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Smart Phone Apps

 

Fitness & Weight Control

 Medical Specialists Welness Apps

  • Tap & Track is an all-in-one app for diet and exercise. You enter what you eat, your physical activity, your actual weight, and your target weight. It computes your nutritional intake (calories, carbs, protein, saturated and unsaturated fats, and sodium) from a database of about 250,000 items found in restaurant chains, supermarkets, and even your backyard garden plot. It also offers a selection of 180 physical activities. Each time you enter a snack or plug in a workout, you'll receive a nutritional tally as well the number of calories you have left for the day. A food score — a proprietary measurement developed by Weight Watchers International, Inc. — is also given for dieters enrolled in that program. The $3.99 app can generate graphs and spreadsheets tracking your progress, which can be e-mailed to your computer.
  • Calorie Counter by FatSecret, a free app for Androids, gives the nutritional content of thousands of foods and allows you to enter your weight and exercise regimens. But it doesn't do the math for you or create charts or spreadsheets.
  • iTreadmill: Pedometer Ultra with PocketStep is available for iPhones for 99 cents. Although the name promises more than it delivers (it doesn't make the sidewalk move in reverse), it is a very good pedometer. It senses your motion as you walk and determines the length of your stride. Once you establish your pace, it can select a tune with a matching beat to keep you on track. It also estimates calories burned.
  • Walk It! and Pedometer-Widget, both pedometers for Androids, are similar to iTreadmill, but get lower user ratings for being less reliable.


Diabetes Management

 

  • EatSmart - designed to give direction for better healthier food choices.
  • MyFitnessPal - a food data base to help you track calories, carbohydrate, protein, fat, sodium and exercise.
  • MyNetDiary - the meal you enter is tracked for nutrient content and provides  suggestions for improvement. This app is free for iPhone users and costs $2.99 for Android users.
  • WaveSense Diabetes Manager - to identify trends in your blood glucose results enter your personal information beginning with blood glucose results and activities such as  exercise, medication or food.
  • Gomeals.com - an extension of CalorieKing.com to use on your phone. This is not a free service.
  • Glucose Buddy - On this app you can record blood glucose levels and note the time of  day for each such as breakfast, lunch or dinner. It offers graphs to  monitor trends in blood sugars and record food eaten.
  • Vree -  Allows a person to log their blood glucose, exercise, weight, blood  pressure and food and medication intake. You can even email them direct  to your doctor. The food database includes common foods and some  restaurant meals.
  • OnTrack - have the ability to log and graph your blood sugar as well as food  intake, blood pressure, weight exercise, pulse, A1C results, body fat  percentage and medications. The user can also add personal notes and  send the information to the physician via the email.
  • LoseIt - A comprehensive app that allows you to track just about everything. As  you eat, add the meals from a list of brand-name foods, common foods and restaurant meals.
  • Fit Pro-Sport and Diet - An online food tracker with a database full of fast food information. The cost is $8.99.

 

High Blood Pressure

 

  • HeartWise simplifies the task if your doctor has asked you to log your blood pressure at home. You enter your systolic pressure (the top number) and diastolic pressure (the bottom number) as well as your pulse and weight. The app will calculate your average arterial pressure and pulse pressure and generate graphs showing fluctuations in these values over time. It's available for the iPhone for 99 cents.
  • My Blood Pressure and Heart Rate, available free for Androids, is similar to HeartWise. You enter your systolic and diastolic pressures and heart rate as well as other information — including which arm was measured and whether you were standing, sitting, or lying down when your pressure was taken.


Sleep Hygiene

 

  • Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock- If anything attests to a growing global sleep deficit, it's the overwhelming popularity of this quirky 99-cent iPhone app, a top seller in the G-8 countries. You place your phone on a corner of your mattress, secure it under a contour sheet, and allow it to "observe" you for a few nights. The app uses your phone's motion sensor to chart your sleep patterns. Within a week it supposedly knows you well enough to find the best moment (within a pre-set 30-minute period) to awaken you with your choice of tones or tunes. Most reviewers report that they are rarely jolted from a deep sleep and usually feel refreshed, although a few have dashed their phones to the floor during fitful episodes. Others have forgotten their phones were there and made them into the bed the next morning.
  • Smart Alarm Clock, which works much the same way, is being developed for Android and should be in Android Market in 2011.

 

Stress Reduction

 

  • Stress Free with Deepak Chopra offers a whole bag of relaxation tricks and exercises — meditation, yoga, journaling, and even e-mailing privileges with the master himself. It's available for the iPhone for $1.99. Or you can try Stress Free with Andrew Johnson for $2.99 for the iPhone, $1.99 for the Android. The UK hypnotherapist puts you under with good thoughts and a Scottish burr. This is not an app for midday meltdowns.
  • If you're really stressed, keep an eye out for iBreathe, developed by the Department of Defense's National Center for Telehealth and Technology. Designed for troops under the pressures of combat, it uses videos to coach you through deep-breathing exercises and can be used as an adjunct to professional therapy. You should be able to get it on your iPhone or Android early in 2011.
  • Rage Eraser is the app for you if you're mad as hell and can't take yourself any more. You may want to start by using the "Rant" feature to record your next tirade and listen to yourself after you cool down. The app can help you track the situations that trigger your anger and identify the distorted thoughts that feed it. There are male and female voices to talk you down from a tantrum in progress as well as techniques for transforming your anger into more productive emotions over time. It's $4.99 for iPhones only.


First Aid

 

  • Pocket First Aid & CPR from the American Heart Association for iPhone and Androids. It offers detailed instructions for assisting accident victims and people who have been taken ill, including video instructions for performing procedures like CPR or using a cardiac defibrillator. Although the app is easy to navigate, it's important to familiarize yourself with the content before you need it; some of the instructions are so lengthy and intricate that they may be hard to follow if you first try them during a crisis.

  

Hearing & Vision Assists

 

  • You can turn your phone's camera into a magnifier by activating the zoom function. (If it doesn't have one, you can download a zoom-lens app.) When you pass your phone over the tiny type on a menu or medicine label, you'll find a readable version on the screen. If you have macular degeneration or low vision, the iPhone's "Accessibility" menu in "Settings" has two features that may help — a button to change the contrast from black-on-white to white-on-black and a "voice-over" function that can read aloud any text on the phone's screen, including words you type.
  • SoundAmpR, turns your iPhone into a hearing aid. To use it, plug the phone's ear buds into the jack and adjust the controls that appear on the screen. The "tune" slider adjusts the volume in each ear; the "zoom" slider screens out background noise. Activate the recorder if you want to capture the conversation for replay. $1.99