Watching TV Is Causing Us To Die Young!
Let’s be honest with ourselves. How many hours do you and your family spend watching TV each day? Each week? It’s probably too much.
Kami, haven’t you heard the common phrase ‘moderation in all things’!?!? Frequently. BUT according to studies, the American public hasn’t figured out how to moderately watch TV.
Children ages 2 to 11 watch an average of 24 hours of TV a week or 3.5 hours a day. Teens ages 12 to 17 watch 22 hours a week. Ages 18 to 24 watch 25 hours weekly and after that it rises steadily until people over 65 average 48 hours a week, or nearly seven hours a day. This is ONLY TV watching. This doesn’t include hours spent on video games, computers, or smart devices. Scary.
The Journal of the American Medical Association combined data from eight studies and found that for every two hours people spend watching TV a 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.
Watching TV may cause you to die young!
Spending hours on our derrieres watching TV interferes and decreases desire to do other healthy activities such as physical exercise, enjoying the outdoors, cooking healthy meals, reading, spending quality time with loved ones, and getting the appropriate amount of sleep.
Sedentary activities AKA watching TV is a major contributor to our obesity epidemic. Two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese and about a quarter of 2-5 year olds and one-third of school-age children (including adolescents) are overweight or obese in the U.S.! If we’re not movin’, we ain’t grovin’…. which means no calories are being burned. Minimal activity or completely omitting exercise has very poor outcomes such as obesity (the list goes on and on of all the health hazards), depression, poor self image, weakness, and earlier mortality.
Spending long hours glued to the tube causes people to go to bed later or interferes with quality of sleep resulting in sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation causes an increase in hunger, allows more time to eat, and decreases desire to participate in physical activity during the day. Not only does sleep loss appear to stimulate appetite. It also stimulates cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.
As if that isn’t horrible enough, skipping out on sleep can cause much more serious outcomes. Lack of sleep causes impaired alertness contributing to accidents, leads to heart disease and Type II Diabetes, causes weight gain, and can even kill your sex drive! Decrease your TV time and increase those ZZZs!
There are numerous of studies correlating watching lots of TV with poor health outcomes. Let’s not make anymore excuses and cut down on our TV time and finally apply ‘moderation in all things’.
It’s time to make a change and commit to ourselves and families to decrease our TV time. Need help to make changes? Don’t forget to check out my eBooks!
What are some other quality, enjoyable things you can do with your family instead of watching TV?
