Symptom tracking helps you and your doctor identify patterns, determine treatment effectiveness, and make informed healthcare decisions. It is a critical tool for anyone dealing with a chronic illness or condition.
COVID-19 symptom tracking apps allow users to record and track symptoms, including fever, type of cough, body aches, contact with infected individuals, and more. These apps typically provide immediate medical advice based on input symptoms.
1. Keep track of your symptoms
A daily symptom tracker makes it easy to record and monitor your symptoms over time. This allows you to identify patterns and triggers so that you can take preventative measures and minimize flares.
In addition, a symptom tracking app can also help you share your data with your doctor. This can be an invaluable tool in helping your doctor understand your symptoms and provide you with personalized resources and support.
Traditionally, patients have kept paper journals to document their symptoms. While these journals have their upsides, such as being easy to carry and not requiring extra devices, they can be difficult to interpret, and can easily get misplaced or lost. A digital symptom tracking app is the solution to these issues. It is also portable and convenient, so you can use it whenever needed. Plus, it gives you personal insights that can improve your health.
2. Track your medications
A symptom tracker is a tool that helps people monitor their symptoms and the impact of various treatment regimens. It can also help patients identify recurring or new symptoms that need to be addressed by their doctors.
A good symptom tracking app can offer reminders to take your meds and pills, and can even import your existing medications into the app. It should also warn you about drug-to-drug interactions. It can also allow you to record notes and daily values like weight, blood pressure and heart rate.
A symptom tracker is different from a symptom checker, which offers immediate preliminary medical advice based on the symptoms you enter. STAR, developed by clinicians and hereditary ATTR amyloidosis patients, makes symptom recording quick and simple, empowering you to easily share your changing symptoms with your doctor. Then they can advise you on next steps.
3. Track your diet
A food symptom tracker can help identify which foods might be causing adverse reactions such as bloating, stomach pain, and skin problems. It can also be used to track other factors that may affect your response to specific foods, such as stress levels, exercise, and medications.
Foody is an all-in-one food and symptom tracking app that makes it easy to connect your diet to your symptoms. Record all of your meals and symptoms in one place, then view them on a beautiful timeline and use filters to check for patterns and confirm suspicions.
4. Track your exercise
Symptom tracker apps help you track symptoms like anxiety, fatigue and low back pain on a regular basis so that you can monitor and identify patterns. This information can then be used to determine whether or not a treatment is working or not.
When choosing a symptom tracker app, make sure it has a simple user interface that is clean and easy to read. It should also be compatible with wearable fitness devices so that you can track your progress in real time.
Research shows that using digital fitness trackers can boost your motivation to exercise by upping the accountability factor and allowing you to see how far you’ve come since starting a new program. This makes them great tools for people with chronic illnesses who need to self-monitor their health.
5. Track your sleep
Poor sleep is one of the most common triggers of headaches and migraines. Fortunately, there are a variety of smartphone sleep tracking apps that can help you get more restful nights.
These apps measure your movement using your phone’s accelerometer and detect a pattern of sleep versus wakefulness. They then display a graph of your sleep cycles over time, allowing you to see trends.
A recent study found that sleep tracking apps improve users’ awareness of their own sleep habits, knowledge or understanding of sleep hygiene, attitudes or motivations to change, and intentions to seek help for their sleeping patterns. Insomnia is a common condition that can lead to other health problems, such as chronic pain or depression. Symptom tracker apps allow you to monitor your symptoms, so you can identify and manage the causes of your insomnia.
6. Track your mood
Mood tracker apps help you be more involved with your mental wellness by providing insight on the things that affect it. These include any medications, supplements or diet that you may be taking as well as activities and experiences that trigger your bad moods.
When you analyze your data over time, you can identify patterns in your behavior and emotions that might not be immediately obvious to you. For instance, you may notice that your moods tend to change on Sunday evenings due to your work schedule, or that you become more irritable during certain times of the month because of the fluctuations in hormone levels associated with your menstrual cycle.
A symptom tracker app allows you to monitor your moods so you can identify the factors that make you feel better and those that do not. It can also help you determine what triggers bad moods so that you can avoid them in the future.
Some things that cause mood changes include foods, exercise, medication, and stress. By tracking your moods over time, you can see what affects your mood and then work with a mental health provider to find ways to improve your condition. For example, if you find that your moods are worse on Sunday evenings after working a night shift, then you can work with a psychiatrist or psychologist to find a way to prevent these changes from occurring. This will help you feel happier and more in control of your life. This is a good idea for anyone who suffers from mood swings or bipolar disorder.
7. Track your stress
Using a stress tracker will help you get in tune with your emotional and physical health, so that you can identify the things that are causing you stress. There are a few apps that you can use to track your stress levels, which help you rate your stress level each day and has a variety of options for stress relief, such as EDA mindfulness sessions, a coloring book, and more.
The best symptom tracking apps are easy to use and can help you discover patterns, triggers, and treatment effectiveness. They also allow you to share your tracking with your healthcare team so that they can provide better support and resources. Some symptom trackers even include AI insights that take the guesswork out of managing your symptoms.
8. Track your weight
A symptom tracker can help with weight loss by tracking the calories you consume. It can also track your blood sugar and help you find a healthier diet.
For people suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms like acid reflux, IBS, food intolerances and sensitivities, Celiac disease, Crohn’s Disease, and dyspepsia, look for a simple diary app with visual representations of your data.
9. Track your sleep cycles
Sleep is critical for your health and has a direct impact on your PD symptoms. Getting enough sleep can help reduce tremors, rigidity and balance problems. Using an app to track your sleep cycles can also improve your energy levels and overall mood.
