C++ Curl Multi Perform Blocking Issue - c++

Question

In my QT app, I been using curl's curl_easy_setopt, and notice that its actually synchronous which was blocking my main gui. Inside my app I have a timer that has a set interval that calls curl. Anytime my timer callback would run curl, it would block my app for a few seconds than continue. So now im trying to figure out how to perform curl's multi interface and multi perform which is asynchronous, and its giving me the same blocking/lagging issue. Can anyone give me advice.
Below is my code, as well as curl's website demo for multi perform.
/********Header Files******/
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <unistd.h>
....
/************My Timer runs the code below every 10 seconds************/
std::string url = searchEngineParam.toStdString();
std::string userAgent = options[5]->userAgentsOptions[0].toStdString();
CURL *http_handle;
CURLM *multi_handle;
int still_running; /* keep number of running handles */
int repeats = 0;
curl_global_init(CURL_GLOBAL_DEFAULT);
http_handle = curl_easy_init();
curl_easy_setopt(http_handle, CURLOPT_URL, url.c_str());
curl_easy_setopt(http_handle, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1L);
curl_easy_setopt(http_handle,CURLOPT_USERAGENT,userAgent.c_str());
curl_easy_setopt(http_handle, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
curl_easy_setopt(http_handle, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, (void *)&chunk);
curl_easy_setopt(http_handle, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, WriteMemoryCallback);
/* init a multi stack */
multi_handle = curl_multi_init();
/* add the individual transfers */
curl_multi_add_handle(multi_handle, http_handle);
/* we start some action by calling perform right away */
curl_multi_perform(multi_handle, &still_running);
do {
CURLMcode mc; /* curl_multi_wait() return code */
int numfds;
/* wait for activity, timeout or "nothing" */
mc = curl_multi_wait(multi_handle, NULL, 0, 1000, &numfds);
if(mc != CURLM_OK) {
fprintf(stderr, "curl_multi_wait() failed, code %d.\n", mc);
break;
}
/* 'numfds' being zero means either a timeout or no file descriptors to
wait for. Try timeout on first occurrence, then assume no file
descriptors and no file descriptors to wait for means wait for 100
milliseconds. */
if(!numfds) {
repeats++; /* count number of repeated zero numfds */
if(repeats > 1) {
WAITMS(100); /* sleep 100 milliseconds */
}
}
else
repeats = 0;
curl_multi_perform(multi_handle, &still_running);
} while(still_running);
curl_multi_remove_handle(multi_handle, http_handle);
curl_easy_cleanup(http_handle);
curl_multi_cleanup(multi_handle);
curl_global_cleanup();