Asthma Risk Linked To Early TV Viewing

Ponca City, We love you writes "The number of children with asthma has been rising for many years. About 1 in 10 children in the UK develop asthma, compared with about 1 in 25 in the 1960s. The reason for this isn't clear, although several theories have been put forward such as keeping our homes cleaner, and having central heating and more soft furnishings where house dust mites can multiply. Now based on more than 3,000 children whose respiratory health was tracked from birth to 11.5 years of age, researchers have found a new correlation with young children who spend more than two hours glued to the TV every day doubling their subsequent risk of developing asthma. 'This study has shown for the first time a positive association between increased duration of reported TV viewing in early childhood and the development of asthma by 11.5 years of age in children with no symptoms of asthma in early childhood,' said the researchers, led by A. Sherriff, from the University of Glasgow. It's not clear exactly how sedentary behaviors like television watching are tied to asthma, but there is some evidence to suggest exercise and deep breaths that come with it stretch the smooth muscles in the airways, while lack of exercise may make the lungs overly sensitive. The results add asthma to a catalog of undesirable outcomes, including obesity, diabetes, smoking, and promiscuity, tied to TV viewing."

Comments

Promiscuity

[BlackusDiamondus]

Wow, so promiscuity is now considered an undesirable outcome? Perhaps from a religious morals point of view...

Re:Promiscuity

[timmarhy]

promiscuity would be an advantagous trait, not a defect. this "research" seems highly suspect.

Re:Promiscuity

[drDugan]

beat me to the point...

"promiscuity" being "undesirable" seems in line with the absurd overly-judgmental attitudes toward sex promoted by the far right and the religious zealots

IMO people would be a *lot* better off being taught healthy norms about sex and encouraged to have more healthy sex - instead of the story that it is somehow bad and needs to be restricted, hidden and controlled by shaming people

Re:Promiscuity

[rrohbeck]

Just my thought.
I should have watched more TV as a child. Damn.

Re:Promiscuity

[Firehed]

For an 11-year-old? Um... ok, if you say so.

Re:Promiscuity

[commodore64_love]

>>>promiscuity is simple hedonism - it's empty and leads to a lonely place.

Yeah. So? I like leading an empty and lonely life. In fact, it's why I chose engineering. Who are YOU to judge my lifestyle? Jeez. "Lord, save me from your servants trying to control my life and my choices. Thanks."

/end sarcasm

Re:Promiscuity

[Ephemeriis]

Actually, promiscuity is simple hedonism

Promiscuity != Hedonism

Promiscuity is a "large" number of sexual partners. Large being purely subjective in this case. Just because someone is labeled as promiscuous does not mean that they're sleeping with a different person every night, nor does it mean that there's no value attached to the sex that they have. People in long-term, loving multiple-partner relationships are often labeled as promiscuous.

Hedonism is seeking pleasure above all else, that feeling good is your highest calling. This doesn't necessarily mean sex - it can also mean drugs, alcohol, food, whatever. And, yes, pursuing your own happiness/pleasure at the expense of all else does lead to many ills - social and otherwise.

The loss of shame leads to many, many social ills.

Personally, I've found that shame is rarely useful.

Shame comes in two flavors - your own, and everyone else's.

Your own shame is typically a result of realizing you did something you probably shouldn't have. I find it is typically better to think things through the first time and avoid the shame alltogether. When I'm trying to make a decision "I might be ashamed" doesn't enter into it - "is it a good decision" does. And typically, if it's a good decision, there's no call for shame.

Everyone else's shame is an attempt to get you to conform to what they think you should be doing. "You ought to be ashamed!" is someone telling you that you did something they don't like. Unless it's someone you genuinely value - your spouse or parent, for example - those are empty words. I personally couldn't care less whether some random person thinks I should be ashamed or not.

The "if it feels good, do it" philosophy is bunk.

If it feels good, why wouldn't you do it?

Certainly doing it, whatever it may be, to excess is probably going to be bad. But in moderation, as a responsible human being, why not? Why not have sex? Why not eat cake? Why not drink beer? Why not go skiing? Why not read a book? Is there something inherently noble in depriving yourself of pleasure? Is there something wrong with enjoying yourself?

