Plonking yourself on the sofa to watch TV is one way to relax, but doing it too often can take years off your life. Australian researchers generated life-expectancy tables based on information from the Bureau of Statistics and a study of the TV viewing habits of 11,000 people.
They found that those who watch six hours of TV a day live an average of 4.8 years less than those who don’t watch any TV. Every hour of TV watched after the age of 25 is associated with a 22-minute reduction in life expectancy.
The beneficial effects of not sitting in front of the TV continue into old age. A study of 70 to 82-year-olds in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed those who moved more were up to 69% less likely to die within the study period.
