Watching television may do more than just rot your brain. New research shows it could kill you, the Daily Mail reported.
Researchers from the Epidemiology Unit of the Medical Research Council in the U.K. conducted a study of 13,197 middle-aged, healthy men and women. They found that the risk of dying from heart disease increased 7 percent for every hour spent watching TV.
During the nearly 10 year study, 373 of the participants, all from Norfolk, England, died of heart disease.
The average amount of time spent watching television in the U.K. is about four hours a day, which increases the risk of heart disease by 28 percent, according to the study.
The study suggests that lifestyle changes could reduce the number of heart disease cases, which result in 193,000 deaths each year. Eight percent of deaths related to heart disease could have been avoided if people reduced the amount of television they watched from four hours to one, scientists estimated.
“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,” Dr. Katrien Wijndaele, study co-author, said.
The study’s findings were published in the International Journal of Epidemiology Thursday.
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