Degeneracy can be fun but it's hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation.

Most of the time "degeneracy" is a subjective label. If you agree with what someone is doing, to the extent that they're doing it, they're OK. If you don't agree with it, or if they're doing it too much, they're degenerate. And what exactly we label as "degenerate" is strongly influenced by our own morals and values - not any objective analysis.

If someone likes to read books, are they degenerate? What if they go through a book every single night? What if they avoid social contact in favor of reading? What if they get so hooked on reading that it starts affecting their work? What if they just can't put down a book during lunch and never get that TPS report done? Are they degenerate? Somehow that word just doesn't seem to fit, does it? Addicted maybe... They've certainly got issues... But degenerate?

Now what if they really like having sex? What if they have sex with someone different every night? What if they spend all their time trying to hook up with a new partner? What if their sexual encounters start affecting their work? What if they get caught fooling around with someone during lunch? I'm guessing the world "degenerate" seems a lot more fitting in this case.

Most of the western world (not just the US) has been conditioned by immersion in Judeo-Christian values to view sex as somehow separate from normal life activities. It's something secret, sacred, or dirty that polite people don't really talk about. It's something that should only happen between married couples... Or something that should only happen with a certain frequency... Or something that shouldn't involve people of the same gender, or power tools, or animals, or chains, or whatever... Sex has values and judgments attached to it that eating, for example, doesn't. Yet both of those are completely natural, and often pleasurable, parts of human existence.

Re:Promiscuity

[cayenne8]

Who needs research?

I think even a little common sense would show that kids need to be outside playing, and getting exercise that comes naturally from that!!

When I grew up...during the summers off school...I was up and out about 9-10am...playing with my friends in the neighborhood. Skateboarding around, swimming in the neighborhood pool, sometimes 'stealing' wood from local house construction, to build forts in the woods nearby, or skateboard ramps at the end of our street, riding bikes around, etc.

We always had something to do....all my friends (I'm still in touch with most of the main ones I grew up with) were pretty much all raised by all of our parents, in that the group was always at one person's house or another.

This was before cell phones...when I was really young (in the 10-12 range) I made sure and called home to check in with my Mom from wherever I was at. When both my parents were working..I'd call and check in during the day periodically at their workplace. Thing is....we were out and playing and doing something whenever possible.

Granted, we only had 3-4 channels, but, while growing up, cable made it into our neighborhood, yet we still didn't spend 24/7 watching the damned thing, not during the days when there were things to do.

Hell, when was the last time you saw a group of kids in someones's front yard playing "kill the man with the ball"?

*sigh*

Re:Promiscuity

[geminidomino]

I don't know if you're older than I, or just didn't have cable (it's the "3 channels" bit that I'm taking as an indicator) but you're spot on.

When I was growing up (80s), even though we had video games, we were social. Back then, you still had kids who would walk down the block, knock on his friends' door and ask if Joey could come out and play. Everyone had the story where they lost track of where they were going with their bikes and ended up in the next town. Or just beat the crap out of each other in the backyard with wiffle bats and snowballs.

Nowadays, "Can Joey come out to play" has been replaced with fucking "play dates?" And they wonder about rising levels of depression in children? Part of the price of being an adult is being locked in inane, rigid structure. Why the hell subject a 7 year old to that? Let the kids be fucking kids, rather than soiling yourself when little Brittney wants to rollerskate because she might scrape her knee.

Carlin was right. These people are fucked up, they're fucking up their kids, and in a single-digit number of generations, we're gonna be looking at a fucking society of Eloi.

Re:Promiscuity

[drinkypoo]

I think even a little common sense would show that kids need to be outside playing, and getting exercise that comes naturally from that!!

There are counterexamples. For instance, when smog is high, it's best to try to use your lungs as little as possible (I'm not kidding.) Exercise will do more harm than good. Don't go jogging in Los Angeles when the wind is blowing strongly onshore, you'll be sucking enough Chinese pollution to undo any good work you've done. The same thing was happening from Los Angeleno pollution, except worse; kids were getting lesions on their lungs and coughing up blood due to breathing LA's toxic debt. However, the CARB took all kinds of drastic air pollution-reduction measures which the citizenry largely hated, and actually saved the say (until China started to industrialize en masse.)

