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  Awards Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Ctr. Boston Medical Center Boston University Brigham and Women's Hospital Broad Institute Cambridge Health Alliance Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Ctr. Children's Hospital Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Grants Harvard University Joslin Diabetes Center Lahey Clinic Mass. General Hospital Mass. Health Law McLean Hospital MIT New England Baptist Hospital Personnel Moves Public Health Research Short White Coat Tufts-New England Medical Center Tufts University UMass Memorial Medical Center University of Massachusetts VA Medical Centers    A Healthy Blog Running A Hospital Nature Network Boston SciBos - Corie Lok's blog Kevin, M.D. Blog, MD Dr. Flea's blog Nurse at small Your Child's Health Blog Healthy Children blog WBUR's CommonHealth Other Globe Blogs
Elizabeth Cooney is a health reporter for the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette.
Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
Scott Allen Alice Dembner Carey Goldberg Liz Kowalczyk Stephen Smith Colin Nickerson Beth Daley Karen Weintraub, Deputy Health and Science Editor, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor. Short White Coat blogger Ishani Ganguli  |
« Today's Globe: insurance under $300, right and wrong, help quitting, blaming the sick | Main | MIT professor starts hunger strike » Monday, February 5, 2007Turning off the TV won't make kids more activeCutting down on how much television adolescents watch doesn't necessarily translate into more physical activity, Harvard researchers report in today's issue of Pediatrics. "Kids have other activities that they do if they turn off the TV," said Dr. Matthew W. Gillman, a professor at Harvard Medical School and director of an obesity prevention program at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. "They don't necessarily go out and play or join a sports team." Researchers tracked 10,000 10- to 15-year-old boys and girls for four years, asking them to report their TV habits and physical activity levels. The results ruled out any major association between the two. Programs that work on sedentary behaviors like TV watching and physical activity as separate, independent elements hold more promise for helping children avoid excess weight during adolescence, the authors concluded. They noted that adolescents may gain weight if they watch a lot of television because of what they also do in front of the TV set. There's some evidence that kids who watch TV ads for unhealthy foods wind up eating more of them. Or they just snack while they watch. "If we want to get the greatest bang for our buck in terms of interventions to prevent obesity, we're going to have to work on both TV and physical activity independently," Gillman said. Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 06:00 AM
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