Hours of after-dinner binge TV-watching is worse for you than working a desk job, according to a new study.
Americans who spend more than four hours a day watching TV have a 50 percent higher risk of developing heart disease or dying an early death than do people who watch for less than two hours, the new American Heart Association study found.
The difference between sitting at a desk and sitting on the couch is mostly accounted for by the big meals and fatty snacks we tend to eat before or during a TV binge session, the study authors suspect.
To offset the harm 'Netflix and chill' does to your heart, the scientists advise changing up the snack menu and taking the occasional mid-binge break to get up and walk around.
People who spend more than four hours binge-watching TV are at 50% greater risks of heart disease and early death because they tend to sit, un-moving, after eating a big meal, and often with fatty, salty snacks, a new study finds (file)
The US has been an increasingly sedentary society for the last several decades.
Machines have taken over many of the kinds of manufacturing work that kept many Americans employed doing physical labor, pushing most of us into intellectually but not physically skilled jobs - desk jobs.
The American Heart Association estimates that the proportion of Americans working desk jobs has increased by 83 percent since the 1950s.
Many studies have blamed our rising rates of obesity, heart disease and more on the hours we spend sitting at desks. Some reports have gone so far as to say that our desk jobs are 'killing' us, by raising our risks of an early death.
But the advent of streaming services have given us a bottomless well of content to screen while we sit - and may replacing desk jobs as the new villain of the obesity epidemic.
On average, Americans
