Friday, March 13, 2009
Televison and Asthma?
You knew that too much television wasn't good for children... (like the commerical says, aliens are waiting for your brains to turn to mush). Well, as if that wasn't enough to worry about, a newly released study has found that toddlers who spend more than two hours a day watching television almost double their risk of getting asthma before they become teenagers.
Researchers identified 3,065 children without asthma when they were 3 1/2 years old, and tracked them for the next eight years for wheezing or other tell-tale signs of the disorder that makes breathing difficult. Asthma rates rose in tandem with TV time, and those who watched the most had an 80 percent greater risk of being diagnosed by age 12 than those who watched less.
The researchers used television viewing as a marker for sedentary behavior, since the now-ubiquitous personal computers and popular home video-game systems weren’t as widely used when the study began in the early 1990s. The results add asthma to a catalogue of factors, including obesity, diabetes, smoking and promiscuity, tied to TV viewing.
It’s not clear exactly how sedentary behaviors like television watching are tied to asthma, the researchers said. There is some evidence to suggest exercise and deep breaths that come with it stretch the smooth muscles in the airways, while lack of exercise may make the lungs overly sensitive, they said.
So get the kids out from in front of the TV... its for their own good in more ways than you know.
AND, today is Friday the 13th, so stay away from mirrors, ladders, and black cats...
You knew that too much television wasn't good for children... (like the commerical says, aliens are waiting for your brains to turn to mush). Well, as if that wasn't enough to worry about, a newly released study has found that toddlers who spend more than two hours a day watching television almost double their risk of getting asthma before they become teenagers.
Researchers identified 3,065 children without asthma when they were 3 1/2 years old, and tracked them for the next eight years for wheezing or other tell-tale signs of the disorder that makes breathing difficult. Asthma rates rose in tandem with TV time, and those who watched the most had an 80 percent greater risk of being diagnosed by age 12 than those who watched less.
The researchers used television viewing as a marker for sedentary behavior, since the now-ubiquitous personal computers and popular home video-game systems weren’t as widely used when the study began in the early 1990s. The results add asthma to a catalogue of factors, including obesity, diabetes, smoking and promiscuity, tied to TV viewing.
It’s not clear exactly how sedentary behaviors like television watching are tied to asthma, the researchers said. There is some evidence to suggest exercise and deep breaths that come with it stretch the smooth muscles in the airways, while lack of exercise may make the lungs overly sensitive, they said.
So get the kids out from in front of the TV... its for their own good in more ways than you know.
AND, today is Friday the 13th, so stay away from mirrors, ladders, and black cats...
// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 6:09 AM 
