Mobile phone calls linked with increased risk of high blood pressure
escardio.org
escardio.org
> Professor Qin said: “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. 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.”
I really wish more work was done to establish a causal relationship before publishing something like this.
Merits of this study:
* It was large, twelve years and over 200,000 participants.
* The impact was dose responsive. People that reported talking longer on the phone had greater chances of hypertension.
* The impact is large enough to cause concern.
* In the published article, a mechanism of action was purposed (RF-EMF), and other studies related to this mechanism were cited.
* It fits the expected amount of 'controlling for' third variables you would expect, even if we cannot control for everything.
Weaknesses of this study:
* Mobile usage was self reported. Using empirical data such as cellphone bills or data from cellphone would have been much more accurate. There could be a bias where those with higher blood pressure perceive themselves as talking on mobile more frequently.
* There was no determination of the nature of the calls. Personally, my blood pressure feels very different when I talk to family for 30 minutes than if I'm talking to Comcast for 30 minutes.
* About 3/5 of the study participants dropped out. We'd expect lots of dropouts to occur with such a long study, but it could skew the data if dropouts had some statistical significance on measured values and weren't random. Dropouts are almost never random.
* The article admits those with mobile phone usage seem to be at a higher natural disposition for hypertension. More likely to smoke, many other high variables. It seems plausible that some other risk factors were associated with that cluster that did not get accounted for.
* No direct measurement of the purposed mechanism of action was performed.
In my opinion that's the explanation. Even if not considering the extremes you mentioned, the more you're interrupted the less relaxed you are. The metric here is minutes talked but they're probably linear with the number of unexpected calls.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say my theory is more plausible on its face.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
It's a 7 person study, and it looks like they didn't correct for multiple comparisons. i.e. nothing to see here.
They’re beating the drum for an RF/EMF mechanism based on self reported usage.
If the authors really believe RF-EMF can cause hypertension, then this study is a fine first step. But they really should find a way to test the mechanism of action before saying they've found a causal relationship.
Even if RF-EMF isn't the cause, the effect is large enough that it begs the question "Why", which is where the other possible factors suggested come in.
In my mind, increased calls are linked with increased cases of emergencies (because much communication is done through text chat and equivalents), so calls are for when that's not sufficient or for when people are away from their normal groups for extended periods. Both of those tend to induce stress. Does stress increasing hypertension account for this?
Not true! Economists have devoted person-millenia developing the theory of instrumental variables, which lets you extract causal relationships from historical non-experimental data.
That said, it's damn hard to find a good instrument. Many economists use it badly, and most doctors don't even know the theory.
The problem is we conduct science on systems we don't fully understand. Because we don't fully understand it, it's easy to miss important information we didn't know is important.
The double blind with random selection allows us to control for all important information, determine causation, and is the best known method for controlling for bias. We don't have to worry about missing important variables because the nature of random selection means those variables are randomly distributed.
The study depended on self-report? The solution is obviously to stop reporting that one talks on the phone.
This is basically the logic that cigarette companies used to deny that they were causing lung cancer. A longitudinal study is about as good as you can get for testing these sort of hypotheses.
Trying the same with RF-EMF would be an obvious next step. Just a personal opinion, but I don't think the results will hold in direct study.
So… radio waves cannot be the cause.
But until the actual science is performed by making this recommendation and tracking the results, there's no advice or conclusion that can be drawn from stuff like this. We need more science literacy --in journalism--.
Nevermind that, maybe the % correlation they found is simply roughly the proportion that find phone calls themselves stressful.
Regardless, it just sounds like someone publishing to not perish.
But not having a job or a family member that calls you with stressful crap?
Put them on a speaker and blast, but I can see for people that depend on phone for business, it's going to be rough.
The fact that I’m now expected to answer their stressful crap 24/7 definitely raises my blood pressure.
I like to spend time in the wilderness, and I’ve thought a lot about this concept of “reachability” and how it contributes to the kind of unique feeling I have when I’m deep in the backcountry.
Over time technology has increased the percentage of the day where someone is reachable: home phones became ubiquitous, then answering machines, then cell phones with limited coverage, now cell phones with extremely broad coverage, even on airplanes. Accordingly, most people now assume they can get ahold of you basically whenever. You can try to manage people’s expectations as an individual, but you will be swimming against the current.
I think being unreachable sometimes is healthy. Heading into the backcountry with no cell service is an incredibly freeing feeling for me, and one I think many people simply never feel these days.
I don't always have MY phone on me either, and even if I do I don't always answer.
It is this phone where I have the biggest problem with people and boundaries. Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by needy children but they're in their 40s, 50s, and 70s.
A phone call, a voice mail, a call back, another voice mail to remind me about the first call, maybe a call that night too. Nobody even died. It's not always the same person either.
So the next call I do answer will be mostly a shaming about how I don't answer the phone. You're right and your behavior right now is why. Have a nice day mom.
Does it sound stressful? I don't care probably even as much as I should, but one day it will be something important but the boy cried wolf too many times and got eaten.
Just remember. If you have them, teach your kids that while they may be the main character in their story, they are not the main character in the story, and the difference between the two.
Seriously? No control for non-mobile phone use, or even using a headset (i.e. not raising your arm)?
Controlling for those over six months with a smaller sample would yield a more-meaningful result. This study fails to rule out the hypothesis that getting calls correlates with hypertension, which neighbours stress causes hypertension, which we know. (I am trying to find the study, because a quote near the top cites hands-free use.)
the cross-sectional and case-control designs limit conclusions about causation and directionality
Busy people spend more time on the phone?
So I'd argue there's no established link, but there might be an obvious correlation that might warrant more study.
I'd assume that talking through DECT or WiFi has similar effects, which would mean that there is no safe way to phone wirelessly longer then 30 minutes a day. Should I put my aging mother on a wired phone and internet connection just to be on the safe side? Or is that tinfoil hat territory?
my hunch would be that talking over the telephone is stressful and causes the high blood pressure and it doesn't matter that the device is mobile.
as-is the article seems to suggest radiation as cause, not the act of talking-without-seeing.
I do find it easier to understand when I'm looking directly at them in-person, partly because I can infer a lot of meaning from their facial expressions and match what I'm hearing to how their mouth is moving.
not to mention that almost all of my phone calls fall into two categories: calling my family to catch up, and calling services to wait on hold and deal with an underpaid support rep on the other end. category 2 is almost always stressful and irritating in and of itself, and would be similarly stressful (albeit less so) if I went to their location in-person to deal with the support issue.
if this is the case, then how do teenage girls spend hours talking with friends on the phone? I have doubts on this hunch
Why fix the phone issue if you still have the not-rich issue anyways, I imagine both of these have outsized impact on risk of high blood pressure...
It's true that there are plenty of other sources of high blood pressure which are unrelated to phone calls but may be correlated to lack of wealth. :)
Ironically, video calls use more bandwidth yet are cheaper (for voice calls using the standard phone dialing functionality I mean, I don't know too much about plain old voice calls over wifi and their cost structure)