paigns to reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes have largely focused on increasing exercise levels, but have paid little attention to the reduction of sedentary behaviors. Television (TV) watching is a major sedentary behavior in the United States. In a survey conducted in 1997, an adult male spent approximately 29 hours per week watching TV, and an adult female spent 34 hours per week. 1 In recent decades, in parallel with increasing obesity, there has been a steady increase in the number of homes with multiple TV sets, videocassette recorders (VCRs), cable TV, and remote controls, as well as the number of hours spent watching TV. 1 Compared with other sedentary activities such as sewing, playing board games, reading, writing, and driving a car, TV watching results in a lower metabolic rate. 2 Constant exposure to food advertising leads to increased food and calorie intake and unhealthy eating patterns. [3][4][5] It is well established that prolonged TV watching is associated with obesity in children. [6][7][8] However, the role of TV watching compared with other sedentary behaviors, such as sitting at work or reading, in the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes among adults

Background-Accumulating evidence indicates that abdominal adiposity is positively related to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and some other diseases independently of overall adiposity. However, the association of premature death resulting from these diseases with abdominal adiposity has not been widely studied, and findings are inconsistent. Methods and Results-In a prospective cohort study of 44 636 women in the Nurses' Health Study, associations of abdominal adiposity with all-cause and cause-specific mortality were examined. During 16 years of follow-up, 3507 deaths were identified, including 751 cardiovascular deaths and 1748 cancer deaths. After adjustment for body mass index and potential confounders, the relative risks across the lowest to the highest waist circumference quintiles were 1.00, 1.11, 1.17, 1.

We conducted a prospective, nested, case-control study of inflammatory markers as predictors of type 2 diabetes among 32,826 women who provided blood samples in 1989 through 1990 in the Nurses' Health Study. Among women free of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or cancer at baseline, 737 had developed diabetes by 2000. Control women (n ‫؍‬ 785) were selected matched on age, fasting status, race, and BMI for cases in the top BMI decile. Baseline levels of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-␣ receptor 2, interleukin (IL)-6, and C-reactive protein (CRP) were significantly higher among case than control subjects (all P < 0.001). After adjusting for BMI and other lifestyle factors, all three biomarkers significantly predicted diabetes risk; the odds ratios (ORs) comparing extreme quintiles were 1.64 (95% CI 1.10 -2.45) for TNF-␣R2, 1.91 (1.27-2.86) for IL-6, and 4.36 (2.80 -6.80) for CRP (P for trend <0.001 for all biomarkers). In a multivariate model simultaneously including the three biomarkers, only CRP levels were significantly associated with risk of diabetes (OR comparing extreme quintiles of CRP ‫؍‬ 3.99, P for trend <0.001). These data support the role of inflammation in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. Elevated CRP levels are a strong independent predictor of type 2 diabetes and may mediate associations of TNF-␣R2 and IL-6 with type 2 diabetes. Diabetes 53:693-700, 2004