Your phone can be your health companion. In recent years, more people have been using digital health-tracking apps to monitor their health. Fuelled by a collective rise in wellness awareness and an increase in chronic illnesses, people have adopted using technology to track their health. While wearing smartwatches is a popular way to track your fitness, you can also use your phone to monitor various health metrics without a wearable.

Let’s look at some health areas you can track with your phone.

1. Track Your Steps and Physical Activities Using Your Phone

Tracking your movement with your phone is the easiest way to turn it into a fitness tracker. While a smartwatch may give you more precise data, a phone can track your movement as long as you have it with you. The built-in sensors can track your movement and give you a picture of how active you’ve been.

The Samsung Health App, Google Fit and Apple Health all come preinstalled on your phone and are free. You can also download several apps by typing ‘pedometer’ in your app store. Apps like Strava help you record your movement, whether you’re trying to track your steps, cycling or running. Apps available for this purpose can be either free or paid, and some allow you to enter data manually.

2. Track Your Sleeping Patterns

Sleep is an important part of your general health and wellbeing. The quality of your sleep and sleep patterns can have a correlation with your brain function, metabolism, blood pressure and respiratory issues.

How does sleep tracking work? Your phone can track your movement and breathing patterns when you’re sleeping. When the phone is near you, it uses the microphone and phone sensors to track your snoring, breathing, and any tossing and turning. Tracking these aspects can provide an overview of your sleep cycle, sleep interruption,s and sleep duration. 

Some sleep-tracking apps you can check out include SleepCycle, RISE App, SleepScore, and Pillow, among others.

While you shouldn’t use sleep trackers to self-diagnose, studies have shown that tracking your sleep patterns can help you collect health data about yourself, revealing issues like sleep disorders and identifying connections between sleep and health factors such as asthma and blood pressure. Sleep tracking can also tell you when you need to adopt healthier sleeping habits.

3. Track Your Diet

They often say, “You are what you eat.” Our diet has a significant impact on our physical wellbeing. Your phone can help you keep records of your nutritional intake. It can also assist you when trying to change your bad habits, for example, you may be trying to eat more fruits or drink more water. Keeping logs of what and how much you eat and drink daily can give you important information.

Apps that you can use include: MyFitness Pal: Calorie Counter, MyNetDiary, Yazio Yazio and WeightWatchers.

Some of the available apps have free tiers for basic tracking. Still, premium subscriptions offer more helpful features, including access to recipes, some communities, and a database of nutritional coaches. 

4. Track Your Stress Levels

Our mental health wellness can slip through our fingers easily. Sometimes we don’t even know that we’re in the deep because we’re too busy juggling what life throws at us. However, tracking your mood can give you a picture of how you’re really feeling. Apps can help you track your mood over time and guide you through breathing and meditation exercises.

Apps to help you monitor your stress include Samsung Health App and StressScan.

Additionally, you can use your phone for breathing exercises using either apps or a timer. You can also listen to calming sounds to help you lower your stress and anxiety.

Digital Health Tracking for Your Wellbeing

Today, people use their phones to track and record various aspects of their health. This doesn’t eliminate the need to visit a health professional for diagnosis, as the apps have their limitations. However, having records of your health can help you and your doctor assess your health in more detail, providing a broader history.

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