Correlation vs. Causation

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an interesting result that certainly warrants further study but IMHO everything about this study just screams "correlation is not causation".

What if healthier kids just enjoy playing outside more? What if healthier parents (who didn't have asthma themselves as children) encourage their kids to play outside more. What about kids in urban environments with high levels of air pollution who don't really have anywhere to go outside to play (without getting shot in a drive-by).

Re:Correlation vs. Causation

[rrohbeck]

Exercise has been proven to reduce Asthma. It can even fix it in adults although it has to be dosed very carefully. There are elite runners (can't remember a name though) who started running to curb their Asthma.

Re:Correlation vs. Causation

[Suisho]

I don't think this is necessarily completely true. I have exercise induced asthma, which, means basically the harder I breathe the more constricted my airways become. >.> But- I was encouraged to do specific breathing exercises (especially as a child), and I did do sports with an excessive amount of medication. I think this might be true for some...but I don't know of any particular studies.

Re:Correlation vs. Causation

[jandersen]

everything about this study just screams "correlation is not causation".

I think what scream loudest in this case is that you are uncomfortable with the implications; perhaps there are things in your lifestyle you don't want to change?

Taken in isolation this kind of study does seem a little bizarre, and the way it is presented in the popular media doesn't help either, when it is reported as if it was a kind of joke. However, it is part of a growing trend that seems to indicate that a lot of illnesses are actually lifestyle diseases, and there is growing evidence that one common factor is inflammation - or the presence of certain indicators of inflammation, I should say. Inflammation seems to lie behind such things as atherosclerosis, insulin resistence, and of course it is known to a major symptom in asthma. The adipose tissues of obese people seem to be the seat of low-level inflammation too, or something very similar. Now, I don't know about you, but when I see all these things together, I don't think it is all that unlikely that sitting in front of the telly instead of getting up and about actually is a major causative factor in these lifestyle diseases, asthma included.

It is also well-known that exercise actually is a very effective way of lowering the levels of inflammation in places where you don't want it - perhaps because exercise actually causes low-level damage to muscles and connective tissue; this sort of draws the attention of the body's repair system away from the places where it is not actually supposed to be. Inflammation is an important part of the repair system, which is why muscles get sore from exercise.

Re:Correlation vs. Causation

[Tellarin]

So you took the same course as this guy?
http://www.xkcd.com/552/

Re:Correlation vs. Causation

[rtb61]

Lazy parents who use the TV as a baby sitter for hours on end are also likely to be lazy when it comes to preparing healthy meals and resort to take away meals and junk food snacks. Also children that suffer from asthma are likely to prefer less arduous activities, like watching TV, in order to reduce the risk of an attack.

As for the growth in asthma, increasing levels of exotic pollutants (that generate hormonal reactions in people) plus the effects of junk food consumption during pregnancy are the most likely the culprits.

Feeding neuro stimulant so called 'flavour enhancers' to unborn children is most likely not the brightest idea in the world and maybe the future health of an unborn generation should be put ahead of the profits of junk food and chemical additive manufacturers.

Re:Repeat after me:

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://xkcd.com/552

Make sure you hover over the comic...

Computers

[tttonyyy]

Presumably (as far as Asthma goes) the same applies to sitting in front of computers/sitting playing handheld games like the DS. Though it would be interesting to know whether that carries the same correlations with the other undesirable outcomes.

Re:Just unproductive

[American Terrorist]

What's the point of watching TV if it doesn't make babies? It might be entertaining for its participants, well, some of them anyway, but it doesn't actually accomplish anything useful. It's just self indulgence.

Filthy carpets

[G3ckoG33k]

In another scientific article researchers link filthy carpets in the living room to asthma, but for some reason that article never made the headlines...

Re:Filthy carpets

[DrProton]

You've got it backwards. Asthma is linked with excessive cleanliness. People who are raised on farms and exposed to a lot o dirt don't get asthma. Google "hygiene hypothesis asthma" sometime.

Breathing causes Asthma

[Norsefire]

100% of people who don't breath don't have Asthma.

Bollocks.

[tpgp]

I'm filthy stinking rich and have a REALLY nice sports car.

