levels of the brain hormone melatonin, which usually increase in the evening as light levels fall. This may effect the body's natural rhythm, keeping you awake longer and results in irregular sleep and extreme fatigue. Reduced levels of melatonin have also been linked to early puberty in girls.

3. Increase in the risk of diabetes

When it comes to controlling diabetes, TV watching habit can be included as the risk factor. A 2003 study of women published in the Journal of the American Medical

Association suggests that the risk of diabetes increases by 14 per cent for every two hours of television viewing in a day.

Another study conducted in the same year and published in the journal lipids found that men who watched more than 40 hours of TV per week were three times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than men who watched TV less than one hour weekly.

According to researchers, all this increased risk cannot be explained by the increased snacking and reduced activity linked with sitting in front of the television.

4. Increase in the risk of obesity

Prolonged watching of television relates to an absence of muscle movement. If your muscles stay inactive for too long, it can disrupt your metabolism leading to weight gain.

Additionally, when you are watching TV, you tend to eat more and eat unhealthy foods due to advertising and other food cues on TV. A study compared the television viewing habits of more than 50,000 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study from 1992 to

1998, and found that weight gain increased as TV watching increased.

For each two-hour increase in television watching per day, there was a 23 per cent rise in obesity.

5. Development of attention deficit disorder

In the 1970s, a Professor named Werner Halperin suggested that the rapid changes of sounds and images on TV may affect the neurological system of a young child and can cause attention problems. Also, a study conducted by researchers at the University of Washington Child Health Institute found that 3-year- old child who watches two hours of TV per day is 20 per cent more likely to have attention problems at age 7 than a child who watches no television.

6. Increase in the risk of asthma

In the UK, a research studied the TV viewing habits of more than 3,000 children ranging in age from infants to 11 years.

The results of the study established that children who spent two hours or more watching television per day had twice the risk of suffering from asthma.

8. Negative effect on the mental development

Watching TV for a prolonged period of time has a negative effect on the intellectual development of children. The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages TV viewing for kids under two and recommends no more than two hours a day for older kids.

Prolonged watching of TV can also lead to a deterioration of the mental processing power in case of older people.

9. Increase in the eye strain

Watching too much television is bad for your eyes, especially when watching television in a dark room. Focusing your eyes too long on any one object can strain your eyes.