Sitting your kids down in front of the television could be more harmful than you think, new research shows.

Children who watch more than two hours of television a day have twice as much chance of developing asthma as those who watch less than this. This new research conducted by the Medical Research Council in Britain doesn't suggest that watching TV actually causes asthma, but rather that a more sedentary lifestyle like watching TV, makes asthma more likely to develop in young children.

More than 3000 children were assessed from birth to the age of 12 to determine a link between a less active lifestyle and the development of asthma-related symptoms. Researchers say that there has been a recent suggestion that breathing patterns associated with a sedentary behavior, like watching TV, could lead to developmental changes in the lungs and wheezing illnesses in children.

Parents were questioned about their children's symptoms while the study also looked at how much television these children watched. Researchers added that other types of sedentary behaviour like video and computer games weren't studied because of their lack of popularity in the 1990's when these children were growing up.

The study discovered that around 6 per cent of children who had no symptoms of asthma growing up had developed the condition by the age of 12 years and that those who watched more than 2 hours of TV per day had a 50 per cent higher risk of getting asthma.

While studies looking into the connection between physical activity and asthma have produced mixed results, Elaine Vickers of Asthma UK told The Guardian newspaper in the UK that "this study is the first to directly link sedentary behavior at a very young age to a higher risk of asthma later in childhood" and that the study "adds to a wealth of evidence linking a lack of exercise and being overweight with an increased risk of asthma."

On the other hand, some studies have actually suggested an increased chance of asthma in children who spend a lot of time outdoors doing physical activities inhaling certain polutants. So while as many as 30 per cent of children are developing asthma in some countries, according to the World Health Association, further study is obviously required into these types of lifestyle behaviours and the associated risks in developing this life-threatening inflammatory disease.

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