Heart of a Couch Potato
Here's another great article from Dr. Chet Zelasko (read more about him here), this one addressing a very important issue: the link between heart problems and being a couch potato. And, of course, the result may line up with what you're thinking ... but read on to find out for sure =)
And so, here's another one of my soapboxes ... the obesity epidemic (yes, I do believe it is an epidemic) has two sole causes ...
1). Average Americans DO NOT move enough ... period ... and I didn't say exercise; I'm talking about general, every day movement.
2). The average America diet is full of so much junk, our bodies don't know how to effectively process it all anymore.
Bottom line ... our bodies can't process the food we eat and we aren't active enough to get rid of all the excess calories/fat that is consumed ... so now there are health issues including those discussed below and many, many more.
We don't really need more studies giving yet another excuse for obesity (just read one claiming that babies who are fed formula will have a higher chance of being obese -- both my kids drank formula at one time or another, in addition to breastmilk, and both are trim and healthy) ...
What Americans need to do is eat better and move more ... regardless of life circumstances ... it's got to be a priority for everyone. This goes for adults AND kids alike. As Dr. Chet puts it at the end of his article ... Americans need to 'get off the couch and get moving'!!!
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Heart of a Couch Potato
Yesterday (Feb. 4th) was National Wear Red Day® to support women’s heart disease awareness—I hope you remembered to wear red. Because February is American Heart Month, I’m going to do every message on a topic related to heart health this month. The reason is simple: if your heart stops beating, you’re dead. No other aspect of your health really matters at that point because you’re not going to be here anyway. Let’s see what we can do to prevent that from happening.
I’m going to start with a recently published study on television watching, heart disease, and death (1). If this doesn’t at least get you thinking about getting off the couch, I can’t think of anything that will.
The Study
Researchers wanted to see if there was a relationship between watching television and all-cause mortality and CVD events—both fatal and nonfatal combined. Experienced interviewers assessed how much time subjects spent watching television per day and how much time they spent in moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity.
The Subjects
Subjects were part of the Scottish Health Survey 2003. Researchers recruited 4,512 men and women 35 and older. The subjects were followed up through 2007 (so far). There was no intervention in this study—the subjects were just tracked after providing the initial information.
The Goal
The researchers wanted to see if there was any relationship between the time spent watching television and the death and illness rate from heart disease. They also wanted to see if BMI, inflammation, and serum lipids could explain any increase in heart disease and mortality.
The Results
This will probably come as no surprise: as the time spent watching television increased, so did death from all causes and the rate of heart disease. There was a 52% increase in mortality for those subjects who watched television four hours or more when compared to those who watched it two hours or less. The increase in the rate of heart disease was even more dramatic. If you watched television four hours or more, you had a 130% increase in cardiovascular disease.
Researchers also found that the couch potatoes had a higher C-reactive protein, a higher BMI, and a lower HDL-cholesterol. Those measures are all indicators of an increased risk of heart disease.
The Bottom Line
A sedentary lifestyle is a prime risk factor for cardiovascular disease and an increased risk of death from all causes. For too many people, watching television is the only prime-time activity. Just because the research compared the highest group with the lowest, don’t think that up to two hours per day is fine. The study was about four years long, so we’ll see what happens as the study follow-up continues. It could be that consistently being less sedentary such as watching television for only two hours every night all year long might be just as bad or worse than watching four hours or more for a short period of time.
The lesson for you? Get up off the couch and get moving.
What are you prepared to do today?
Dr. Chet
Reference: J Am Coll Cardiol, 2011; 57:292-299, doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2010.05.065.
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