Taking advantage of the omnipresence of our smartphones in our daily lives, we can use them to improve our health and well-being.
New technologies aren’t just useful for communicating with people thousands of kilometers away, or letting our friends know what we’re doing and with whom at all times. In fact, beyond these convenient functions, smartphones and tablets can also give us an in-depth knowledge of how our bodies are working to help us live longer and better. Want to know how? This post will explain it to you.
Instant Heart Rate is perhaps the best example of how smartphones can serve as the perfect complement for our health. This app lets you determine your heart rate just by placing your finger on the mobile’s camera. How do they do it? The app automatically turns on the phone’s flash to illuminate the finger, which allows the camera’s sensor to detect the small variations in color that occur on our skin when blood flows through it.
Calorie Counter tells you the calories and nutritional value of virtually all of the foods available on the market, and also lets you to design exercise and meal plans based on the calorie intake. But the most unique feature of this app is that it allows you to scan the bar code of any product to see the nutritional information for it in just seconds.
Quit Smoking is an app that helps with the arduous task of quitting smoking. Just enter the number of cigarettes per day that you smoke, the price of a pack, how long it takes you to smoke a cigarette, and the date on which you decided to quit.
OnTrack Diabetes, as the name indicates, is an application aimed specifically at diabetics, allowing them to keep track of sugar intake over the course of the day and know their glucose level at any time.
The latest: bracelets for in-depth personal analysis
The trend of using smartphones almost as virtual healthcare centers seems to be unstoppable, and proof of this is the proliferation over the last few months of bracelets like the Jawbone UP (on sale in department stores for a little more than 100 euros), which connect with an app on your phone to record when you sleep, eat and move. Based on all of this information, the system can make personalised recommendations, warn of possible health risks and encourage users to have a healthier pace of life.
