Research

Energy balance

High leisure-time sedentary behavior (television viewing ≥3 hours/day) is associated with adverse cardiovascular and diabetes biomarkers (lower HDL, higher triglycerides, blood pressure, and metabolic syndrome odds) in mid-life adults, with associations mediated by BMI.

If you watch TV for 3 or more hours a day, your HDL (good) cholesterol may be lower and your risk of metabolic syndrome higher, largely because this habit is linked to higher body weight. While you can't change the past, reducing leisure-time sitting time might help improve these biomarkers, especially if it helps manage your weight.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Television-viewing was associated with most biomarkers and associations were mediated by BMI: e.g. for each category increase in television-viewing, HDL-cholesterol in men was lower by 2.3% (95% CI: 1.5%, 3.2%) and, in BMI and diet adjusted analyses, by 1.6% (0.8%, 2.4%); for women, by 2.0% (1.2%, 2.9%) and 0.9% (0.1%, 1.6%) respectively.
Snehal M. Pinto Pereira et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

Why this rating

Large population-based cohort (n=7660), cross-sectional design, adjusted for multiple confounders.

Source

Sedentary Behaviour and Biomarkers for Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes in Mid-Life: The Role of Television-Viewing and Sitting at Work

Snehal M. Pinto Pereira et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0031132

cross_sectional · n=7660Cited 170×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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