You know, most of the filthy rich sports car owners I know:

1) Don't sit round big noting themselves on Slashdot.
2) Don't refer to their sports car as a "really nice sports car", but rather something more specific like "a 1967 Jaguar E-type coupe".

I am prepared to believe that you're a smoker & obese.

A more obvious association..

[DeadboltX]

Seems to me that time spent inside the home is the more likely culprit than viewed television hours, and that a higher rate of television viewing leads to an increased amount of time spent inside the home.

Re:A more obvious association..

[DrProton]

I had the same thought. More time outside the home also exposes the child to more dirt, more bacteria, and more of the tiny little worms out there. The beneficial effect of this exposure is known as the hygiene hypothesis. Kids who grow up on farms and poor people living off the land don't get asthma and a whole host of immune system disorders. There was a recent article by Jane Brody in the New York Times about the hygiene hypothesis.

Basically, a little dirt is good for you.

Damnit, modders!

[Jane Q. Public]

Can you at least look at the goddamned timestamp before modding something as "redundant"?? Mine was the second comment in this whole thread!

Re:Damnit, modders!

[saiha]

"Correlation does not imply causation" is said in every topic that has any type of statistics. So while this may have been the first post about it in this topic, its quite redundant.

The correlation coefficient is simply a tool.

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

the other way to look at this is that kids with asthma spend time in front of the tv since running around outside may kill them

Hmm...

[claybugg]

What about sitting still in a desk at school for hours each day?

Re:Thank you.

[triffid_98]

I don't quite see what poor air quality has to do with it. Air quality in the 1960's was nothing to get excited about. In first world countries air quality has generally improved quite a lot since then.

In fact, I'm tempted to think the opposite. An overly sterile environment has been theorized to repress childhood immune systems, causing them to become overly sensitized to pollens, dust, etc.

This is their bullshit excuse for fucking up the world's air quality. "See, it's not all the coal power plants and diesel trucks, you're watching too much TV!"

Don't buy some of it.

[Secret Rabbit]

I don't think that researchers understand the difference between causation and correlation.

I'll buy that watching a lot of tv can lead to someone being overweight. After all, how many of use use a treadmill while watching our "stories." I'll buy that not exercising can have other outcomes such as (stretching it) asthma. Not working those lunges may indeed lead to problems for kids. But, this is hardly a conclusive study. Where's all the testing on the tissues themselves. Where ruling out other factors such as diet, air quality, etc? I know we got some of that tissue around that the lab guys can do tests on and while following people around for over a decade, it's hard to believe that they couldn't have noticed living conditions.

But, obesity, diabetes, smoking and (especially) promiscuity?!?!? Bullshit. One must be susceptible to get diabetes and the TV cannot make one not exercise and smoke. And promiscuity?!?! PROMISCUITY?!?!? Perhaps these guys should get out of the lab and see just how many parents are NOT parenting there kids.

Jesus christ. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

Re:Don't buy some of it.

[bigmouth_strikes]

> I don't think that researchers understand the difference between causation and correlation.

Why is that ? Have you ever undertaken studies to become a researcher, perhaps at PhD or post-doc levels ? If you did and still believe this, then you should ask for your money back. Most such programs involve quite extensive theory behind how to calculate statistical association and correlation. Do you actually know anything on how this study was performed and how its findings was analyzed ?

Perhaps you do, but the tone of your comment leads me to think that you have no idea and just think the summary sounded too far-fetching for your liking.

Brainless research

[4D6963]

OK no seriously now WTF. There's not a day without a health news story talking about some weird correlation between two factors that are obviously not directly related. What's a researcher these days, someone who gathers a whole bunch of data, looks for all the statistical correlation they can find and publish a paper as soon as they find "something", without using an ounce of critical thinking? It surely is how it sounds like.

"So we took a whole bunch of people, alright, we asked them a whole bunch of random questions about their weight, their diet, their asthma, their TV watching habits, then we cross plotted them, let the computer program give us a correlation index and the one with the strongest correlation was asthma vs TV so we wrote a paper about it. As to the whyness of this correlation, meh, we don't really know, nor did we bother to establish a few hypothesises like "oh maybe it's due to socio-economic conditions i.e. poor people watch more TV and live in houses with asbestos hey let's try and find out", nah, we just care about writing a paper and making it buzz for all it's worth cause it's gonna look good on our CVs and you know it's going to work because people love senseless sensationalist drivel like "new research shows that learning to play the violin will make you live 6 years longer!" or "can eating pineapple make you gain IQ points?"."

