Using a mobile phone can give you high blood pressure – perhaps due to the stress certain conversations can cause, new research suggests.
Researchers found that talking on a mobile phone triggers significant increases in the blood pressure that corresponds to the ‘surge’ that occurs with each heartbeat.
This is the number which doctors pay most attention to when assessing a patient’s risk of cardiovascular disease.
The researchers took 12 blood pressure readings at one-minute intervals from 94 patients with mild hypertension (raised blood pressure)
The participants, whose average age was 53, were seated in a comfortable armchair in a doctor’s consulting room and were left alone after the first blood pressure reading was taken.
Researchers phoned the patients at least three times and found that when the patient was on the phone or receiving a call, their blood pressure reading jumped from 121/77 on average to 129/82.
‘Another possibility is people who make more than thirty calls per day may feel more reassured if the mobile phone is activated since they are not running the risk of missing an opportunity.’
Every day there are 350 preventable strokes or heart attacks in the UK caused by high blood pressure.
It has long been known that high blood pressure can significantly increase the risk of heart disease.
Now wide variations in blood pressure are also recognised as an important risk factor compared with readings that show little difference over a 24-hour period.
Considered the ‘silent killer’, high blood pressure affects about a billion people worldwide, including more than one in four people in the UK and a third of adults in the United States.
source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
Tags: Blood, Mobile, pressure, Talking
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