Your Questions Answered!
By Dr. Mehmet Oz
Is talking on my cell phone a lot bad for my health?
No one knows for sure what the long-term effects of cell phones on brain cells will be. "But my personal belief, based on some data that shows that brain cells are affected by the cell phone—if you look at the brain cells on the right side of your brain versus the left side, when you're listening with the cell phone on the right side, they're a little different—we may actually find some problems down the road," Dr. Oz says.
What about cordless cell phone receivers? While these do reduce the amount of energy from the cell phone that reaches your head, their effects are also unknown. "They're probably beneficial, but they're receivers and so they might receive other energy from other places as well. We're not quite sure on those as yet," Dr. Oz says. "But I wouldn't throw my cell phone away. I have one, but I think for a lot of us we ought to think at least about how much we're on the cell phone."
Instead, Dr. Oz says the safest solution is using the speaker phone option. "The reason for that is the distance that you hold the phone away will cut the amount of energy [reaching your brain] by a quarter. So it's a lot if you can pull it farther from your head." Or, even better, he says to stick to the land line if you can.
No one knows for sure what the long-term effects of cell phones on brain cells will be. "But my personal belief, based on some data that shows that brain cells are affected by the cell phone—if you look at the brain cells on the right side of your brain versus the left side, when you're listening with the cell phone on the right side, they're a little different—we may actually find some problems down the road," Dr. Oz says.
What about cordless cell phone receivers? While these do reduce the amount of energy from the cell phone that reaches your head, their effects are also unknown. "They're probably beneficial, but they're receivers and so they might receive other energy from other places as well. We're not quite sure on those as yet," Dr. Oz says. "But I wouldn't throw my cell phone away. I have one, but I think for a lot of us we ought to think at least about how much we're on the cell phone."
Instead, Dr. Oz says the safest solution is using the speaker phone option. "The reason for that is the distance that you hold the phone away will cut the amount of energy [reaching your brain] by a quarter. So it's a lot if you can pull it farther from your head." Or, even better, he says to stick to the land line if you can.
Published 01/01/2006