Daily TV binge watching could dramatically shorten your life

A study from Japan compared people who watch 2.5 hours of television a day to those who watch between 2.5 and 4.9 hours. The results showed that people who watch more have a 70% higher chance of dying from pulmonary embolism – a blood clot on the lung.

For every additional two hours of daily TV watching, the chance increases another 40%. Across the board, those who watch five or more hours of TV a day were 250% more likely to die of an embolism.

How did the scientists come to these grim conclusions? The researchers surveyed more than 86,000 Japanese adults who were aged between the ages of 40 and 79. They were monitored from the late 1980s until 2009 and it was found that 59 died in that period from a pulmonary embolism.

These new findings are in line with similar research from 2011 that found a sedentary lifestyle overall increased the risk of pulmonary embolism in a group of 70,000 female nurses.

Nearly 50,000 people in the UK have a pulmonary embolism and around 2,500 of them die each year.