Television has become an unavoidable part of modern culture. Almost every one likes to watch television as it is very entertaining. Watching TV helps us to know what things are happening around the world and develop learning skills of children as many educational programmes are coming on TV. But it has many effects on health if you watch for long time.

As per new study done by Harvard researchers, watching television for a long time daily increase the risk of diabetes, heart disease and premature death from any cause. The study was recently published in Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that watching TV for just 2 hours a day increase the risk of developing Type II diabetes by 20%, heart disease by 15% and premature death from any cause by 13%.

Harvard researchers conducted “meta-analysis” in which they reviewed 8 large studies from the Europe, United States, and Australia which was done between 1970 and 2011 and then concluded findings. Based on the findings the researchers calculated that by reducing the time of TV by 2 hours daily among 100,000, almost 176 new cases of Type II diabetes, 38 cases of heart disease, and104 premature deaths could be prevented every year.

As per the analysis, the relationship between excessive TV watching and these diseases & early death, is linear and substantial. The more time a person spend to watch TV the higher their risk for the effects of television on health. Americans spend about 5 hours in watching TV while Australians and Europeans spend about 4 hours in a day. To decrease the risk of diabetes, heart disease and premature death people should cut their time of watching TV.

People should also increase their level of physical activity and decrease the sedentary behaviors. The person who does exercises but watch TV for long time has high risk of developing disease. Watching TV for a long time promotes unhealthy activity, make people to eat unhealthy food and exercise less. So people become obese and obesity is linked with many health problems. As per another study, obese kids who watch food commercials tend to double their food consumption.