While we’ve all got dozens of apps on our smartphones, how many are actually improving our health? Spending time with our faces in our phones often get a bad rap, but these health apps could have the opposite effect – helping you keep track of different aspects of your fitness, including the quality of your sleep, your heart rate or calorie intake. They are also a handy way to keep track of your health when you’re on the road.
This is just a selection of the myriad of options available, with some apps tailored for certain devices.
Lose it! allows you record what you eat, create meal plans and share recipes. It does the same for exercise, allowing you to share exercises with your friends and family through its accompanying website. Also making it easy to use is the fact you don’t have to be connected to the web to use it.
This app could be thought of as a personal trainer in your pocket and includes hundreds of exercises — including pictures and videos when needed — along with an “exercise builder” tool to help you create a custom routine. If you’re not sure how to start, try one of the 25 expert-designed routines to get you going.
Forget placing your fingers on a pulse point and counting. Instead, cover your device’s camera with your finger, and the app will read the subtle changes as your finger’s blood vessels expand and contract with every heartbeat and turn them into information you can see on screen — rather like a heart monitor you’d see in a clinic.
The principle behind this app is simple: track what you eat and ultimately lose weight. Rather than carrying around a notebook and a pen, simply enter your food choices into your mobile device. The app boasts the largest database of foods and monitors other indicators like fat, protein and sugars. It even calculates numbers for your homemade recipes.
WebMD is designed by medical experts, with popular features including a Symptom Checker, a database of drugs and treatments, a pill identification tool and information on various conditions. The app’s First Aid Essentials guide is available offline, which is handy, especially if you’re camping or generally away from civilisation. The only thing to keep in mind with this one is that it’s American, meaning drug names and spellings may differ.
What if your alarm clock could monitor your sleep cycles and avoid waking you out of a deep sleep? Your device’s accelerometers — technology which measures movement and gravity — can make getting up a little more pleasant. Place your device on the corner of your bed and the accelerometer tracks your movements to determine what sleep cycle you’re in. Wake up during the lightest sleep cycle to your choice of alarm sounds or music from your collection.
This app was developed by Josh Swinnerton, whose mum suffers from Parkinson’s Disease as well as a number of other conditions. The idea for MedAdvisor came about as he watched her struggle to remember to take her medications, and juggle refilling scripts and seeing the doctor for new scripts. The app has a few handy features including reminders to take medicines or see a doctor for a refill, Tap-to-Refill (so your prescription is waiting at the pharmacy) and Snap-and-Send, which allows users to send a photo of their script directly to the pharmacy. The app is linked to a quarter of all Australian pharmacies.
This is an edited version of a story that first appeared on The Retiree. The Retiree Magazine is the ultimate lifestyle publication for those that are retired, semi-retired or approaching retirement and, most importantly, those who believe that life really does begin at 50!
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