Television Causes Asthma?

Are your children television addict? This is what we always heard from parents about their children watching television habits, especially children from three to twelve years old.

It can not be denied that television is a source of information and also can be your friend when you are alone. But the main function in most households is more to entertainment. Do you know, research shows that watching television in a long period of time can increase the risk of getting asthma in children?

A research published in Thorax Journal in United Kingdom reported that the link between asthma and inactive lifestyle (including too much time watching TV), obesity and lack of exercise contribute to one death among 250 patients in one year.

Asthma is the most common lung chronic disease in the world. According to WHO, 300 million people, especially children, suffer from asthma, and 255,000 people died of asthma in 2005. Asthma is not just a public health problem in high income country, it occurs in all country regardless of level of development.

Asthma in children usually “disappear” after they reached 3 years old. For those children who still have asthma after this age, the disease usually will continue for another two or three years. If without proper control or treatment, the disease might continue until the children become adults.

Asthma becomes the third main disease which causes children under 15 years old to be admitted in hospital and the main causes of the school absentees.

University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK have done a study to investigate whether duration of television viewing in young children is associated with subsequent development of asthma.

Every year, parents were asked for their children wheezing symptoms and whether or not their children had been diagnosed with asthma.

Researchers also gathered parental report of hours of TV viewing per day by their children.

The results showed that 6 % the children with no symptom of wheeze at 3.5 years of age will have asthma at 11.5 years of age. And the children who watched TV more than 2 hours per day, were almost twice as likely to develop asthma by 11.5 years of age as those watching TV for 1 to 2 hours per day.

Inactive life style effected breathing pattern since it change the development of the lung and contribute to breathing problem among children.

The study showed that the early childhood lifestyle will determine the risk of developing asthma in later childhood.

Therefore, our children must be encouraged to spend more times playing outside with their friends to stimulate lung development and improve breathing system.

There are a lot of asthma patients involved in sports, some of them even represent their country in the Olympic. Unfortunately, there are still many parents too worry to let their children active in sports. This will lead to their children spending more times watching TV or in front of personal computers. This inherited worry, indirectly will make the asthma patients believe that they must refrain from any physical activities.

It is true that physical activities can cause asthma attack, but if the disease is under control, the child can do many healthy activities without any problem.

Even though asthma can not be cured, the patients still can live normal lifestyle as other normal people. The most important thing is to manage and control the disease wisely.

This is why parents must play important role in managing and controlling asthma in their children.

Some of the most important aspects which should be concerned by parents is to avoid the patients from the factors which could trigger asthma attack by keeping home clean and free from air pollution such as smoke from cigarettes.

All family members should know asthma symptoms such as:

• Coughing at night

• Breathing difficulty

• Wheezing

The symptoms may differ from time to time, but usually they get worse at night or early morning.

Besides always get ready with medicines and practice good balance diet, asthma can be controlled by performing physical activities according to the patient capabilities. Whereas, study shows that inactive lifestyle can causes someone to develop asthma.

So, as parents, spare some of your valuable times to accompany your children playing at the park or even better if you could together with your children playing or exercising.