Your tablet and phone can help you investigate symptoms, monitor your fitness and even train your brain. Jonathan Parkyn reveals the health apps that really work
Health trackers and “fitbands” have become big business over the last couple of years. But you don’t necessarily need an overpriced elastic band round your wrist to keep yourself in good nick. There are dozens of brilliant apps that let you monitor, analyse and improve your health using your tablet or phone – and many of the best are completely free.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of poor-quality, misleading health apps on the market, too. So here we’ll direct you to the best ones, so you can be sure of good health advice and steer clear of the virtual quacks.
Check and track your symptoms
No one and nothing can track symptoms of illness as well as your doctor can. However, you can help your doctor make a diagnosis by using an app to monitor and record physical changes, and then showing the log to your doctor.
For example, to track changes to moles on your skin, use the Doctor Mole app, which is free for Android (www.snipca.com/16774) but costs £3.99 from Apple’s app store (www.snipca.com/16810). The best app for monitoring glucose levels is iHealth Gluco-Smart (Android www.snipca.com/16811, iOS www.snipca.com/16775), but while the app itself is free, it only works if you also use the iHealth wireless glucose monitor (£59.99 from www.snipca.com/16776).
To find information on symptoms you might be worried about, use the NHS’s ‘Health and Symptom checker’ app, which is completely free (Android www.snipca.com/16770, iOS www.snipca.com/16769). It can provide an initial assessment, and offer advice based on information about your condition.
Nuffield HealthScore (Android www.snipca.com/16765, iOS www.snipca.com/16764) is a good free all-round health tracker, with an emphasis on fitness. Bear in mind though, the best fitness monitors work on phones rather than tablets, because they harness the device’s built-in GPS.
Get help in an emergency
The British Red Cross has a very useful free ‘First aid’ app (Android www.snipca.com/16768, iOS www.snipca.com/16766) that can tell you precisely what to do in an emergency – and possibly even save a life. There’s simple step-by-step advice with videos and animations to help you understand what to do in a crisis, along with quizzes to test your first-aid knowledge. All the content is hosted in the app, rather than online, so you can access it offline wherever you are.
The free First Aid Training app (Android only, www.snipca.com/16822) has advice on how to handle certain critical situations. Tap an item – these include Heart Attack, ‘To do CPR on Adult’ and ‘Control a Fall’ – for a description and pictures. Like the ‘First aid’ app, First Aid Training’s content is available offline.
If you have a smartphone, make sure you’ve got an ‘emergency button’ app set up to alert a contact of your choice if the worst happens. Free app Panic Button (www.redpanicbutton.com, Android and iOS phones) sends an SMS text message to your chosen contact, along with your exact GPS co-ordinates.
Monitor the food you eat
At one time keeping track of your diet meant jotting everything you ate in a journal or dieting diary. Now you can use your tablet or phone to record that information. What’s more, it will help you calculate the number of calories you’ve consumed and give you a useful overview of your intake.
There are a number of apps for doing this, but our favourite is ‘Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker’ by MyFitnessPal (Android www.snipca.com/16754, iOS www.snipca.com/16753). You don’t need the new premium version (£7.99 a month) as long as you can put up with adverts on screen. Just sign up for a free account, enter your details, such as age, height, weight and target weight, and the app will calculate a daily calorie target for you. You can also enter the food you’ve eaten, and the app will use its large database of calorie counts to calculate your total intake.
If you’re using it on your phone or you have a compatible Fitbit or Jawbone fitness band, the app can integrate data from your daily steps and work out your calorie deficit.
Track your sleep
Apart from making us grumpy and tired, insufficient sleep can have serious implications for our long-term wellbeing. Heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes have all been linked to chronic sleep deprivation.
Many fitness bands come with sensors that track your sleep, but you can achieve similar results using a free app called SleepBot (Android www.snipca.com/16756, iOS www.snipca.com/16755). Plug in your tablet or phone (the app works on both) next to your bed, and the app will track your movement and sounds during the night to provide you with information about your sleep cycles. Over time, you can examine your sleep trends, review sleep statistics and set gentle ‘smart’ alarms to wake you at optimal moments of light sleep.
Other apps can help insomniacs drift off or remain asleep for longer. An iPhone app called Sleepio (www.snipca.com/16757), for example, uses clinically proven cognitive behavioural therapy techniques to ‘train’ you to overcome poor sleep. Sleepio requires a subscription to use (£7.99 a month), but you can try the free trial to see if it works for you.
HOW YOUR PHONE CAN KEEP YOU HEALTHY
A brisk 20-minute walk every day can add years to your life, according to a medical report published earlier this year (www.snipca.com/16813). The NHS, meanwhile, recommends walking 10,000 steps (about five miles) a day.
There are some great free apps that let you track your walking distance, but they usually don’t work on tablets. Therefore you’ll need to use your smartphone, which has built-in GPS that apps use to monitor distance. Besides, it’s much easier to stick your phone in your pocket and go for a walk than take your tablet along.
For example, Apple’s built-in Health app is limited to iPhones only – you won’t find it on your iPad. It’s included with iOS 8, iPhone 5s or later with an M7 motion processor. Tap it then check the Dashboard, and you may even find that it has already been recording your steps. If it hasn’t, turn it on by tapping Health Data, then Fitness, then Steps and switching on ‘Show on Dashboard’.
If you have an older iPhone or an Android phone, record your steps using the free step-tracking app Moves instead (Android www.snipca.com/16751, iOS www.snipca.com/16752). Android owners should also consider installing the free Google Fit app (www.snipca.com/16750), which includes a step tracker.
BRAIN TRAINERS WORTH USING
Keeping your brain in good shape is just as important as exercising your body, and there are loads of apps that claim to help. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called ‘brain training’ apps are utter rubbish. The best ones tend to work on a ‘freemium’ basis – you can download them for free and access a small number of daily exercises for free, while other exercises cost money. There are no compulsory in-app purchases.
Our favourite apps of this kind are Elevate (Android www.snipca.com/16759, iOS www.snipca.com/16758) and Lumosity (Android www.snipca.com/16761, iOS www.snipca.com/16760), which both offer fun, personalised mental workouts based on neuroscience and cognitive research to improve your memory, confidence and language skills. If you want to stick with cost-free apps that keep your grey matter in trim, use one of the many free Sudoku apps for Android (such as www.snipca.com/16763) and iOS (such as www.snipca.com/16823).