TV Watching Raises Risk of Diabetes, Heart Disease

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TUESDAY, June 14, 2011 (Health.com) — No one ever claimed that watching TV was healthy, but doctors are only now discovering just how bad it can be. Evidence from a spate of recent studies suggests that the more TV you watch, the more likely you are to develop a host of health problems and to die at an earlier age.

In a new analysis published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers combined data from eight such studies and found that for every additional two hours people spend glued to the tube on a typical day, their risk of developing type 2 diabetes increases by 20% and their risk of heart disease increases by 15%.

And for every additional three hours the study participants spent in front of the TV, their risk of dying from any cause during the respective studies jumped 13%, on average.

“When put together, the findings are remarkably consistent across different studies and different populations,” says Frank Hu, M.D., a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, who coauthored the analysis.

The increased risk of disease tied to TV watching “is similar to what you see with high cholesterol or blood pressure or smoking,” says Stephen Kopecky, MD, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved in the research. The new analysis, he adds, “elevates the importance of the sedentary lifestyle” as a risk factor.

“[TV watching] is not a good behavior for you no matter where you are in life, whether you’re young or old,” Kopecky says.

Extended TV watching has reached epidemic proportions, especially in the U.S. Around the world, people spend more time engaged in this pastime than in any other activity except working and sleeping, but by one estimate the average American spends no fewer than five hours a day in front of the TV—more than Europeans and Australians.

“That’s a lot,” Hu says.

The connection between TV and disease isn’t a mystery. TV watching eats up leisure time that could be spent walking, exercising, or even just moving around, and it has also been linked to unhealthy diets, including consuming too much sugar, soda, processed food, and snacks—foods, perhaps not coincidentally, that are often found in television commercials.