A growing number of phones offer downloadable applicationss — or apps — that can help you live a healthy lifestyle.
Ever wonder what all those people are doing staring at their fancy mobile phone screens?
They could be getting healthy.
A growing number of phones offer applications -- or apps -- that you can download to help you find healthy food on the go, keep track of your diet and workouts, figure out why your back hurts, tell you how to stop smoking and read tips for living a healthy lifestyle.
"Having a cell phone with you kind of 24/7 is that great prompt and that great reminder," said R. Craig Lefebvre, a research professor in the department of prevention and community health at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "Anybody who is interested in trying to manage what they are eating and how they are exercising are going to find these very useful tools."
By far, the biggest app users are the 50 million Apple iPhone or iPod Touch customers. They have access to 85,000 apps that do everything from provide mind-numbing games to maps of hiking trails.
The mHealth Initiative, which is funded by membership dues with the express purpose of promoting mobile devices being used for health care, estimates that there are more than 2,500 apps related to wellness and health. Of those, at least 2,000 are on the iPhone or iPod Touch.
When it comes to healthy apps, "the iPhone is definitely the leader," says Claudia Tessier, president of Boston-based mHealth Initiative.
So, just for the fun of it, we've compiled a short list of some our favorite healthy iPhone apps -- as with all apps, some are free and some cost a small fee, generally no more than $2.99. If you don't have an Apple iPhone, you're not completely out of luck. Just skip to the last bullet for a few pointers for finding apps for other phones.
Good Food Near You, FREE
This cool app helps you find the healthiest eating options with just a couple of clicks. So, if you travel a lot or are debating between McDonald's and Wendy's on the way home, this is the app for you.
In search of lunch last week, we asked the program to auto-detect our location in downtown Cleveland. Within seconds the screen popped up with a list of nearby restaurants and choices. It told us that Subway's Veggie Delite Salad with 1 gram of fat, 60 calories and 11 grams of carbohydrates was the best choice.
Don't want a salad? It also listed foods on the menu in order of healthfulness and also brought up other nearby restaurant locations with a map for finding them. For instance, the best choice at McDonald's is the McSalad Shaker Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad at 3 grams of fat, 100 calories and 3 grams of carbohydrates.
The one big caveat: Good Food only tracks chain restaurants. So it didn't tell us about the yummy, low-fat ethnic food available at the West Side Market or our favorite salad at Nate's Deli.
LiveStrong.com Calorie Tracker, $2.99
This app came out last year and has proved to be one of the most popular calorie-counting, workout-tracking apps out there. You also can use some of this app's features online at LiveStrong.com.
It's easy and simple to search for foods and thumb through 2,000 different workouts.
It told us that a pear for breakfast was 96 calories and that our daily 3-mile run at a 10-minute pace burned 600 calories. As you plug in your food and workouts throughout the day, the app keeps track of you intake and output. It even has a handy "progress" gauge to let you know if your diet has been derailed by too many calories and not enough exercise.
And a nifty weight chart so you are inspired to watch the line drop.
But perhaps most impressive: The app had that a quarter cup of our beloved warm breakfast cereal "Malt-O-Meal" was 170 calories. If it can tell us that, well, it can track anything.
WebMD Mobile, FREE
Of course, if you are seriously ill or injured, you need to go to the doctor or call 9-1-1. But there are those times when you just want to ponder why your lower back hurts or check out the uses and side effects of that drug the doctor is suggesting. In those cases, the mobile WebMD is ideal.
WebMD Mobile, just like its online counterpart, lets you check symptoms, look up drugs and treatments and find first-aid information on the go. To check symptoms, you plug in your gender and age, and it pulls up a body image that you can then touch in the place that hurts.
For instance, touch the stomach on a middle-aged woman and it will give you a list of options. Under "distended stomach," WebMD tells us that possible causes include ulcer, constipation, gas and a host of more serious issues. You can click through to get more information about each one.
One of the app's handiest features is the ability to look up drugs by name and what they are used to treat, their side effects, precautions, interactions and warnings.
My Quitline, FREE
There are lots of apps out there to help you quit smoking, including ones that help you track your daily progress. But not all of them use evidence-based research. We're listing My Quitlinne because it provides an easy link to a smoking counselor at the National Cancer Institute Quitline. You can call or online-chat with a counselor as often as you need support. And, let's face it, when trying to quit, it's best to have someone at your side.
Introduced in April, My Quitline was developed by a researcher at George Washington University's School of Public Health Services with grant support from the National Cancer Institute and advising help from the National Tobacco Cessation Collaborative. You can't find more expert help than that.
Wellness Tip of the Day, FREE
The Cleveland Clinic offers a nifty stockpile of tips to help motivate you daily. Just pull up the app and double click on a floating bubble and voila! Or, choose the calendar version, which gives a bubble per day.
On Thursday, the Clinic told us "Fat be gone! A new study shows that eating fatty foods has a negative effect on short-term memory and exercise performance."
The tips are color-coded, so green bubbles are food tips, pink ones are for the mind, orange ones are for the body and the blue bubbles offer miscellaneous suggestions.
We particularly like the "Favorites" button. On Sept. 26, the Clinic said: "Take health reform into your own hands: don't smoke, stay active, drink in moderation and eat 9 servings of fruit and veggies a day."
We stored that one in favorites right away.
No iPhone?
For the most part, smartphones, the kind that include keyboards and let you link to e-mail, offer apps as well as some high-end feature phones, says Tole Hart, research director for consumer services at Gartner Research.
The BlackBerry App World store opened in April and can be found on your computer at na.blackberry.com/eng/services/appworld/. Browse the full online catalog and you'll find a health-and-wellness section that includes the previously mentioned LiveStrong calorie-counting application plus other apps that help you track workouts as well as find healthy fast food.
Microsoft developers have also created a host of apps for phones like the HTC Dash 3G, Touch Pro 2 and the Samsung Blackjack. To see if your phone qualifies and find apps, go to the download section on your phone or microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/default.mspx.
Finally, if you don't have an iPhone or BlackBerry, Hart says you should also check out the so-called "android" market at www.android.com to find apps including the CardioTrainer, which helps keep track of workouts.
SOURCE: cleveland
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