Don’t let your gadget control you

Are you careless with your mobile phone? Do you let your phone control you instead of the other way around?  Now this is just my layperson’s point of view but, for health reasons, there are some things you ought not to be doing with your phone, regardless of whether it’s on or off.  Before the mobile phone was invented, most people would go to bed with a good book, or at the very least, a boring book that would send them to sleep the moment they started reading it. Now the concept of books has totally disappeared and people go to bed with a mobile phone in their hands where they now do all their reading. This is the first thing that none of us should be doing with our phones. If you want to disrupt your sleep pattern, this is the way to do it.

But if they’re not looking at the screen, instead of a good book being on their bedside table, they have their smartphone, and most of the time it’s left on in case someone calls them or they hear the ping of a social media notification.  Now, a few years ago, I was in a shop and a man with his daughter came up to me. He was Greek. He’d seen me put my phone in my breast pocket. He came up to me and asked me what I was doing with my phone in that pocket. Did I not know how dangerous it was for my heart? So, never put your phone in a breast pocket or any pocket that is near a vital organ. That also includes your back pocket and your front trouser pocket both of which are near your vital organs.

We all know how radiation adversely affects red blood cells that begin to leak haemoglobin. This then accumulates in the body leading to heart disease and kidney stone. Many experts believe that all smartphones emit some degree of radiation in the form of microwaves that can lead to cancer. They also emit some kind of radiofrequency, exposure to which leads to heating up of the tissues, much like putting food in the microwave. Generally speaking, exposure to anything emitted by a smartphone can cause sleep disturbances that, in turn, leads to memory problems, headaches, nausea, dizziness and hypertension.

Aside from the adverse health problems associated with anything that the phone itself emits, there are countless health issues associated with the way we handle our devices. We are, well most people are, careless.

I have seen people put down their mobile devices on top of dustbins in shopping malls and then pick them up and use them as if they’d been sitting on their nice clean table at home. That bin has been touched by every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet. People have dumped their food in them, their used tissues and I’ve seen some men actually open them up and spit in them. Does this not deter you from putting your phone down on just any random surface?

I have also seen people hand over their phones to a pharmacist or cashier just so they can use their vouchers that are on their Apps. Do they not realise that the pharmacist and cashier have been handling grubby notes all day? She may also have been sneezing and coughing or handling items and cash from people who may have been sneezing and coughing. Yet they are all too happy to hand it over? Then when she hands the phone back to them, they just put it to their ears and then eat food with the same hand. Sometimes it’s not to use a voucher for a purchase but to let someone else make a call on your behalf using your phone. Do you have any idea where those hands and ears have been? What if that person has an ear infection that they’re hiding from workmates? That infection is then transmitted to your phone and then, lo and behold, to you.  

People also seem to be careless in the bathroom. They’ll go, forgetting that their back pocket has a phone in it which then falls into the toilet bowl. It’s now a question of having to fish it out! But often they’ll put the phone down beside the washroom sink. Again, any idea what was sitting on that sink before you? Public washrooms never seem clean to me even if they’re cleaned every half an hour. Why? Because they are public washrooms and anyone could have come in between that half hour and done anything.  We need to be more careful where we put down our devices whether we’re at home or out and about. We also need to make sure that we do not hand our phone over to just anyone and, if we do, at the very least, clean them before using them. Let’s control our devices.