Mobile Apps to Track Your Health

Author: Monica Peters, MoniGarr.com

Dear Monica,

I saw something on TV that showed a guy that tracks all of his health information with mobile apps.  What do you know about it and how can I track my own health with mobile apps?

Signed,

Healthy in Akwesasne

She:kon Healthy in Akwesasne,

The «Quantified Self» is becoming more popular as more and more people become interested in tracking their own health statistics using mobile devices and other popular gadgets.  Quantified Self refers to the practice of self-tracking any type of data that is about ourselves (health, habits, lifestyle).  The main reasons that people choose to track themselves includes motivation, help to achieve goals, to modify current behavior, for self-awareness, and to achieve more accurate diagnosis of any health issues. 

Self-tracking also helps you find correlations.  For example, does the amount of time you spend on Facebook make you more stressed?  Sharing some of your measurements (that you are comfortable to share) with a community of online friends can help to motivate and encourage you to achieve your goals.  For example, your group of friends might be tracking their running stats and comparing them with your running stats.  Pretty much anything you can imagine about your own life can be measured and then you can view the data as numbers, images, and various multimedia formats.  For example, you can measure and track your food, exercise, heart, pulse, blood markers, sleep, mood, stress, physical locations, travel and habits.

Popular sport brands are offering health tracking gadgets that you clip onto your sneakers or wear on your body to track how far you walk, how many steps you take, let you compare your efforts and compete with online friends. Google will show you a few companies that provide interesting and affordable sleep monitors that tell you about the quality of your sleep. You can also find many free mobile apps to download that let you manually enter your information to help you track your life. 

Check out the website QuantifiedBob.com to find out how one man is self-tracking his own health information by hacking and experimenting with mobile apps and other affordable gadgets that you can buy online.  You can also google for «Quantified Self» to find many resources to help you start tracking your own health information.  Today›s technology offers great ways to take more control of our own health requirements and to be able to communicate easier with any health care professionals we choose to work with. 

Send your questions or comments about Internet technologies and computers, to [email protected] and I›ll do my best to answer you in future stories.