Here's why you shouldn't sleep by your phone

Hands up if you struggle to let go of your phone at night, placing it lovingly under your pillow until the morning.

Us too.

Well you might want to stop doing that, according to new guidelines by the Californian Department of Public Health.

“Some laboratory experiments and human health studies have suggested the possibility that long-term, high use of cell phones may be linked to certain types of cancer and other health effects,” read the guidelines.

While they have listed conditions including brain cancer, lower sperm count, headaches and negative effects on people’s learning, memory, hearing, behaviour and sleep, scientists stress that there is no definitive link between mobile phones and these health problems.

However, they have given a few recommendations to avoid radiation exposure.

These include using your phone’s speaker or a headset when talking, keeping your phone away from your body and in a bag instead, and not putting it under your pillow or by your bed when you sleep.

They have also recommended limiting your phone use when travelling in a fast-moving vehicle, when you have weak signal, and when trying to stream video as all of these things cause phones to release higher levels of radio frequency energy.

It’s worth noting that phones give off lower radio frequency energy when connected to WiFi or Bluetooth.

In 2011, the World Health Organisation’s Agency for Research on Cancer published a review saying that phone radiation is “possibly carcinogenic.”

However, further long-term studies will need to be carried out to prove any link between mobile phones and cancer.

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