There’s nothing quite like going horizontal on the couch and turning on a mindless reality show after a long day of work. Not to burst your guilty pleasure bubble, but new research has associated less TV time with healthier aging . A study published this week in the journal JAMA Network examined two decades of data from the Nurses’ Health Study—over 45,000 women who were 50 years old or older in 1992.
Researchers who analyzed results in 2022 concluded that an additional two hours of sitting and watching TV per day was associated with a 12% decrease in the chances of healthy aging. Healthy aging was defined as those who lived to at least 70 years old without experiencing one or more of 11 major chronic conditions and who were not cognitively or physically impaired (41% of the participants did not have any of the chronic conditions after the 20-year mark). In contrast, adding two hours of light physical activity at work per day was associated with a 6% increase in the chances of healthy aging.
Swapping an hour of TV time for light physical activity at work or home also increased odds of healthy aging. Additionally, for those who routinely got less than the recommended minimum seven hours of sleep per night, replacing TV time with rest increased the chances of aging healthfully. The researchers estimate that 61% of non-healthy agers could become ones if they adhered to a combination of lifestyle factors, including watching less than three hours of TV per day, maintaining a.