Too much World Cup TV could be a deadly own goal
24 June, 2010
New research from the Medical Research Council (MRC) has provided fresh insights into the lifestyle factors contributing to heart disease, which causes 193,000 deaths a year and is responsible for a third of the UK’s deaths.
For almost a decade, researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit followed 13,197 middle-aged, healthy men and women in the EPIC-Norfolk study and found that every hour a day spent in front of the television multiplied their risk of death from heart disease by a factor of 7%, even after accounting for other well-known risk factors like lack of exercise, smoking, obesity and poor diet.
Study participants with a history of related diseases such as strokes and heart attacks were excluded from the study, and researchers measured television viewing time from questionnaires completed by participants.
Over the 10 year study, 373 of the 13,197 participants (1 in 35) died from heart disease. Taking account of all the variables, the amount of time spent watching television was a significant marker of their likelihood of death from heart disease. Scientists estimated that 8% of these deaths, 30 people, might have been avoided if TV viewing times had been reduced from the UK average of four hours a day to just one hour.
With TV taking pride of place in our living rooms during the World Cup Dr Katrien Wijndaele co-author of the study from the MRC warned:
“Our bodies are not designed to sit for long periods and we should be aware that, as we put in the TV-hours watching the World Cup, our risk of heart disease is probably increasing. It might seem obvious that watching TV is linked to heart disease but it’s really crucial that we look closely at how our lifestyles affect our health in order to develop more effective ways of improving the health of the nation. This type of research is a crucial part of informing public health advice.
“We need further research to see if other sedentary activities, like sitting behind a computer or in the car, generate the same results. However, we chose to focus on TV as it’s the most widespread sedentary leisure activity where people have an active choice to dramatically change their behaviour.”
Dr Ulf Ekelund, co- author of the study from the Medical Research Council said:
“If someone’s normal risk of death by heart disease (taking into account other variables like lifestyle, gender and age) is 10%, then just one hour a day of watching TV increases this risk by a factor of seven percent to 10.7% - a small but significant rise. So if my normal risk of dying by heart disease was 10% and I also watched four hours of television a day (the national average) my risk would jump to 13%.
“Substituting watching TV and sitting down for exercise such as brisk walking is the ultimate goal, but watching a couple of hours less TV a night and being physically active for at least 30 minutes a day can substantially reduce our risk of heart disease.
“In the future, doctors could use the number of hours spent in front of the TV as part of their assessment of our overall risk of heart disease.”
The study forms part of the MRC’s ongoing commitment to tackling lifestyles affecting health and was carried out in collaboration with the EPIC-Norfolk study and the Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge. It is published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
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Editors Notes:
1. Participants with history of diseases such as stroke, myocardial infarction and cancer were excluded from the study sample. Participants who died within the first 2 years of follow-up were also excluded.
2. The risk is calculated using a formula that enables researchers to estimate the impact of a single factor, behaviour or lifestyle on death, while taking into account other variable factors such as sex, age, education level, smoking, alcohol consumption, medication use, energy intake, BMI, physical activity and a family history of disease.
3. The study used a sample of middle-aged men and women, therefore is not necessarily representative of the entire UK population, and on this basis, the number of lives saved can only be predicted for a like for like population – white, men and women aged 45-79 years.
4. For almost 100 years the Medical Research Council has improved the health of people in the UK and around the world by supporting the highest quality science. The MRC invests in world-class scientists. It has produced 29 Nobel Prize winners and sustains a flourishing environment for internationally recognised research. The MRC focuses on making an impact and provides the financial muscle and scientific expertise behind medical breakthroughs, including one of the first antibiotics penicillin, the structure of DNA and the lethal link between smoking and cancer. Today MRC funded scientists tackle research into the major health challenges of the 21st century. www.mrc.ac.uk.
