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• Posted September 4, 2024

Could Your Cellphone Be Harming Your Heart?

Your cellphone might be harming your heart, a new study warns.

People who regularly use a cellphone have a higher risk of heart disease, researchers found in a large-scale study.

And the more time someone spends on their phone, the greater their risk for heart problems, researchers report.

Risk of heart disease was about 21% higher in people who use their phone six hours or more a week, compared with 15% higher for those on the phone four to six hours and 13% for one to three hours, results show.

“We found that compared with non-regular mobile phone users, regular mobile phone users had a significantly higher risk of incident cardiovascular diseases,” said researcher Dr. Ziliang Ye, with Southern Medical University in China.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 444,000 participants in the long-term UK Biobank research project.

The participants all reported the frequency of their cellphone use. Researchers defined regular mobile phone use as at least one call per week.

The research team tracked the participants for about 12 years, looking to see if they’d been diagnosed with stroke, heart disease, heart rhythm problems or heart failure.

It turned out that regular phone users did have a higher risk of heart problems, compared to non-users, and that more cellphone use increased that risk.

Cellphone use can impact a person’s sleep patterns and stress levels, which in turn affects heart health, researchers said.

Study results showed that people who used a mobile phone more than an hour a week had poorer sleep patterns than those who used their phone less.

Overall, poor sleep explains about 5% of the link between cellphone use and heart problems, researchers said. Psychological distress caused by cellphone use explained another 11% of the increased risk.

“A poor sleep pattern and poor mental health may adversely affect the development of cardiovascular diseases,” said researcher Dr. Xianhui Qin with Southern Medical University in China said.

It’s also possible that the radio waves emitted from the phones could be causing inflammation in the body that affects the heart and blood vessels, researchers added.

The new study was published Sept. 4 in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

“Chronic exposure to RF-EMF radiation emitted from mobile phones could lead to oxidative stress and inflammatory response,” Qin said in a journal news release. “Therefore, RF-EMF radiation exposure from mobile phones in combination with smoking and diabetes may have a synergistic effect in increasing cardiovascular diseases risk.”

The results indicate that people would do well to put down their smartphones, according to an accompanying editorial written by epidemiologists at the University of Toronto.

“Maintaining responsible mobile phone habits should be a valuable component of an all-encompassing approach to supporting cardiovascular health,” said lead editorial writer Nicolas Grubic, a doctoral student with the University of Toronto. “Before diving into hours of mindless ’doom-scrolling’ on your smartphone today, consider redirecting this time toward a more heart-healthy activity."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on cellphones and health.

SOURCE: Elsevier, news release, Sept. 4, 2024