Study: People who Watch more TV have a Greater Risk of Diabetes

If you want to reduce your diabetes risk, you might have to give up some of your television shows. A new study is reporting that people who watch more TV have a greater risk of developing diabetes.

For this study, the researchers examined data taken from Diabetes Prevention Program that included more than 3,200 overweight American adults between 1996 and 1999. The purpose of the program was to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes from manifesting in high-risk patients. The program also compared the effects of diabetes drug metformin to lifestyle changes in preventing diabetes.

Due to the lifestyle changes that the program enforced, some participants ended up spending less time watching TV. This variable allowed the researchers to study the link between the number of hours participants spent watching TV and their diabetes risk. Before the program, the participants watched an average of 140 minutes per day. During the program, those who engaged in lifestyle changes lowered their average by 22 minutes a day.

The researchers found that for every additional hour that a person with prediabetes spent in front of a TV every single day, their risk of developing type 2 diabetes increased by 3.4 percent.

"I know when I'm sitting around watching TV, I'm more likely to graze and eat crappy food," David Marrero, president of health care and education for the American Diabetes Association, said. "When people are watching passively, there's a tendency to snack. When's the last time you measured out a portion size of potato chips and ate it in front of the television?"

The team also found that the best way of delaying or preventing diabetes was through physical activity, which helped reduce development of diabetes by 58 percent. Metformin, on the other hand, led to a 31 percent decrease in diabetes development.

"If you think about it, we all recognize the fact that when we sleep our bodies are at rest, and everything sort of slows down," study author Bonny Rockette-Wagner, director of physical activity assessment at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, said according to WebMD. "When we're sitting for long periods of time, our body also starts to slow down. It might not be in a sleeping state, but it goes into a more rested state and things start to slow down."

The study was published in the journal, Diabetologia.