Longer Mobile Phone Conversations May Lead To Rise In Blood Pressure Levels: Study

Lengthy phone conversations can likely have negative effects on your health, a new study has claimed.

If you are too much of a phone person then it may be advisable to reduce your conversation duration as the study has found that excessive phone usage can increase the risk of high blood pressure by 12%.

The findings of the research, published in the European Heart Journal--Digital Health, suggested that people who talk for more than 30 minutes or more per week are more susceptible to high blood pressure as compared to those who speak on the phone for less than 30 minutes.

"It's the number of minutes people spend talking on a mobile that matters for heart health, with more minutes meaning greater risk," the study author Professor Xianhui Qin of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, told Medical Express. "Years of use or employing a hands-free set-up had no influence on the likelihood of developing high blood pressure. More studies are needed to confirm the findings."

There were 7.91 billion mobile phone users across the world, as of 2021, with people spending over three hours a day on their mobile phones on average. The number of users is expected to grow every passing year.

Nearly 1.3 billion adults aged 30 to 79 years worldwide have high blood pressure, according to the World Health Organization estimates. High blood pressure is a leading risk factor for cardiac events and even premature deaths. Even short-term exposure to low levels of radiofrequency energy emitted by mobile phones is linked to the rise in blood pressure levels.

Drawing on data from UK Biobank, the study examined a total of 212,046 adults aged 37 to 73 years without hypertension, and information on the use of a mobile phone to make and receive calls was collected through state-of-the-art technology.

Then there were factors like body mass index, race, deprivation, family history of hypertension, education, smoking status, blood pressure, blood lipids, and inflammation, which were all acknowledged before reaching a conclusion.

The study concluded, after a median follow-up of 12 years, that a mobile phone increases the risk of developing hypertension by 7% when compared to non-users. Moreover, individuals who converse on their phones for more than 30 minutes per week have a 12% greater likelihood of developing high blood pressure than those who talk for less than 30 minutes, irrespective of gender.

Furthermore, genetics also played a role in feeding into the risk. Individuals with a high genetic risk and spending at least 30 minutes per week on mobile phone calls stand a 33% higher chance of developing high blood pressure compared to those with low genetic risk who talk on the phone for less than 30 minutes per week, the study said.