Re:Brainless research

[bigmouth_strikes]

Do you have any clue what's involved in doing scientific research, especially involving a large study such as the one in question (ALSPAC), involving 14000 children and their parents ? It sounds like you are questioning the scientific methods used in the study, which so far has resulted in over 300 peer-review academic papers, so it would be interesting to know what you base this on.

Or is this just a knee-jerk reaction to something that's not obvious to you ?

I'm not saying that you're out of your depth here, but I'll wager that you are.

Re:Brainless research

[4D6963]

But here's the thing: they did find "something", that is statistically significant. That means there *is* a direct relationship.

FAIL! It's not because there's a correlation that there's a direct relationship. Unless by direct relationship you mean A and B are linked by A<-C<-D->E->B, which I'd rather call "indirect". Let's say it goes like this : poor people are poor -> therefore their kids have a shitty education -> therefore they hardly know how to read or do anything creative -> therefore they spend their time watching TV. In parallel, they're poor -> therefore they live in shitty houses -> therefore they catch colds and infections because they have a poor insulation or whatever -> therefore they catch asthma (let's admit it makes sense).

Considered all of that, how the fuck does that help to know that watching TV is correlated to asthma? Maybe it can be somewhere to start off for a researcher, but it can't be the fucking conclusion of their research, if you'll admit my hypothetical scenario, they should look for the true direct reasons for asthma, which would be the conditions of living of a certain class of people (to which something could actually be done to remedy to that asthma problem, i.e. the President decides to fix the insulation of every house in the fucking country) and not content themselves with some vague bullshit that the general public that this press release is meant to be read by would interpret as "so turning the TV will keep my kids more safe from asthma?!".

Hmmmmm.....

[IHC Navistar]

" The results add asthma to a catalog of undesirable outcomes, including obesity, diabetes, smoking, and promiscuity, tied to TV viewing."

Ok..... obesity, diabetes, and smoking I can definitely find true. Promiscuity, sort of, but only in the sense that it leads to a lack of knowledge about reality and people learning social norms through Big Media and Hollywood.

Asthma, on the other hand, would require a whole hell of a lot more evidence, study, and explaination than simply correlation.

Re:You're close to the answer ...

[MrNaz]

It's so obvious that maybe I should apply for a grant to show how the sun is in the sky only during daylight hours.

I represent a consortium of investors who are interested in your proposed research. Please can you give us more information, such as how soon your research would yield commercialisable results.

We would also be interested in patenting the outcomes of your research, so please can you tell us how long it would take to fully write up a patent application for a method of comprehensively determining the presence or absence of the Sun during certain times of the solar cycle.

We look forward to funding your novel research.

Vitamin D deficiency, anyone?

[SlowGenius]

The "hygiene hypothesis" is one hypothesis to explain the prevalence of asthma among kids who stay indoors a lot. But that hypothesis doesn't explain the particularly high prevalence of asthma among black inner city kids--they don't live in particularly clean/fastidious environments. Turns out there's another hypothesis that's at least as plausible: Vitamin D deficiency.

Being indoors a lot equates to a lack of adequate sun exposure, which causes Vitamin D deficiency, which is now epidemic. (And having dark skin, which is great for protection against melanoma and sunburn, turns out to be not so good when it comes to producing Vitamin D--particularly in northern latitudes.) Vitamin D deficiency has now been linked to tons of health problems--not just osteoporosis, but also many types of cancers, as well as depression, diabetes (both types), heart disease, autism, multiple sclerosis, and (among many other conditions--you guessed it) asthma.

I'd recommend people check out www.vitamindcouncil.org for more info about Vitamin D in general. As to the specific links to asthma, well, I'd provide some links, but I'm guessing anybody who cares to look for more evidence can use Google as well as I can. :^)

Re:Just unproductive

[Mister Whirly]

"What's the point of promiscuity if it doesn't make babies?"

If you really need to ask this question, you are truly a Slashdotter.