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Uh-oh. Bad news! I would say that maybe you should sit down before you read this blurb from the New York Times health blog but, ahhh, hahahaa, maybe you should never sit down again? Throw your chair in the garbage. Throw it in the garbage, do a few jumping jacks, and then come back and read this:
Using complex actuarial tables and adjusting for smoking, waist circumference, dietary quality, exercise habits and other variables, the scientists were next able to isolate the specific effect that the hours of sitting seemed to be having on people’s life spans.
And the findings were sobering: Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.
By comparison, smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes, the authors said.
Looking more broadly, they concluded that an adult who spends an average of six hours a day watching TV over the course of a lifetime can expect to live 4.8 years fewer than a person who does not watch TV.
NOOOOOOO! But what if television is the only thing we try to sustain our life FOR?! What if watching a combined, like, ten or whatever hours of Gallery Girls is the reason why we’d want those last few hours with our family on our death bed? To TALK ABOUT THE EPISODES? I guess, in the very least, this discovery brings with it a question: Which television shows are you willing to die for? Gossip Girl? The Walking Dead, if Gabe decides to recap it? Breaking Bad? A second full viewing of The Wire? WHICH IS IT, BOYS, TIME’S RUNNING OUT!
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I only watch TV in bed.
Does this only apply to cable, or does Netflix streaming count too?
Were all those episodes of Fraiser worth it?
Oh man, time will tell. I can’t really imagine my life without having seen the episode where Roz thinks Niles and Daphne want to have a threesome with her.
thanks to DVR, a 1 hour show gets reduced to about 45 minutes when fast forwarding through commercials and therefore adding back in that extra 20 minutes of life I’m losing….it all evens back out!
According to these numbers I think I might already be dead.
Hipsters shall inherit the earth.
This is some bullshit.
I love these rigorous studies that presuppose people only sit when they watch TV. Is that 21 minutes per hour of sitting, or per hour of sitting AFTER the 8+ hours we all spend sitting in front of a screen at work? Is sitting while watching TV more harmful than sitting while doing other activities? What if we work standing up, are we then allowed 8 hours of free TV watching once we get home?
You don’t know this, but back in MY day we had to run on a treadmill to power the old-fashioned radio and hear the adventures of Annie after dinner.
True story: we were too poor to afford a TV until I was like 13, so when we were little my brothers and I got a tape player that was made to look like an old timey radio from a yard sale and we would borrow books on tape from the library and listen to them like those old radio shows. We would also run around the living room a lot while listening because we were kids and that’s what kids do. So your story is kind of correct.
Yeah, they’re always based on the weird assumption that you’re constantly doing cardio and anything sedentary is distracting from that. It’s like when people talk about how they “could have made $40″ if they had been at work rather than seeing a movie or sleeping or whatever.
Everything in life is not an opportunity cost, because you can’t feasibly be constantly working and exercising and only take breaks when something is more tangibly valuable.
If you’re looking to cut down, just start watching shows at Season 4. Best season anyway, usually.
Frankly, I’m more concerned about what effects my favorite hobby of punching bears might have on my health.
would die for:
(seriously, how is there not more about this show on videogum?!?! can we get someone to do a weekly recap once the new season starts?! CAN I DO A WEEKLY RECAP?!)
They *are* accepting post submissions! But all recaps must include screencaps with funny speech bubbles, as is tradition.
I bet if they didn’t want to do it here, the folks over at MOBFD would post them!
YES PLEASE
OH SNAP I HAVE 4 1/2 MORE MONTHS TO WATCH ALL THIS TV BEFORE IT STARTS TAKING YEARS OFF MY LIFE!!!!! I need to get a jump on my Netlix Queue!
As a molecular biologist, I find correlative studies like this very upsetting. WHY DON’T YOU POSIT AN ACTUAL MECHANISM, YOU LAZY HEALTH SCIENTISTS!?
Welcome to the last scene in my own, personal M. Night Shyamalan movie when half way through reading the article, I pause dramatically and realize I’m a ghost.
WORTH IT!!!
“If I keep watching this will I be immortal? Because if I’m still going to die one day then off this goes!” – The very useful Delahaye Test. http://videogum.com/583412/if-i-ever-watched-an-episode-of-dr-phil-it-would-be-this-one/tv/