Teenage TV Viewing Increases Metabolic Syndrome Risk During Forties

Recent research has shown that the pattern of television viewing during teenage predicts the risk for metabolic syndrome developing during later years. A team of researchers from the Umeå University, in collaboration with their colleagues in Melbourne, Australia, have found that television viewing and lack of exercise at age 16 is associated with the risk of developing metabolic syndrome at 43 years of age.

Metabolic syndrome is a disorder characterized by abdominal obesity, hypertension, elevated blood lipids, and impaired glucose tolerance. This condition puts a person at a very high risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke.

It has always been acknowledged that low physical activity is linked to metabolic disorder. Now, it has been proposed that low leisure time activity such as extended hours of watching TV, especially within the ages of 16-43, increases the risk for metabolic syndrome and this has nothing to do with a person’s other exercise or physical activity. And the shocker is that the sedentary lifestyle of a teenager is expected to put him at a much greater risk for lifestyle diseases at a later age.

The study was carried out on 888 participants belonging to northern Sweden who were followed from 1981, when they were yet in their ninth grade, until the year 2008.

Lead author, Patrik Wennberg of the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University says that the results of this study should motivate us to adopt means to reduce sedentary lifestyle among teenagers in general and not focus on fitness and sports activity only in those who are already interested.

The results of this study have been published in the journal Diabetes Care.

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Source-Medindia