Binge Watching Is Associated With a 12 Percent Increased Risk of Inflammatory-Related Death
In Brief
- The Facts:An Australian study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise looked at more than 8,900 adults and found that each additional hour of TV viewing was associated with a 12% increased risk of inflammatory-related death.
- Reflect On:How much TV do you watch? How active is your lifestyle?
I’m sure that you hesitated before choosing to read this article, as most of us have been sucked into a binge watching
marathon on more than one occasion (myself included). While it may seem
like we’re buckling down to give ourselves a break, we may actually be
hurting ourselves far more than we realize. Sitting for prolonged periods of time has
proven to be harmful to our bodies, especially for adults over 50, and
when you match lounging with television, you create a deadly combo.
In an Australian study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise,
researchers examined more than 8,900 adults and found that each
additional hour of TV viewing was associated with a 12% increased risk
of inflammatory-related death, and those who spent more than four hours a
day watching TV were at an even higher risk. This includes diabetes,
respiratory, cognitive, and kidney diseases. (source)
In general, watching television has
proven to negatively impact mental health; it alters your brain, lowers
your attention span, and has the potential to make you more aggressive.
You don’t need to experience the “trance-like”
state television can put us in, but I’m sure you’ve witnessed it
before. This trance occurs roughly 30 seconds after you start watching
TV. Your brain begins by producing alpha waves, leading
to a light hypnotic state that makes the viewer less aware of their
environment and more open to subtle messages — aka programming.
In the 1990s. Dr. Teresa Belton, a visiting fellow at the University of East Anglia, studied the effects that television has on the imagination of 10-12 year old children, ultimately concluding that television negatively impacts their development: “The
ubiquity and ease of access to television and videos perhaps robs
today’s children of the need to pursue their own thoughts and devise
their own occupations, distracting them from inner processes and
constantly demanding responses to external agendas, and suggests that
this may have implications for the development of imaginative capacity.”
And these physical affects are becoming
increasingly apparent. Not only does it eventually lead to immobility as
you age, but with the risk of creating inflammation in the body, you
are susceptible to a host of diseases including kidney disease,
diabetes, asthma, Alzheimer’s, and even depression.
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Dr. Megan Grace
is the lead investigator at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in
Melbourne. Between 1999 and 2000, her team quizzed adult participants
about their viewing habits via a questionnaire. Again, this was before
we had access to popular streaming websites like Netflix. The
participants were separated into three groups based on their TV viewing
habits: less than two hours per day, greater than two hours but less
than four hours, and more than four hours.
“TV time was associated with increased
risk of inflammatory-related mortality. This is consistent with the
hypothesis that high TV viewing may be associated with a chronic
inflammatory state,” the authors wrote.
They followed up with their participants
12 years later and found, of 909 deaths, 130 were
inflammatory-related. Of the inflammatory-related deaths, 21 were from
diseases of the respiratory system and 18 of the nervous system, and
those who watched between two to four hours of TV a day showed a 54%
higher risk of inflammatory-related death. Additionally, people who
watched more than four hours of TV a day doubled their risk of dying
from an inflammatory disease compared to those who watched two hours.
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