A recent study conducted by a group of Australian researchers puts people who spend prolonged hours sitting before their TV sets on high alert.The message from them is that every hour spent in front of the television per day brings with it an 11 percent greater risk of premature death from all causes, an 18 percent greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a 9 percent increased risk of cancer death. The experiment involved 8,800 people .The interesting fact is that this is applicable both to obese as well as healthy individuals without taking into consideration common cardiovascular disease risk factors, including smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, unhealthy diet, excessive waist circumference, and leisure-time exercises. Although the study mainly focused on the adverse effects of prolonged television viewing ,the findings of the study apply to a much broader spectrum of people mainly those who led a sedentary lifestyle or are involved in jobs that demand sitting in front of computers and office desks for long periods of time. David Dunstan, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and professor and Head of the Physical Activity Laboratory in the Division of Metabolism and Obesity at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia is of the opinion that the human body is naturally designed to carry out physical activities but recent lifestyle changes has transformed most strenuous work into ones that can be accomplished simply be sitting in one place. Sitting for prolonged periods of time can have a lot of unhealthy side effects especially on the blood sugar and fat. .
Over a period of six years starting from 2000 up to 2006, 3,846 men and 4,954 women age 25 were considered for the study. People with a history of CVD were excluded. Participants had to take oral glucose-tolerance test and their blood glucose and cholesterol were monitored regularly. According to their television viewing habit they were categorized into three groups-those that watched TV less than 2 hours, those who viewed between 2 to 4 hours and lastly people who saw more than 4 hours of television per day. Overall at the end of the six year period of study a total of 284 deaths were reported 87 of which were due to CVD and 125 of them because of cancer. The high death rate due to CVD shows a direct impact of sedentary life such as prolonged TV viewing on health. The message to take home is that too much sitting is bad for health.
