Sophie Okolo, MPH

Phones can help with many aspects of your life, from helping to manage your finances to providing a range of entertainment in your hands. And then there is your health. While there are often reports of the negative impact of phones on health, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways your phone can help your health too. From helping you maintain your fitness to tracking your sleep, there are a lot of ways your phone could help you maintain a healthier lifestyle.

Learn about some of the effective ways your phone can boost your health and make your phone work better for you.    

Monitor your daily activity

Fitness apps can be one of the most useful tools on your phone. Not only can they monitor activity such as your sleep or how much you move, but they can also give you some valuable insights into your health, like your heart rate. There are a lot of different fitness apps that can help you improve your fitness, while also keeping an eye on your health basics. Let your phone give you a clearer picture of your health so you can find ways to live a healthier lifestyle. 

Track what you eat

As you get older, a healthy diet becomes even more important. But so many people are unsure of what a healthy diet looks like, or even how much food you should eat in a day. Using a nutrition app can help you track your daily food intake, while most come with recipe ideas and tips for helping you improve your diet. If you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, these types of apps are ideal for helping you monitor your nutrition and track your progress.

Use it with your other health monitors and devices

Smartphones can be paired with many types of health devices to help you take better charge of your health. Hearing aids available from your audiologist can be controlled via smartphone apps to help adjust your hearing aid with ease, as well as get relief from tinnitus symptoms. Other health trackers compatible with phones include fertility trackers, blood sugar monitors and others, providing simple, accessible solutions to monitor your health with ease.

Connect with others

Aside from the physical benefits, your phone can also help boost your mental health and wellbeing. Phones can connect people, especially distant friends and relatives, helping to prevent loneliness and improve symptoms of stress and anxiety. Technology has a crucial role to play in easing loneliness, and your phone could be a great way to start connecting. 

Your phone has a lot of potential to help you manage and even boost your health, provided you use it in a controlled way. While it is possible to become too reliant on your phone to the point where it affects your mental health, if you manage your usage and maintain some good phone habits, you can balance out the negative effects to ensure that using your phone only affects your health positively.