How to Get Healthy Using Your Mobile

Fifteen years ago if anyone told you that you could monitor your sleeping pattern on your mobile phone, they would have through you were crazy. Today however, we live in a world rich with technology and almost anything is possible on a phone or tablet. It was the creation of apps that turned a phone into more than a device for communication. These days there is an app for almost anything, from weather to education to photo editing; however what I find most interesting and useful is medical apps.

Medical app development is changing the whole healthcare industry. It’s enabling doctors to easily reference the latest medical research, view X-rays and even prescribe apps to patients to help them manage their conditions. It’s not only valuable to medical professionals, there are many apps designed to help us track our own health at home, all you need is a smart phone or mobile device with internet access. If being healthy matters to you, here are some steps to help you achieve your goals and monitor your progress.

Whether you want to lose weight or simply get healthy, nutrition is important. They say losing weight is roughly 80% diet, amplifying the significance of your food intake. Luckily there is an infinite amount of apps specialising in nutrition and weight loss. The first step with losing weight (if that’s your plan), is to set a goal. Once you have a goal, you have something to work towards and once you achieve it you’ll feel extremely proud. After you have set your goal you need to figure out how to accomplish it, this is what the apps will help you do.

My Fitness Pal offers a calorie counter and diet tracker app. This app allows you to enter your age, gender, weight, lifestyle and weight loss goal. It works by setting a daily calorie limit, calculating your calorie intake from the food you’ve eaten and informs you on how many you have remaining for that day, it even has a bar code scanner for any packet food you’re consuming. It’s an effective way of knowing how many calories you need to reach your goal and monitors them for you, so there is no excuse for over eating. Other nutrition apps are recommended such as, Nutrition Tips, a great app to give you advice on healthy eating every day. Superfoods is another great app to help you make the right decision on what foods to stock in your larder. It’s not just about counting calories, it’s about eating nutritious food and Superfoods  can teach you what foods contain essential vitamins and minerals to sustain a healthy lifestyle.

There are numerous reasons as to why exercise is important to our health. Exercise contributes to maintaining weight loss, combating health conditions such as high blood pressure, improving your mood and it boosts energy levels, which is why there are recommended physical activity guidelines. For adults aged 19-64 it suggests to do at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity a week and muscle strengthening activity two or more days a week. As you can imagine there are plenty of apps to help you achieve the minimum and more.

There are apps specifically for women, specifically for men, specifically for those who like to run or do yoga and so on and so on. Nike Training Club is a great app for women, it gives you access to countless 15-45 minuet workouts right from your phone and talks you through how to get the most out of them. If you prefer to run or cycle, Strava is a great app choice. If you want motivation and to become faster, this app will track your session, monitor your progress and give you the ability to compete with yourself and other users. Data of your session is automatically uploaded to www.strava.com where you can view the statistics of your run, such as calories burnt, average speed and total runs to date, enabling you to compare each run.

Sleep is important to every animal on the planet, even those with the perfect weight and fitness need to acquire adequate sleep. Sleep deprivation can have many negative effects on the body such as: learning and memory, weight and metabolism, mood, stress and immune system. It’s recommended we get at least 8 hours of sleep a night, however this isn’t always possible with the busy lives people live and the technology that keeps us awake at night.  As there is an app for everything, of course there are some to help you sleep and relax.

Depending on how good or bad your sleep pattern is there are a range of apps available to you. You can go for a simple app such as Sleep which offers a range of sounds and calming music to help you relax and fall asleep. There are also meditation and hypnosis apps to help you drift off or there is Sleep Cycle alarm clock. Sleep Cycle alarm clock monitors your sleeping pattern and can tell you when you’re in your deepest and lightest sleep, this information can let you see which nights you’re getting the best nights sleep. With this, you can analyse you’re day and night, deciding what it may be during the day that could be affecting your sleep.

Being aware of our health and not ignoring signs or symptoms of diseases is essential to our general wellbeing and catching conditions early. If you don’t want to go to the doctor straight away then these apps are a great way to self-diagnose or to simply find advice. The NHS Health and Symptom checker will take you through your symptoms, offer a potential diagnoses and advice on what to do next. Other apps are available for example embarrassing bodies have developed a self-checker app, so if you don’t feel like going on national television with your embarrassing problem you can now check your symptoms in the privacy of your home.