It’s true. You can now use your iPhone’s Health App (and equipment connected to your iPhone) to track many of your body’s functions. For example you can track your heart rate, the Oxygen saturation in your bloodstream, or the number of steps you walk. If you have the iWatch, it can also track how far you swim, how long you stand, and other activities.
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Activity
The iPhone’s Health App will automatically track your steps, flights of stairs climbed, and how many miles you’ve walked, but you do need to always have your phone with you in order for the data to be accurate. If you synch your iWatch with your iPhone, you have access to additional data that is much more accurate.
Mindfulness
There are a number of apps that you can connect to your iPhone’s Health App to help you meditate and practice mindfulness.
- Calm: Calm has a few options available for free. Most of the meditations require a monthly, annual, or lifetime subscription. Calm also has bedtime stories to calm you down and help you to get a more restful nights sleep. Calm is rated 5 stars with 1482 reviews.
- 10% Happier – Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: 10% Happier also has a few meditations available for free, with an option to purchase a monthly or annual subscription. It also has a meditation to help you wind down for sleeping. 10% Happier is rate 5 stars with 676 reviews.
- Headspace: Guided Meditation: Like the other two apps, Headspace requires a paid subscription to gain access to most of the meditations. It is rated 5 stars with 592 reviews.
Try them out and see which one works best for you. You may find that you don’t even need to sign up for a paid subscription
Nutrition
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any great apps to track your food intake. The iPhone’s Health app does allow you to manually enter data which is very easy to do. If you take vitamin supplements, you can also enter the amount of Vitamin A, B, etc., that you are consuming. Don’t forget to drink lots of water every day!
Sleep
Getting a good nights sleep is very important to your overall health. And collecting sleep data is the first step in understanding how your productivity is impacted by your sleep. I looked at several different sleep apps, but only Sleep Cycle seems like it will work well:
- Sleep Cycle doesn’t require that you place the phone under your pillow. Instead it uses the microphone on your iPhone to track your sleep sounds to determine when you are sleeping and how deeply. It even records you when you snore! Sleep Cycle is rated 5 stars with 1340 reviews
Have you learned more about tracking your health with your iPhone? If you found this helpful, please forward it!
Chris Eddy of Geek For Hire, Inc. has been providing computer service to families and small businesses with Mac’s and PC’s for the past fifteen years. His company is highly rated by both the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and by Angie’s List. You can find more on our website, or give us a call 303-618-0154. Geek For Hire, Inc. provides onsite service (Tier 3) to the Denver / Boulder / Front Range area as well as remote service throughout North America.
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