In a shocking revelation, it has come to light that excessive TV viewing can be as dangerous as smoking and obesity. Though sedentary life has always been categorized for being anti-health, viewing TV, DVDs and videos for every single hour could reduce life expectancy by almost 22 minutes.

A team of researchers from the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland in Brisbane examined information from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study in addition to British population and death rate data in order to ascertain the lifetime risk from television viewing.

The research, involving 11,000 people over the age of 25, has warned against the health concerns attached with every hour of watching TV.

However, the authors stated: “While we used Australian data, the effects in other industrialised and developing countries are likely to be comparable, given the typically large amounts of time spent watching TV and similarities in disease patterns.’ In the UK, the average amount of time spent watching TV is four hours a day compared with five hours in the United States”.

Referring to the findings of the study, Professor Dame Sally Davies claimed that a significant improvement in the lifestyle is a must to address the attached heath concerns.