Too much TV tied to premature death

“We did this study because there were some previous reports of a higher mortality among subjects with a higher TV viewing time, but they had been done in elderly people in other countries,” Dr. Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez told Reuters Health in an email. “We were interested in knowing whether or not this association also was present in younger subjects,” said Martinez-Gonzalez, a researcher with the Department of Public Health at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, who is the study’s senior author. His team’s results are in line with past studies that found a 13 percent higher risk of death for each additional two hours per day of television-watching time, and a sharper risk increase when daily TV time went above three hours, he said. They wanted to examine any associations between three types of sedentary behavior and risk of death from any cause.