Do you like to talk to your friends for a long time on mobile phone?
If yes, then this habit can make you prone to high blood pressure.
This claim was revealed in a medical study conducted in China.
A study from Southern Medical University reported that the habit of talking on a mobile phone for 30 minutes or more per week increases the risk of developing high blood pressure by 12%.
High blood pressure is a condition that increases the risk of diseases such as heart attack and stroke, while it is also considered to be the leading cause of death worldwide.
For the study, data from over 200,000 people aged 37 to 73 were obtained from the UK Biobank.
The subjects were not diagnosed with high blood pressure at the start of the study and were then asked how many years they had been using mobile phones and how long they made calls each week.
The results revealed a link between mobile phone calls and high blood pressure.
In fact, this association remained even after taking into account other risk factors for high blood pressure such as age, body weight, family history of high blood pressure and others.
These individuals were followed for 12 years, during which approximately 14,000 were diagnosed with high blood pressure.
Researchers reported that mobile phone users have a 7 percent higher risk of high blood pressure than those who stay away from the device.
However, people who spend 30 minutes or more per week talking on a cell phone have a 12 percent higher risk of the disease than those who make calls for less than 30 minutes.
The risk was found to be about the same in both men and women.
A more in-depth examination of the results revealed that the risk of high blood pressure increased by 25 percent for more than 6 hours of phone calls per week, compared to 16 percent for 4 to 6 hours.
The study also found that if a person has a high genetic risk of high blood pressure, their risk of the disease increases by 33 percent from mobile calls.
The researchers said that the results indicate that the risk of developing high blood pressure does not increase if the duration of mobile calls on a weekly basis is less than 30 minutes.
However, he said that more research is needed to confirm these results, however, reduce mobile calls as much as possible so as not to harm the health of the heart.
The results of the study were published in the European Heart Journal.
