Too much TV can ?depress older women?
Watching too much television or not exercising enough can make older women depressed, a new study has shown. According to findings published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that women who exercised more were about 20 percent less likely to get depression than those who rarely exercised. The more hours they spent watching TV each week, however, the more their risk of depression crept up,
The author of the study, Michel Lucas, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said yesterday: ?Higher levels of physical activity were associated with lower depression risk.?
The research looked at nearly 50,000 women who filled out detailed surveys as part of the US Nurses? Health Study.
Participants recorded the amount of time they spent watching TV each week in 1992, and also answered questions about how often they walked, biked, ran and swam between 1992 and 2000.
On the same questionnaires, women reported any new diagnosis of clinical depression or medication taken to treat depression. The analysis only included women who did not have depression in 1996. Over the next decade, there were 6,500 new cases of depression.
After the researchers accounted for aspects of health and lifestyle linked to depression, including weight and smoking, exercising the most ? 90 minutes or more each day ? meant women were 20 percent less likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who exercised 10 minutes or less a day.
Women who watched three hours or more of television a day were 13 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who hardly ever watched TV.
Watching too much television or not exercising enough can make older women depressed, a new study has shown. According to findings published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that women who exercised more were about 20 percent less likely to get depression than those who rarely exercised. The more hours they spent watching TV each week, however, the more their risk of depression crept up,
The author of the study, Michel Lucas, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said yesterday: ?Higher levels of physical activity were associated with lower depression risk.?
The research looked at nearly 50,000 women who filled out detailed surveys as part of the US Nurses? Health Study.
Participants recorded the amount of time they spent watching TV each week in 1992, and also answered questions about how often they walked, biked, ran and swam between 1992 and 2000.
On the same questionnaires, women reported any new diagnosis of clinical depression or medication taken to treat depression. The analysis only included women who did not have depression in 1996. Over the next decade, there were 6,500 new cases of depression.
After the researchers accounted for aspects of health and lifestyle linked to depression, including weight and smoking, exercising the most ? 90 minutes or more each day ? meant women were 20 percent less likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who exercised 10 minutes or less a day.
Women who watched three hours or more of television a day were 13 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who hardly ever watched TV.
Comment