Watching TV: Even Worse for Kids Than You Think

It's no secret that sedentary behavior contributes to obesity and chronically poor health. But not all sedentary behaviors are created equal, according to a new study that examines the link between blood pressure in children and their choice of inactive pastimes, including watching TV, using the computer and reading.

Researchers in the U.S. and Spain collaborated on the study of 111 children ages 3 to 8 and found that of all the forms of inactivity they examined, television-viewing was the worst. It was linked to significantly higher blood pressure in children - the more TV kids watched, the higher their blood pressure - and the effect held true regardless of whether a child was heavy or at a healthy weight. What's more, other sedentary behaviors, like using a computer, were not associated with similar blood-pressure hikes, according to the study, which was published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

"These results show that sedentary behavior, and more specifically television-viewing, is related to blood pressure independent of body fat or obesity level," says Dr. Joey Eisenmann, a kinesiologist at Michigan State University and one of the study's co-authors.

To determine levels of inactivity over one week, the children in the study wore accelerometers, which resemble pedometers but instead of tracking distance, they record the body's acceleration in a vertical plane - sitting results in a score of zero, and walking and running produce progressively higher scores. The researchers considered anything under a score of 50 per day as sedentary. They coupled this data with reports from the children's parents about how much time the kids spent in inactive pursuits, including watching television, sitting at a computer, playing video games, reading or doing other projects that don't require much movement.

The children were sedentary for five hours each day, and 1.5 of those hours were spent in front of a TV, computer or video game, on average. When the researchers further broke down screen time by activity, TV-viewing had the strongest correlation with higher blood pressure. Kids watching from 90 to 330 minutes of television each day had systolic and diastolic blood-pressure readings (the two numbers that indicate pressure caused by blood pumping from the top and bottom chambers of the heart, respectively) that were five to seven points higher than those of children watching less than half an hour of television a day.

"These results show that TV-viewing really is the worst of all possible sedentary activities," says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children's Hospital Boston, who was not part of the study. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 2 should not watch any television and that older children limit their viewing to one to two hours per day.

So what is it about watching TV that's worse than playing video games or surfing the Internet? Certainly, playing games and using computers involve some movement, like fidgeting or changing body positions, but is that enough to explain the difference? The study's authors propose several other possible explanations. For instance, beyond the complete inactivity involved with TV-viewing - which alone raises the risk of high blood pressure - children may be compounding their sloth by eating junk food. "A full bag of chips or a plate of hot dogs can disappear a lot more quickly while watching TV than they might at any other occasion," says Ludwig. And the types of foods that children are likely to be eating in front of the tube, like salty snacks, can push up blood pressure readings.

In addition, say the authors, if kids watch TV too close to bedtime, their minds may remain stimulated just enough to keep them awake and miss out on precious hours of sleep. Cutting short a good night's slumber, past research suggests, can lead to weight gain and hypertension, since the body's metabolism doesn't have enough opportunity to recharge and renew itself overnight.

To those reasons, Ludwig adds a few others. Previous studies have found that watching television lulls people, especially young children, into a low-energy state that is akin to sleeping - that's about as sedentary as a person can get. "Some studies suggest that the metabolic rate can fall even below that of sleeping," he says. "They suggest that children are getting into some deep hypnotic state at times." (See the top 10 TV series of 2008.)

Worse yet is the content of television programming, which Ludwig suggests may have long-lasting repercussions. "There is the possibility that the greatest long-term impact of TV viewing is on children's eating habits through food commercials," he says. Some experts estimate that youngsters are bombarded with 10,000 food commercials each year during children's programming, and most of them aren't promoting salads or fruit. All this marketing, says Ludwig, changes children's taste preferences and causes them to crave - and beg for - unhealthy foods. "Children are seeing these commercials at an age when they are just establishing eating habits that can become ingrained and last a lifetime," he says.

Eisenmann stresses that while the new study found an association between TV-viewing and higher blood-pressure readings, it did not measure whether children developed hypertension. However, in previous studies involving the same group of children, whom he and the other scientists have been studying for four years, about 20% of the children had developed prehypertension or hypertension - often because of weight gain.

Although the study did not follow the children over time, the findings still suggest that TV-viewing has a strong influence on the health of young children. Environmental and lifestyle factors, like diet and inactivity, account for about 70% of a person's blood pressure (genes determine the rest), and high blood pressure at a young age may increase kids' risk of developing heart disease in adulthood. "There is no fundamental biological need for TV-viewing in childhood," says Ludwig. "So these findings certainly warrant follow-up."

Source: Alice Park, Time Magazine

Cafepress Commits Suicide

CafePress, the world’s leading print-on-demand service, announced a major change June 1st that will have a huge negative impact on its huge community shopkeepers that manage over 6 million shops.

Since 1999, people can upload their designs on CafePress and sell them on t-shirts, stickers, buttons and many other products. The designer determines the price of the product and thus the commission they will earn when the product sells. When someone orders one of your products, CafePress will kick into gear by printing your design and sending it to the customer. The shopkeeper gets the commission. CafePress also has a marketplace where everyone’s designs can be found. For many shopkeepers most of their sales come through the marketplace, as CafePress spends a lot of money on advertising and their pages rank very high in search engines.

What CafePress recently announced that is making everyone very mad is that they will fix all prices in their marketplace and give shopkeepers only 10% of the final retail price. 10% is very low, as some shopkeepers have markups of as high as 30% to 40% to make a living. If in the past a t-shirt had a base price of $15 and the shopkeeper decided to have a $5 markup the t-shirt will sell for $20 and the shopkeeper will get $5. In the new scheme CafePress will be able to determine the retail price of all products in their marketplace and give the shopkeeper only 10%. So if they decide to sell the t-shirt for $18, the shopkeeper will get only $1.80. That is a huge cut in earnings.

In the summer of 2008, CafePress already made some unpopular changes to their volume bonus scheme that resulted in shopkeepers’ income to drop 20% to 30%. As a result of that change some shopkeepers already left CafePress and moved their designs to other print-on-demand sites, like Printfection. This week’s announced change will cut another 50% to 80% off people’s income. This has hundreds of people enraged on CafePress’ forums.

Many shopkeepers have built up a business on CafePress that allowed them to quit their day jobs and work on CafePress full-time. A lot of these people will now be forced to find other jobs in a time when jobs are scarce. There are also people who have managed to make a living off CafePress because their illness prevented them from working out of the house. They are also screwed. Others were laid off from their job and are using CafePress to make some extra money. Thousands of others are relying on CafePress to supplement their income besides their other job(s). For all these people their CafePress income pays for their mortgage, bills and children’s educations. A sudden cute of 50% to 80% in income is outrageous.

It is not only an immoral and greedy business decision, it also doesn’t make any sense from every other perspective. CafePress’ entire community is built on the premise that shopkeepers own their own designs and can determine the markup. Some people just put simple text on their t-shirts and sell them with a low markup. Other designers get expensive graphics software, buy fonts and spend hours or days to make an elaborate design. It makes no sense whatsoever to fix prices on all these designs and to lower people’s markup to 10%.

If CP is smart they will revert this planned change. Many big shopkeepers, who work on CafePress full-time and depend on the income to pay their bills cannot afford the 50% to 80% pay cut. CafePress’ announcement yesterday was the equivalent of laying off thousands of people. Many of these successful shopkeepers have already announced that they will close their CP stores and move to other PODs like Printfection .

If CP goes ahead with this change it will be the end of CafePress.

source: www.wolfstad.com