Science says it is a good idea to put the remote down to do something more productive, as it directly affects how a person ages.
There is a reason why the phrase ‘couch potato’ has a negative connotation to it. It is used to signify an unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle, where one is simply wasting time sitting on the couch and surfing television channels. At a time when there is a huge push on finding a balance in life that involves rest and recuperation, along with healthy eating and exercising, television-viewing activities, especially for long hours, is considered to be detrimental for health. And if you needed another solid, science-backed reason for putting the remote down to do something more productive, a new study has found that it is a good idea to trade TV viewing for physical activities, as it directly affects how a person ages.
Senior study author Dr Molin Wang — associate professor of medicine in the department of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health — was quoted as saying in a CNN report, “Our take-home message is that replacing TV time with light physical activity, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and sleep (for participants with inadequate sleep) is beneficial to healthy aging.”
For the study published earlier this week in JAMA Network Open journal, researchers analysed data from the ‘Nurses’ Health Study’; it comprised more than 45,000 people aged 50 years or more in 1992, who were ‘free of chronic disease’. For 20 years, researchers purportedly followed up with the participants to find out how much time they had spent sitting at work, at home, and watching television. The time they spent standing or walking at home and at work was also analysed to find out about how it had impacted their aging.
The study defined healthy aging to be ‘living to at least 70 years’ and ‘maintaining at least four healthy domains’ — like having no major ‘chronic disease’ and no ‘impairment in subjective memory, physical health and mental health’.
What The Researchers Found
Researchers apparently found that when a person spent additional two hours sitting down to watch TV, they had a 12 per cent ‘decrease’ in the chance to age in a healthy manner, as opposed to adding two hours of ‘light physical activity‘ at work, and witnessing a 6 per cent ‘increase’ in the ‘odds of healthy aging’.
The researchers concluded that since human beings are designed to stay physically active, it is wise to swap television-viewing hours (that warrants sitting long hours and doing absolutely nothing) with exercising, or catching up on lost sleep, which have immense health benefits and can promote healthy and happy aging.
Sedentary Lifestyle
Sedentary lifestyle is known to cause many health issues, including cardiovascular problems and early death. For the elderly population, it exposes them to risks of falls and severe injuries, muscle and bone pains and mental health disorders.
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