Beyond our minds, which becomes... mashed, television significantly damages our physical health. Of course, this is not so much related to the quality of the product, but to the hours spent sitting still in front of the screen.
According to a publication by the European Society of Cardiology, 1 in 3 adults in its member states do not meet the recommended amount of physical activity time. In fact, the rates are slightly larger in women and in high-income countries. As if the lack of physical activity were not enough, we also have a sedentary lifestyle, which is a separate health burden. In other words, even if we exercise for one hour every day, what we do for the other 23 hours is very important.
«Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of mortality worldwide. In Europe alone, there are more than 4 million deaths from cardiovascular disease every year, accounting for 49% of all deaths in women and 40% of all male deaths. In all the European member states of the European Society of Cardiology, an estimated 83.4 million people have cardiovascular problems,» says Associate Professor of Cardiology Konstantinos Tsioufis in an article in the Hellenic Cardiology Review.
How many hours of TV do you watch?;
11% of coronary heart disease cases could be prevented if we watched less than an hour of TV every day, claims a study published in the journal BMC Medicine, suggesting that there is a causal link between the two.
Scientists from the Epidemiology Unit of the Medical Research Council of the Universities of Cambridge and Hong Kong used data from more than 370,000 British people aged 40-69 years who participated in the UK Biobank study. The team carried out so-called polygenic risk assessment tests, calculating each person's genetic risk of developing coronary heart disease, based on 300 genetic variants known to affect their chances of developing it. Individuals with higher scores, were at greater risk.
After the experts took into account the above genetic risk of coronary heart disease, as well as factors such as body mass index, age, gender, diet, physical activity, they found that the longer the duration of TV viewing, the greater the risk of developing the disease.
People who attended more than four hours of television a day were at the greatest risk. In comparison, people with two to three hours of TV viewing per day had about 6% lower risk of the disease, while those who watched less than one hour of TV had 16% lower.
«Although we cannot say with certainty that watching TV increases the risk of coronary heart disease, our research suggests that limiting viewing time could be an easy change to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. Especially for people with a high genetic predisposition,» said Dr Youngwon Kim, assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong.
How TV and coronary heart disease are linked
How can the link between coronary heart disease and TV watching be explained? As the team says, we usually watch television after dinner (usually our most calorific meal), which leads to higher glucose and lipid levels. Also, people often snack more when watching TV compared to, for example, when surfing the internet. Finally, watching TV usually means long periods of inactivity, and even when we sit at the computer we may interrupt our activity to do something else.
