Each hour of TV viewing reduces life span by 22mins

Washington: A study has found that watching TV might be as bad for your health as smoking or obesity, as each hour of TV viewing after the age of 25 may cut your life span by almost 22 minutes.

“If our estimates are correct, then TV viewing is in the same league as smoking and obesity,” ABC Science quoted Dr Lennert Veerman, from the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, as saying. An Australian study by Professor David Dunstan of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, and colleagues, last year found that if someone watches TV for an hour everyday, he/she is led to an 8 percent higher risk of premature death, especially from cardiovascular diseases. “We’ve taken that study and translated it into what it means for life expectancy in Australia given how much TV we view,” said Veerman. “Given that Australians watch on average around two hours of TV a day, that would reduce life expectancy at birth by 1.8 years for men and about 1.5 years for women,” he added. Veerman also revealed that the small proportion of people who watch six hours of television a day might end up reducing their lifespan by 4.8 years. The reports will be published in British Journal of Sports Medicine today. ANI