Too much television may shorten your life

Watching too much television could shorten your life, a study suggests. Research carried out in Australia, and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, showed that every hour of TV watched after the age of 25 may shorten lifespan by 22 minutes.
According to one of the report's authors, Dr Lennert Veerman, from the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland, it puts long hours spent in front of the box "in the same ballpark as smoking and obesity". "While smoking rates are declining, watching TV is not, which has implications at a population level," he said.
Last year, another Australian study found an hour of TV a day led to an 8% increase in the risk of premature death. Australians watch about two hours of TV a day. As a result their life expectancy at birth is reduced by 1.8 years for men and 1.5 years for women, according to the study.
Britons watch more than three hours of TV a day, according to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board. Too much sitting, as distinct from too little exercise, is associated with higher mortality risk, particularly from cardiovascular disease. The report also showed that a person who watches an average of six hours of TV a day would live on average 4.8 years less than someone who watches none.