Studies try to make believe that, as the rhythm of the heart accelerates and that we sweat like in the gym, watching sport on television is not easy, and therefore good for health … Sorry, nothing can replace real physical activity!
Watching others play sports in front of your TV is also playing sports … This is the misinterpretation of a 4-year-old study published in an Australian medical journal. It started from the observation that, in front of images of sports suspense, our heart rate accelerates, just like the frequency of breathing, which increases blood circulation and sweating. Which, for Australian researchers, is nothing more than the same consequences as physical exercise. These are the findings; it is the conclusion that is wrong. If you think about it, when you are stressed, there are the same manifestations that are due to the sympathetic nervous system – that’s its name – which kicks in the same way whether it is stress or sport. . But the comparison stops there. Indeed, you forget the work of the muscles which, even if you get up more often this year with the goals of the PSG or the France team, does not really represent a jogging… At the maximum 5 to 6 jumps and howls per hour . The rest of the time, you wallow on the sofa, biting your nails in anguish.
Australian researchers put needles on nine volunteers. They first showed footage of a still landscape, then a 22-minute video of a jogger. The changes recorded were small, but they corresponded to known physiological responses during exercise. As the volunteers were seated comfortably in armchairs, without any muscle activity, this shows that the responses were of mental and not physical origin.
TV makes you fat
For all those who thought they had found a good argument to avoid playing sports, it is a false hope! Nothing can replace getting up from your sofa and moving! American doctors focused on children aged four to seven who were already obese for 2 years, which is not uncommon in this country, as did their bad habit of sitting for hours in front of a television screen or playing games. videos. These charming toddlers did not take a back seat, since they spent at least 18 hours a week in front of their screens. A good number of French children should not be far from this in our country! So the study consisted of depriving them of TV and games, by suggesting that parents put a surveillance device with an electronic access code. All well controlled by electronic boxes.
And after two years, as we could imagine so much TV rhymes with lack of physical exercise, children deprived of a screen saw their body mass index, that is to say their obesity indicator. , fall in considerable proportions. Not by completely eliminating TV, but by going from almost 18 hours on average to around 5 hours per week. The others, those who continued to watch without constraint, also continued to gain weight.
The council of physicians
Today, doctors’ advice on children’s TV hours is not to behave like silly censors, but to give the child free choice of limited TV time. Go for 5 hours a week; when you want, but no more! And we control that with a small device that allocates hours but which closes the television for the rest of the week when the quota is reached!
A timer that is easy to find in specialized stores or on the internet …
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