Television watching leads of lack of exercise and overweight, obesity

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A pedometer study shows watching television can deprive people of health exercise
When you're slumped in front of the television, couch potato style, you're getting overweight through lack of exercise - right? It sounds obvious but, strange to say, no-one has actually proven that this before. Now researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute show what happened when they issued a group of nearly television watching lower income residents of Boston with pedometers.

The amount of television watched ranged from zero to nearly 15 hours a day, with an average of 3.6 hours. Taking 10,000 steps a day can improve your health and help with overweight and obesity. So the researchers used this as a goal, finding that each hour spent in front of the television reduced the steps taken by 144 - so for an average day's viewing the steps went down by 520. The odds of walking the 10,000 was 47 per cent less for the average viewer than for the non-viewer, according to pedometer readings. The researchers say that while it's obvious that lack of exercise will lead to overweight and obesity, telling people not to watch television would not work. Instead, more exploration of why people prefer television to exercise needs to be done. Exercise needs to look like an attractive alternative - perhaps by making parks and walkways safer and sport facilities more accessible.

Source
American Journal of Public Health online 27th July 2006

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