Team DailyPedia
Are you familiar with pulmonary embolism? I bet you have no idea.
Well, just so you know, pulmonary embolism is a fatal blockage in the artery that carries blood from the heart to the lungs, and is usually caused by a blood clot formed in a vein in the leg.
It’s a killer. In fact, according to Independent UK, 60,000 people dies annually because of it in Britain alone. Long-haul economy flights were a well-known cause of the condition.
However…
There’s a recently concluded study in Japan that says watching television for more than five hours a day can make you six times more likely to suffer this fatal blood clot. O-M-G.
Researchers from Japan’s Osaka University presented this study to the European Society of Cardiology and it proposes that men and women between 40-79 years old who watch more than five hours of TV every day are twice as likely to suffer a possibly fatal pulmonary embolism than those who watches TV in less than 2.5 hours a day.
Why is this alarming?
Dr Toru Shirakawa, who led the research by the Department of Social Medicine at Osaka University, pointed out that people were more likely to regularly watch lots of television programs than fly. With the advent of online television services recently has allowed binge watchers to download and watch entire series of shows such as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead in one sitting.
Researchers say that leg immobility when you watch television may in part explain the finding. The study tracked 86,000 subjects in Japan for over 18 years. The risks of watching TV were calculated after adjusting for other factors such as a history of hypertension or diabetes, smoking, drinking, and BMIs.
Meanwhile, these experts advise binge watchers to do the same preventive behavior used against economy-class syndrome such as taking a break, standing up, walking around while watching television and drinking water (to prevent dehydration).
Source: Independent UK (via Yahoo/Daily Mail)
