Watching TV Excessively Could Be Fatal, Literally Speaking

Watching TV can surely be a relaxing, educative, and useful activity. It’s especially available nowadays during the ongoing pandemic when we’re being recommended to stay at home. But watching TV can sometimes lead to some awful possibilities, whether we like it or not.

One of those possibilities is the increasing of blood clot risk, according to a new study that The New York Post writes about. The new study shouldn’t be neglected at all, especially by those who are watching TV excessively. But since every person has their own definition of what “excess” can mean, let’s clarify this aspect as well.

Over four hours of watching TV per day could be fatal

The new study claims that if you’re watching TV for more than four hours a day, you’re more likely to deal with venous thromboembolism (VTE), meaning a potentially fatal clotting condition.

Three previous studies were reviewed, and all of them involved over 130,000 patients.

If the clot is left untreated, it can cause some lasting damage to the pacient’s vascular system.

However, we must remember that there are plenty of risk factors for VTE: sedentarism, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc.

Setor Kunutsor, the lead author of the new study, declared for Gizmodo:

The association was independent of age, sex, body mass index and physical activity, which are strongly related to the risk of VTE,

This means that the relationship we observed between TV viewing and VTE risk cannot be explained by age, sex, body mass index and physical activity. The relationship does not depend on these factors.

Feel free to share with us your own thoughts on the new study, as well as how long you’re watching TV every day!

The new findings were published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.