There is such a thing as too much talking on the phone, and research has pointed to heightened risks to heart health for people who regularly have longer phonecalls. — Photo: Christin Klose/dpa
BEIJING: "You talk too much” – that rhetorical cudgel wielded by a taciturn curmudgeon or sometimes a last resort when a perceived babbler won't pipe down – may also be sound health advice.
A team of Chinese scientists appear to have found evidence that there is, in fact, such a thing as talking too much, linking chatting on a mobile phone for half an hour each week with "a 12% increased risk of high blood pressure."
"It's the number of minutes people spend talking on a mobile that matter for heart health, with more minutes meaning greater risk," said study author Professor Xianhui Qin of Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, whose research into the matter was published by the European Society of Cardiology in May, in the European Heart Journal – Digital Health.
The study sought to unpick the relationship between making and receiving phone calls and new-onset hypertension, using data from the UK Biobank, "a large-scale biomedical database and research resource, containing in-depth genetic and health information from half a million UK participants."
The team went through data covering 212,046 people aged between 37 and 73 without hypertension, of which 88% were mobile phone users.
The information gathered included including years of phone use, hours per week, whether a hands-free device or speakerphone was used, the team said in a statement, adding that they "analysed the relationship between mobile phone usage and new-onset hypertension after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, race, deprivation, family history of hypertension," among other factors.
Follow-up data showed almost 14,000, or 7%, of the participants developing hypertension, with those talking on their phones for 30 minutes or more each week having a 12% greater likelihood of new-onset high blood pressure than participants who spent less than 30 minutes on the phone.
For more dedicated chatterboxes, the risk rose with time of use, hitting 16% at four hours and 25% for more than six hours.
"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," Qin said. – dpa
