- A new study has found an association between cell phone dialing and increased cardiovascular risk.
- Those who used their cell phones the most had a 21% increased risk of cardiovascular events compared to those who made the fewest calls.
- The relationship was most pronounced among diabetics and smokers.
- However, this study has many limitations and more research is needed.
A new study published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology includes data from nearly half a million participants that measured the association between cell phone calls and cardiovascular disease risk.
Specifically, the more time a person spends on the phone each week, the greater their risk of cardiovascular events, such as stroke or heart failure.
According to the paper, sleep, psychological distress and neuroticism are important drivers of the association.
How does cell phone use affect your health?
As cell phones continue to rule the world – there are now more cell phone contracts than there are humans on the planet – scientists are keen to understand their impact on health and well-being.
Research has largely focused on the many potential effects of smartphones. For example, whereas there was once widespread concern that cell phone use could cause brain cancer, a recent review of 63 studies by the World Health Organization (WHO) has dispelled this link. Previously, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also found no data to support the Trusted Source link.
With the advent of smartphones, it’s clearly important to understand how they affect our health. Much of today’s research focuses on the impact of social media apps or chat rooms on mental health, rather than the impact of mobile technology itself.
However, the latest study took a step back and asked whether phone calls might be linked to cardiovascular risk.
To investigate, researchers took data from 444,027 participants in the UK Biobank. The dataset included self-reported details about the amount of time they spent making calls on their cell phones.
The scientists defined “regular” phone use as receiving or making at least one call per week. More than 85 percent of the participants fit this categorization, with the rest defined as non-regular users.
Using hospital records, the scientists tracked participants’ health and deaths over an average of 12.3 years of follow-up.
Is cell phone use linked to cardiovascular disease?
The researchers combined cases of stroke, coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation and heart failure to give a composite result for cardiovascular disease risk.
After controlling for a variety of factors, they found a slight increase (4%) in the composite cardiovascular disease risk for conventional users compared to non-conventional cell phone users. However, this difference increased the longer people spent on the phone.
Compared to people who made or received calls for no more than 5 minutes per week, people who used cell phones:
- 5-29 minutes 3%. had an increased risk of
- 30-59 minutes 7%. had an increased risk of
- 1-3 hours 13%. Increased risk of
- 4-6 hours 15%. Increased risk of
- risk of 6 hours or more 21%. Increased
According to the paper, three factors appear to play a significant role in the relationship between cell phone use and cardiovascular disease:
Psychological distress explained 11.5% of the association.
- Sleep quality 5.1%.
- Neuroticism 2.3 percent.
“Poor sleep patterns and poor mental health may adversely affect the development of cardiovascular disease by disrupting circadian rhythms, endocrine and metabolic disruption, and increased inflammation,” Xianhui Qin, one of the study’s authors, said.
Interestingly, the scientists also found that the link between cell phone use and cardiovascular disease risk was most pronounced among smokers and diabetics. The authors suggest that this link may be because “exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields from cell phones, in combination with smoking and diabetes, may have a stronger effect in increasing [cardiovascular disease] risk.
How Cell Phones Increase Heart Disease Risk
Medical News Today interviewed Cheng-Han Chen, M.D., a board-certified interventional cardiologist and medical director of the structural heart program at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, Calif.
Because this was an observational study, causation could not be proven. However, we asked what factors might help explain the relationship.
“The results suggest that some of the effects may be related to the impact of cell phone use on mental health and sleep,” explains Chen, who was not involved in the study. “There may also be confounding factors that influence the results.”
“For example, the study found that increased cell phone use was more common among current smokers and people with diabetes. The reported increased risk of cardiovascular disease may be due to increased risk from smoking and diabetes rather than cell phone use,” he continued.
MNT M.D. spoke with Rigved Tadwalkar also with a board-certified consulting cardiologist at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif.
“It’s well known now that spending a lot of time on the phone can lead to poor sleep,” he told MNT. “Sleep deprivation disrupts the body’s natural circadian rhythm, leading to stress on the heart and blood vessels.”
He also explained how prolonged cell phone use can increase stress and anxiety levels, which can increase blood pressure and possibly inflammation – both of which are linked to cardiovascular disease.
Should People Worry About Their Cell Phones?
According to Chen, “Unless these results are confirmed in future studies to better explain the relationship between cell phone use and heart disease, I wouldn’t consider cell phone use to be a current risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease.
Tadwalkar shares this view: “The results of this study should be taken seriously, but with a balanced view,” he says. There may be other factors that are not adequately considered in these types of studies, such as the type of cell phone technology used.
Jim Liu M.D., a cardiologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, also spoke with MNT and mentioned another important caveat:
“The study only asked participants how often they used their cell phones to make calls during baseline, which was between 2006 and 2010.”
Liu, who was not involved in the study, reminds us that people are now using their cell phones in more diverse ways, including a myriad of messaging services, real-time videoconferencing, and a host of social media apps.
“These may make actual phone calls much less frequent. This study did not assess time spent doing other things on cell phones, such as browsing social media or playing games,” he said.
“While these findings require further validation, they demonstrate the interconnectedness of modern technology and heart health, urging clinicians and patients to be more mindful of daily habits that may affect long-term cardiovascular outcomes,” Tadwalkar told MNT .
While we wait for more research, Chen suggests that people can reduce their cardiovascular risk by “eating a healthy, balanced diet, engaging in regular physical activity, getting an adequate amount of quality sleep, maintaining a healthy body weight, avoiding smoking and drinking, and reducing stress”.