Are you one of the 91% of people who binge-watched a television show in the past year? If so, have you put aside old grudges and finalized your will? Well, a new study from the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain shows that you should maybe get started on that.
According to a new study, people who watch three or more hours of television a day are twice as likely to die in the next few years ("twice as likely...next few years" you repeat over and over while it all goes black) as those who watch little or no television.
According to NBCNews, Dr. Martinez-Gonzalez of the University of Navarra and her colleagues used an ongoing study of 13,284 people with an average age of 37. The participants were followed for eight years, and spent an average of two hours a day on the computer and an hour a day driving. Dr. Martinez-Gonzalez wrote about the study in the Journal of the American Heart Association:
"Participants reporting three or more hours a day of television viewing had a twofold higher risk of mortality than those reporting less than one hour a day."
NBCNews details the ways in which these binge-watchers crumbled to dust:
For every two extra hours of watching TV over and above one hour a day, the volunteers were 44 percent more likely to die from heart disease or stroke, 21 percent more likely to die of cancer and 55 percent more likely to die from something else, and that's taking in account their age, sex, whether they smoked, whether they were obese and whether they ate a healthy, Mediterranean diet.
Holy crap!
This fits in with other recent research that shows for every two hours spent sitting in front of the computer or television, the average American raises his or her risk of colon cancer by 8 percent, of endometrial cancer by 10 percent and of lung cancer by 6 percent.
What the hell! Why?!
Why would that be? "No one yet knows the answer, but if you're the type of person who has a lot of time but spends it sitting in front of the television, you also have other sedentary behaviors, like not going outside too much or engaging in physical activity," said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at New York University who was not involved in the study.
Goldberg went on to say, "Compared to driving a car or doing work on a computer, television is a very passive activity." Martinez-Gonzalez thought that it may be because people ate more junk food while binge-watching than they normally would, but found that, even when that element was taken into consideration, "TV watching seemed especially deadly."
Rest in peace?
