Like binge-watching your favourite shows online? It could be deadly.
A new study has found that the long periods of inactivity associate with viewing episode after episode of a TV show raises the risk of death from a fatal blood clot in the lungs.
The lung clot, officially known as a pulmonary embolism, usually starts in the leg or pelvis region because of limited blood flow due to inactivity. The clot can move through the body to a lung where it can become life threatening.
This new study involved 86,000 people between the ages of 40 and 79. Participants were asked how many hours of television they watched daily over a period of 19 years. Over the nearly two decades of the research, 59 people involved died of a pulmonary embolism.
Researchers determined that every additional two hours a day spent watching TV increases your risk of fatal blood clots by 40 per cent. Participants who watched five or more hours of TV a day were more than twice as likely to die over the course of the study than those who watched less than two and a half hours.
That being said, as I write this I have the smart TV on in the background streaming Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. I’m on episode five. I think I’m going to die. Might be time to get up and take a walk.
Oh, and in other Netflix news, a US court ruled that sharing your Netflix password so that someone in another household can access the service without paying the monthly fee is a federal crime punishable by prison time. So there’s that.
We love the easy access to on-demand television, but it’s killing and making outlaws of us.