Women who are glued to the television are also likely to watch their waistlines expand, Harvard researchers say. What's more, some of these women may go on to develop type 2 diabetes.
In the study, the Harvard team looked at more than 50,000 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study, a long-running project begun in 1976 to follow the health of female nurses across the U.S. The researchers tracked the new cases of obesity and type 2 diabetes over six years, from 1992 to 1998. By the end of this period, 3,757 women (7.5 percent) had become obese, and more than 1,500 had developed type 2 diabetes.
After accounting for exercise, diet, smoking and age -- factors that increase the risk of obesity and diabetes -- the team found that each two-hour-per-day increment of TV watching was associated with a 23% increase in obesity risk and a 14% increase in diabetes risk.
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