According to researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Hong Kong, watching too much television is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, regardless of the individual’s genetic heritage.
- Researchers have established a link between the time spent watching television and the risk of coronary heart disease.
- The World Health Organization recommends reducing sedentary behaviors and replacing them with physical activity of any intensity to stay healthier.
To protect our arteries, a new study recommends not watching television for more than an hour a day!
Indeed, 11% of cases of coronary heart disease, one of the most important causes of premature death, could be avoided if people watched less than an hour of television per day.
This is because one of the main risk factors for coronary heart disease is sedentary behavior, which is sitting for long periods of time instead of doing physical activity.
Many reasons
According to the research team, several reasons may explain the link between television viewing and the risk of coronary heart disease: television tends to be watched in the evening after dinner, which is generally the most caloric meal, which which leads to higher levels of glucose and lipids, such as cholesterol, in the blood.
Also, people often snack more when watching TV than when surfing the web, for example. Finally, time spent in front of the television tends to be prolonged, while people who use their computer are more likely to interrupt their activity.
500,000 adults
To conduct their work, the researchers looked at data from more than 500,000 adults followed prospectively for about 12 years.
It appears that people who watched television for more than four hours a day were the most exposed to the disease, regardless of their polygenic risk score. Polygenic risk is the genetic risk of developing coronary heart disease based on 300 genetic variants known to influence the chances of developing the disease.
Compared to these people, people who watched TV for two to three hours a day had a 6% lower relative rate of developing the disease, while those who watched TV for less than an hour had a 16% relative rate. inferior. These associations were independent of genetic susceptibility and other known risk factors.
Leisure time spent using a computer did not appear to influence disease risk.
Main causes of death
According to British Heart Foundation, coronary heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the UK, responsible for around 64,000 deaths each year. In the UK, one in eight men and one in 15 women die from this disease. People with coronary heart disease are twice as likely to suffer a stroke.
In France, according to Public Health Francecardiovascular disease and stroke have long been the leading cause of death and remain the leading cause of death in women.
Aside from heredity, gender and age, these diseases all share a number of individual risk factors, most of which are modifiable.
Indeed, many of these deaths could be prevented by acting on some of the risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. There are also other factors associated with lifestyle such as smoking, obesity, poor diet, excessive alcohol consumption and physical inactivity, as this study points out.
