July/August 2003

HEALTH BYTES 

TV increases risk of obesity and diabetes

      A new study confirms what has long been suspected: women who watch too much television are more prone to obesity. Additionally, they’re more likely to develop type-2 diabetes. In the study, researchers examined more than 50,000 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study‹a project started in 1976 to follow the health of female nurses across the United States. In this study, they tracked new cases of obesity and type-2 diabetes over a six-year period, and found that each two-hour-per-day increment of television watching was associated with a 23 percent increase in obesity risk and a 14 percent increase in diabetes risk.

Journal of the American Medical Association, 2003