Thats the bottom line from a recent report on the impact of exercise on health and lifespan.
Most people could arrive at the conclusions of this report with their eyes closed: in a way, it's not rocket surgery.Sitting and watching TV all day everyday and getting no exercise and eating poorly shortens a life considerably. New study results really drive this home
Over the Kos-thang....
Basic premise: Exercise good, sedentary lifestyle bad, TV reinforces and rewards couch potato-ness. Not really news.
I posted this to highlight a couple things from the report: A study was done in China with several hundred thousand volunteers taking place and being followed over 8 years. The findings weren't really earth-shattering but do greatlyu underline and reinforce what we sorta already know. Sitting around, eating poorly, and getting no physical exercise isn't good for you and ultimately sheds YEARS from your life. Exercise healps the body and people who do as little as 15 minutes a day of something like walking - not even remotely hardcore exercise - add an average of 3 years to thier live.
Compared with individuals who said they were physically inactive, people who were in a group of "low-volume" exercise had a 14-percent reduced risk of premature death from all causes, and a 10-percent reduced risk of death from cancer.
The "low volume" category applied to people whose total amount of exercise of all kinds averaged 92 minutes per week, or about 15 minutes a day.
But the tube.... it's not good for you.
Not the crappy programming one has to endure in America - that just makes you stupid: it's the sheer number of hours people waste in front of the tube, doing nothing, and eating crappy snack food.
From a study done in Australia:
...researchers in Australia found that watching TV or videos for an average of six hours a day could shorten the viewer's life expectancy by almost five years.
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The researchers estimated that in 2008 Australian adults aged 25 and older spent 9.8 billion hours in front of the small screen, and that this time was associated with 286,000 years of life that ended prematurely.
Every single hour of TV watched after the age of 25 shortened the viewer's life expectancy by just under 22 minutes, according to an extrapolation of these figures.
I more or less quit watching TV in 1978. I have turned it on a couple times since then and lately I will watch a snippet of something, usually
UFC, which is all about physical conditioning and health (except for injuries, heh). I can't stand the TV otherwise.
I exercise: some light running 45 min a day X 5-6 days a week, some martials/heavy bag work, a little weight, crunches and some pushups a couple times a week minimum. I am 51 nowand am built about like a welterweight fighter: I weigh about 175 at 6'2" and I can pass for early-mid 40's. No tobacco, very little alcohol (I am fond of a couple shots of good tequila once in awhile) and I eat pretty well, having married somebody who knows how to cook.
It's harder than vegging in front of the tube, but a hell of a lot more rewarding.