You might want to ignore that incoming call: A new study found that spending just 30 minutes talking on the phone a week is linked with higher blood pressure.
According to a report published Friday in the European Heart Journal – Digital Health, Chinese researchers found that chit-chatting for half an hour once a week can lead to a 12% increased risk for the condition, which can result in heart disease and stroke — both leading causes of death in the US.
The study reasoned that mobile phone usage emits low levels of radiofrequency energy, which even in short-term exposure, has been linked to higher blood pressure, also called hypertension.
Given that “three-quarters of the global population aged 10 and over own a mobile phone,” according to study authors from the Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, the research is particularly impactful.
“It’s the number of minutes people spend talking on a mobile that matter for heart health, with more minutes meaning greater risk,” study author Professor Xianhui Qin said in a press release. “Years of use or employing a hands-free set-up had no influence on the likelihood of developing high blood pressure.”
Researchers surveyed 212,046 adults — all of whom reported using cell phones at least once a week — without hypertension between the ages of 37 to 73, aiming to connect the dots between mobile phone usage and “new-onset hypertension.”
The 12-year study found that 7% of those surveyed who use mobile phones developed hypertension compared to participants who spent less than five minutes per week talking on the phone. For those who spent 30 minutes or more gabbing on their cell phones, they had a 12% greater likelihood of developing high blood pressure.
And the longer participants spent on the phone per week, the higher the increased risk — 8% for those on the phone 30-59 minutes weekly, 13% for those spending one to three hours, 16% for four to six hours and 25% for those on the phone longer than six hours a week.
The study found that those with the highest risk, though, were participants who had a high genetic risk of hypertension. Spending at least 30 minutes on the phone for them led to a 33% higher chance of hypertension.
Nearly half of adults in the US — 116 million people or 47% of the population, have hypertension, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While Qin said that “more studies are needed to confirm the findings,” keeping phone calls to a minimum could be a smart way to reduce risk.
“Our findings suggest that talking on a mobile may not affect the risk of developing high blood pressure as long as weekly call time is kept below half an hour,” Qin said. “More research is required to replicate the results, but until then it seems prudent to keep mobile phone calls to a minimum to preserve heart health.”