Does Excessive Time Watching Television Shorten Survival in Patients With Colorectal Cancer?

A sedentary lifestyle is known to pave the way for serious health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Inactivity also adversely affects many bodily mechanisms and systems, including the skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, excretory, and endocrine systems. In addition, a sedentary lifestyle is closely associated with certain cancers. Numerous studies have examined the effect of a sedentary lifestyle, particularly on large bowel (colon and rectal) cancer , and have shown that inactivity increases mortality in these patients, while physical activity reduces it.

Time spent watching television has been identified as a particularly major contributor. This is because watching television is the most common sedentary activity. Indeed, research indicates that people in Türkiye spend an average of 4 hours a day watching television.

A comprehensive study published in the March 2014 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology demonstrated for the first time the relationship between daily television viewing time and mortality in patients with colorectal cancer. It also compared the effects on these rates of physical activity before and after developing the disease.

The study evaluated approximately 5600 patients with colorectal cancer and examined the relationship between overall mortality and daily television viewing time and weekly regular physical activity before and after diagnosis. It found that patients who had performed regular physical activity for 7 hours or more per week before diagnosis had a %20 lower overall risk of death, while those performing regular physical activity for 7 hours or more per week after developing the disease had a %31 lower risk. Additionally, compared with those watching television for 0-2 hours a day before diagnosis, those watching for 5 hours or more had a %22 higher overall risk of death; after diagnosis, compared with those watching for 0-2 hours a day, those watching for 5 hours or more had a %25 higher overall risk of death.

In conclusion; it is clear that excessive time watching television directly affects survival. Time spent watching television should therefore be reduced as much as possible, and physical activity increased as much as possible. Let us remember: living without television is certainly easy, but regaining health once it is lost is not easy at all. Therefore, taking the necessary precautions before losing our health and not heeding our physicians' advice on this subject is extremely beneficial.