Binge-watching series could literally kill you

A new report by Japanese scientists shows that binge-watching TV could literally be killing you.

“Scientists in Japan studied tens of thousands of television watchers over the course of two decades and are now say watching lots of TV on a daily basis could increase the risk of dying from a blood clot in the lung”, reports CNET.

Between 1988 and 1990, researchers asked over 80,000 people in Japan between the ages of 40 and 79 how much TV they watched each day.

They then tracked how many people died of a pulmonary embolism — a blood clot in the lung — over the next 19 years and looked at how many hours of TV those participants watched.

A total of 59 participants died of a pulmonary embolism and the researchers discovered that such deaths increased by 70 percent among people who watched TV between 2.5 and 4.9 hours a day compared with those who watched less than 2.5 hours each day.

The risk increased by 40 percent for each additional 2 hours and went up by 2.5 times among those who watched TV 5 or more hours a day.

Even worse is that this study was performed at a time when binge-watching a TV series wasn’t even possible.

“Nowadays, with online video streaming, the term ‘binge watching’ to describe viewing multiple episodes of television programs in one sitting has become popular,” said Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine’s Dr. Toru Shirakawa in a news release. “This popularity may reflect a rapidly growing habit.”