Cell phone addiction causes hearing loss – Experts

Some medical practitioners in the South-East have warned that people addicted to cell phones risked hearing loss.
They made this known in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria In Owerri.
A medical doctor, Dr Charles Obi, identified hearing loss as the most common issue associated with constant cell phone usage.
Obi told NAN that other effects included headaches, insomnia and tiredness often as a result of lack of sleep.
The medical practitioner also added that other not so common side effects included brain tumours, hypertension and stroke.
He also said this could be linked to the radiation emitted by cell phones which cause health problems with prolonged usage.
He, however, suggested using earpieces for answering calls and to avoid making calls when the phone was overheated to lessen the effects on the ear.
In Enugu State, Dr Ethel Chime, an Otolaryngologist with the Enugu State University Teaching Hospital, also urged phone users to always spend lesser time in making use of their phone.
Chime said spending less time making calls or browsing with phone would go a long way to prevent some of the health hazards associated with the use of cell phones.
The doctor listed some common health hazards of phone addiction to include headaches, ear aches, vision problems, neck pains, inactivity, intellectual laziness and acoustic neuroma, which is a tumour that grows on the balance and hearing nerve in the head that might cause hearing loss.
Chime said aside the fact that putting the cell phone close to the ear for a long time during calls, some hands free devices such as earpiece and headphones were even more dangerous.
She noted that some of these hands free were inserted into the ear canal, while some have high decibels that were not standard for the ear, thereby causing acoustic neuroma which later results into deafness and various ear infections.
She added that electromagnetic waves released by cell phones were other reasons why one should not stay long pressing the phone, warning that most phone radiations during calls or Internet usage were usually high and were harmful to human health.
Chime advised that time spent on phones should be limited and if one should use hands-free, it should be one that covers just the outer ears and the maximum loudness within normal standard.

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