Digital Health: Is There an App For That?

Apps for Nutrition, Wellness and Healthy Lifestyle

Digital Health Week in November promotes healthier Canadians through innovative digital health solutions.

Technology plays an important role in many aspects of our lives. Similar to the way technology has improved banking or the way we connect with family and friends, digital health is changing the delivery of care. 

~ Better Health Together

In today’s smartphone-driven world, for most of us digital innovation means downloading an app. Digital health and wellness apps provide health-related tools and information on our smartphone or tablet. According to the FDA, the most popular digital health apps are:

• Sports and fitness activity tracking
• Diet and nutrition
• Weight loss coaching
• Pharmacy
• Sleep cycle analysis
• Stress reduction and relaxation
• Meditation
• Medical advice and patient community
• Menstrual period tracking
• Pregnancy
• Hospital selection and appointment management

Andrea’s Top Apps for Nutrition, Wellness and Healthy Lifestyle

Are you wondering what the top fitness, health and nutrition apps are? With hundreds to choose from, I wanted to provide a starting place for some of my favourite apps to support a healthy lifestyle. I have chosen a wide range of the best apps for nutrition, cooking, fitness, meditation and goal setting to get you started. (Note that I have not selected apps that only track calories, since after all there is more to healthy eating than simply just adding up numbers.) 

Top Nutrition Apps

eaTipster

• Free app created by Dietitians of Canada (English and French)
• Credible short nutrition tips on a variety of common questions and topics about nutrition and healthy eating
• Read the tips, save favourites and share them with friends on email, text or social media

EATracker

• Free app created by Dietitians of Canada
• Help plan meals with feedback on a variety of nutrients (not just calories)
• Search and add favourite foods to your “pantry”
• Quickly access a nutrition facts table to find out the nutrients in a food
• Compare your intake to national guidelines
• Set eating and exercise goals and track progress
• Post your own quotes and photos to keep motivated
• Nutrition analysis of recipes

iHydrate Water Tracker Reminder

• Track your daily water intake
• Set reminders

Top Cooking Apps

OrganizEat Recipe Organizer

• paid app
• Organizes all your recipes quickly (no need to type!)
• Snap a photo of your recipe from home or clip a photo from the web
• Sync between your iPhone and iPad

How to Cook Everything

• Paid apps by culinary guru Mark Bittman
• How to Cook Everything kitchen companion app is a must have fundamental resource for every cook to own
• Search by ingredient or category the 2,000 plus recipes with variations for this award winning no-nonsense cookbook
• Also check out How to Cook Everything Fast, Basics, Vegetarian as secondary purchase options

Top Fitness, Meditation and Sleep Apps

Sworkit

• Free and premium paid version app
• Pre-built workouts or design your own
• Strength, stretching, cardio, pilates and yoga
• Set your own time limit from 5 minutes or more
• No equipment required
• Video instruction and audio cues

Insight Meditation

• Free meditation app
• Connect with a worldwide community of millions of meditators
• Choose from a variety of timers for meditation
• Access hundreds of free guided meditations by renowned experts

White Noise Sleep Sounds

• Free app with sounds to help you relax the day and sleep at night
• Create your own custom sound mixes by mixing several sounds together
• Change the color and brightness of your screen
• Gentle alarms and timers that slowly fade in

Digital health is commonplace in our lives. Many people have already incorporated health apps into their daily routine:

• Fitness bands
• Calorie trackers
• Nutritious grocery lists
• Menstrual and ovulation trackers
• Electronic medical records

Note: There are some accuracy issues with activity and calorie tracking apps, see my article: Why your calorie counting apps and devices may be wrong: Fitbit and MyFitnessPal issues.

What are your favorite fitness, health, cooking and nutrition apps? I would love to hear from you on how you incorporate digital health apps into your personal life and at work!

a version of this article appeared on LinkedIn 

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