Restricting the time you are seated to less than three hours
daily might boost your life expectancy by two years, says an
analytical study. Similarly, cutting down TV time to less than
two 2 hours daily might extend life by almost 1.4 years. Several
previous studies have linked extended periods spent sitting down
and/or watching TV to poor health, such as diabetes and death
from heart disease/stroke. The researchers used data collected
for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
(NHANES) for 2005/6 and 2009/10, to calculate the amount of time
US adults spent watching TV and sitting down on a daily basis,
the online journal BMJ Open reports. NHANES regularly surveys a
large representative sample of the US population on various
aspects of their health and lifestyle, according to a NHANES
statement. They trawled the research database MEDLINE, looking
for published studies on sitting time and deaths from all
causes, and pooled the different relative risk data from the
five relevant studies, involving