Is Your Homeland Addiction Taking Years off Your Life Expectancy?

Are you a telly addict? If so, you might want to read the following because according to a new study, too much television could actually reduce your lifespan by five whole years!

Needless to say, here in the Her.ie offices we took this news particularly hard (we’re all currently glued to Homeland and the latest series of Master Chef Ireland. We’re also still recovering from the Great British Bake Off).

According to researchers from Australia, staring at your tellybox for a prolonged period of time can have a devastating effect on your overall life expectancy. Until now, the impact that television has on life expectancy has not been accurately measured but Australian researchers believe they’ve found enough evidence to suggest that it can knock a whopping five years off your overall expectancy.

Researchers analysed the data of 11,000 people aged 25 and older who were taking part in a lifestyle study. The results, which were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, revealed that people who watch TV for an average of 6 hours a day lived almost five years less than people who didn’t watch television on a regular basis.

Even more worryingly, the researchers also discovered that, on average, every single hour of television watched by people over the age of 25 reduced their life expectancy by almost 22 minutes. So basically watching one episode of Gossip Girl could reduce your lifespan by 44 minutes. Disturbing!

Too much television could take years off your life. Seriously.

“These findings suggest that substantial loss of life may be associated with prolonged TV viewing time…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,” said the researchers.

According to the researchers too much television could even have “adverse health consequences that rival those of lack of physical activity, obesity and smoking.”

What do you think ladies? Is this information enough to make you curb your viewing habits slightly?