Obese children who watch a lot of television are more likely to have high blood pressure than heavy children who don't spend as much time in front of the tube, the results of a new study shows.
Increased psychological stress and junk food eaten while watching TV could be factors in the relationship, principal investigator Dr Jeffrey B. Schwimmer of the University of California, San Diego, told Reuters Health.
Obese children who watched 2 to 4 hours of TV each day were 2.5 times more likely than their peers who watched less TV to have high blood pressure, he and his colleagues found, while kids who watched more than 4 hours daily had more than triple the risk of having high blood pressure.
TV watching time clearly influences obesity and high blood pressure is a known consequence of obesity, Schwimmer and his team point out in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
To investigate this relationship, they evaluated 546 children between 4 and 17 years old who were seeking treatment for obesity. Forty-three percent had high blood pressure.
Most of the study participants with high blood pressure watched 2 hours or more of television. Time spent watching television was also associated with the severity of obesity, the researchers found.
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