Tracking kilometres, kilocalories and the kilograms on your barbells is all well and swell, but there’s more to feeling healthy than muscles and increased protein intake. Here are a select few non-fitness health apps you should know about:
Clue
What’s the point? Can shed so much light on what’s going on with you, body and soul
“Getting to your know your menstrual cycle” sounds like a hippie art project, but there is a point. Hormones are very, very real, and literally take your body out for a rollercoaster ride every single month. Whee!
Clue allows you to track these various hormone-related symptoms ranging from the physical (bowel movements, food cravings, sleeping patterns, skin/hair condition) to the mental (mood, motivation, stress, productivity). Not all of them will be relevant to you, but after consistent tracking you will start seeing patterns. This can be incredibly beneficial. For example, seeing that you tend to get moody during the same time each cycle means that you can attribute it to physiological facts and maybe not overanalyze every aspect of your life every month.
Forest
What’s the point? Concentrate! For once! And develop a more productive, smartphone-free working pattern.
The slogan of Focus app reads like a bad Coelho quote: Whenever you want to focus on your work, plant a tree. But boy, is it good for you. The idea is: you plant a virtual tree within the app that grows during your work/focus time (set beforehand). The tree will be BUTCHERED if you leave the app.
It’s stupid. It works. Gamification is real.
You can choose your no-phone time frame between 10 to 120 minutes. So, for example, you could use Forest as a sort of pomodoro app with some arboreal advantages. You can also use it with friends and family, during exercise or whenever you realize you have not spent a whole waking hour without a phone in your hand in decades. It feels surprisingly freeing after you get past the initial FOMO anxiety. The world can wait! You have things to do, places to be, people to focus on.
f.lux
What’s the point? Get rid of the eerie blue glow of your screen. Sleep better. Science is on your side.
There are many studies on blue light being a real sleep-slayer. Light – especially the blue light our screens constantly emit – messes up the body’s biological clock, and consequently sleeping patterns and melatonin secretion.
But sometimes not being on your computer or phone in the evening is just not an option (I’m thinking finals week). Luckily, f.lux comes to aid.
The app checks your location and adapts the lighting to the time of day. So, your screen turns warm and all yellow-y when the sun sets, and back to blue and bright during daytime. The difference is notable. The soft lighting is a clear message to the brain that we’re actually getting ready for bed here, not trying to stay awake. (And for insane special places like Finland where the sun sets at 4PM in November, you can set up your own preferences and turn the feature on and off whenever you want to.)
All apps are available for free in the App Store & Google Play Store.
Flux is available for free for macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone & iPad and Android. More info here.
Header photo by Dimitri Tyan on Unsplash