Life is full of hard choices. One such being whether doing hours of housework is preferable to dying. Whilst this is often taken merely as a verbal threat from one's nearest and dearest, new research suggests that it may actually be true. Ironically, given most people's thoughts on the excitement of doing housework, this has been termed by the media as "literally dying through boredom".

Men are at increased risk of this fatal blow, mainly because even in these days of supposed equality, rather than doing the housework or looking after the kids they tend to faff around doing not very much in their non-career time.

Questionnaires revealed, perhaps less than surprisingly, that during free time women were more likely to do positive active things such as the housework, looking after children, volunteering and otherwise pursuing some actual goal then men. The male of the species on the other hand was more happy sitting around playing crappy computer games, watching TV or doing absolutely nothing. The average man did these passive activities for around 60% of his leisure time, which was around 2 hours and 17 minutes a day.

The research, led by Dr. Bloomfield and presented at a Social Policy Research Centre seminar in Australia, asked men about how bored, lonely or meaningful they felt during their leisure time. A correlation was found between being more bored and less meaningful, doing more passive activities and having a greater chance of dying.

Some of this can be explained by an increase in risky behaviours. If you're more bored, it is more likely you will drink alcohol, smoke and do other unhealthy things. However even when the researchers controlled for these and other biological, demographic and socioeconomic factors, there was an significantly added risk of dying correlated with the male passive lifestyle.

It is presently unknown quite why that is. One hypothesis from Dr. Bloomfield was that it was maybe that "boredom led to anxious and depressive states, which then hindered the functioning of the immune system", but further investigation is needed before obtaining a definitive answer. In the mean time boys, unless you're suicidal, the Poorhouse suggests you grab those feather dusters and get to sweeping away the cobwebs.

Women, don't think you can cut down too much though. It has previously been found that the risk of ladies getting endometrial cancer reduces as the amount of housework they do increases. Doing more than four (!) hours a day seems to reduce your risk of getting that type of cancer by up to 30%.