Oprah, youre giving me diabetes!
How watching TV can increase health risks
By Christy Brownfield
E-mail
Print- Share on Facebook
-
Seed Newsvine
- Text size:
The results of the study found that women can ward off obesity and type 2 diabetes, generally, by adopting a relatively active lifestyle, one that includes less than 10 hours of TV watching and 30 minutes or more per day of brisk walking.
Im watching Oprah, and I can feel the type 2 diabetes setting in. Well, maybe not, but a study suggests that too much Oprah actually could increase the risk of diabetes.
The context of the study �¢���� Television Watching and Other Sedentary Behaviors in Relation to Risk of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Women �¢���� focused on the impact of sedentary behaviors on obesity and type 2 diabetes in women.
TV watching was the specific sedentary behavior analyzed. For six years, over 50,000 women from 11 states with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 30 were studied to track their risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The results of the study found that women can ward off obesity and type 2 diabetes, generally, by adopting a relatively active lifestyle, one that includes less than 10 hours of TV watching and 30 minutes or more per day of brisk walking.
Maybe Im too simple to see the complexities of such a study, but it seems obvious to me that sitting around and watching TV all day without getting any exercise will eventually leave you fat and needing insulin shots.
Of course theres a happy medium of what constitutes too much TV and enough exercise, but I could have told the doctors who documented these findings that if I sit around all weekend watching TV, Im going to gain a couple pounds, as opposed to going to the gym for an hour one day and maybe walking around the mall another.
The study concludes that TV watching, compared to other sedentary activities like reading and driving in a car, results in much lower energy expenditure. In addition, TV watching promotes unhealthy eating patterns because of commercial advertisements and food cues appearing on TV.
Well, duh. Half the commercials on TV are of delicious-looking food. And sure, youll consume more while watching TV as opposed to reading or driving. Everyone knows its hard to read and eat because you cant keep the pages of the book down with one hand, and Im a woman, so clearly Im a bad driver, and eating while driving is not going to improve that any.
The way I see it, people make lifestyle choices and if they choose to eat while watching TV, they should be able to. Personally, I have no junk food in my apartment. If Im hungry while watching TV, I snack on frozen fruit.
Im grossly generalizing here, but often obesity is a result of laziness, as this study suggests. Im all for TV watching, especially more than 10 hours per week, just dont buy the extra large bag of Cheetos to keep you company.
The findings of this study make sense, but I think its just common sense. The more you eat and the less you move, the more weight you gain, and the better the chances of getting type 2 diabetes.


> Comments