Can An App Help You Heal?
With how we live on our phones these days, apps can be one thing that can give us motivation and accountability to achieve our goals. Especially true with health and fitness goals, because so many people need that extra hand.
Here are some of the top apps right now for achieving some of your health and fitness goals.
Mental & Emotional Health Apps
This is a huge category of mental health apps, some very general to help with well-being and happiness. Others are very specialized, dealing with very specific mental health issues. Other still can put you in contact with coaches, psychiatrist, and psychologist to give you direct contact with someone that can help.
Happify – a free app that helps generate happy thoughts and help train yourself for positivity
What's Up – a free Cognitive Behavioral Therapy aid app
CBT Thought Record Diary – a free app for recording thoughts, especially for people with anxiety
Twenty-Four Hours Per Day – a free addiction recovery app based on the book of the same name
GGOCD – Helps you understand your obsessive thoughts and trains you towards positivity
My3 – a free top suicide prevention app
Mindshift – a free app for teens and young adults to reduce anxiety
Recovery Record – a free app for helping recover from eating disorders to record meals, how you feel, and what your body actually looks like
PTSD Coach – a free app for PTSD that customizes help for support monitoring your health
Physical Therapy Apps
If you're working through rehab or looking to improve specific physical fitness, some of these apps can help identify problem areas and how to fix them. Although most of them connect you to a professional, exploring the options can give you a good idea what you could be doing.
Pocket Anatomy – an app that lets you see what different terms are and how to help identify muscles and joints that could be causing pain (iOS only)
CMV: Slow Frame Analysis – a free app that lets you look at a video in slow motion to analyze how you move
PT Pal Pro – a free app that links PT and doctors to the patient to allow specific exercises and recording dates to be shared
Health & Physical Fitness
With the health and wellness industry growing by leaps and bounds every year, apps are taking on a whole new dimension for coaching. Being in touch with a coach regularly can give you the accountability to make proper dietary changes and support for different types of lifestyle habits.
Noom – a paid app that helps you with diet, exercise, and connect with coaches
Deliciously Ella – an app for plant-based recipes and ideas
Flo App – a way to keep track of your menstruation, ovulation cycles, and PMS symptoms
Sleep Cycle – a paid app that tracks your sleep, monitors movement and sounds during sleep, and can wake you during the lightest sleep cycle for the least disturbance
Symptom Tracker
The last group we have here is being able to track your symptoms. If you want to figure out a problem, you need to look at what's going on, and being able to accurately assess what symptoms you have can provide invaluable data. And, if you already know what's going on, you can track your symptoms and discover a potential problem before it becomes severe.
Flaredown – a free app to track and visualize illness, treatments, and symptom triggers, plus keep track of medications
Symple – a free health journal app that keeps track of some symptoms and what your goals are (iOS only)
These apps are only some of the hundreds of different ones that can help achieve your health goals. Since many of them are free, you can try which one works best for you. And, even for the paid ones, there's often a free trial to see if it will work for you.
Once you find something you like, make sure you use it, as consistency is the best way to achieve your goal for health.