Tuesday, June 28, 2011

15 Best Apps for Improving Your Health

The world is a hypercompetitive place. First, you have to get into a good college. Then you have to work for a solid GPA so that you can land a valuable internship, which will enable you to get a steady job when you graduate. During the process, as you get a little older and a little less resilient health-wise, the stress begins to take its toll, particularly if you're in the real world and starting a family — the time to start researching the most cost-effective life insurance policy

Even as time becomes scarcer, you shouldn't fail to eat properly and exercise consistently. Thankfully, there are plenty of health-related apps on your iPhone or Droid allowing you to monitor such things on the go, giving you the ability to live well.

miCoach (free) : Adidas offers a personal coach to track your daily workout regimen. With miCoach, avid runners can utilize their phones' GPS systems to create maps of their jogging routes. A real-time coach speaks in your ear in order to pace your workout, motivating you to comply with your plan so that you can continue to build speed and endurance.

Instant Heart Rate: Using the same technique as medical pulse oximeters, Instant Heart Rate uses color changes on your fingertip to make a determination. No external hardware is needed, and it's considered the most accurate heart rate monitor app in the marketplace.

Daily Ab Workout (free): Trying to sculpt those abs? Daily Ab Workout provides a daily five-minute ab routine for both men and women, with 10 exercises designed to build every major abdominal muscle. It comes equipped with a timer and a video of a certified personal trainer demonstrating the routine.

Hundred Push Ups (free): Push ups are a surefire way to strengthen your upper body. The seemingly elusive goal of achieving 100 consecutively is made more possible by Hundred Push Ups, which offers a six-week training program requiring just 30 minutes per week.

Jefit (free): Organize and track your workouts with Jefit on Android. Choose different workouts, keep logs, chart your body stats, keep a progress photo album and much, much more.

All-in Fitness: iPhone users who fancy themselves as gym rats can take it a step further with All-in Fitness. More than 1 million people worldwide have downloaded this app for the live support from professional coaches, calorie counter, body tracker, pedometer, music player, and most importantly, 700 video clips featuring exercises for men and women and yoga poses.

Secrets of Staying Healthy: This app is pretty self-explanatory. As the name indicates, it provides secrets of staying healthy, offering fitness advice and health tips along with relevant medical statistics. It kind of acts as a handheld fitness counselor.

MyFitnessPal calories counter (free): Set daily goals with the MyFitnessPal calories counter. Track your intake and how many calories you burn during exercise to ensure that you're maintaining a healthy weight or losing weight. Boasting "the largest food database of any Android calorie counter," it has more than 750,000 foods, so you'll never miss a beat.

Weight Journal: Maintain your diet with Weight Journal, which charts your weight history, tracks your BMI and shows you what it'll take to reach your goal. The compilation and presentation of data relating to your progress serves as excellent motivation.

Fooducate Grocery Scanner (free): Finding the healthiest foods at the grocery store is made easy with the Fooducate Grocery Scanner. Simply scan the barcode of the item in question, view its rating, read about its positives and negatives and compare it to potentially healthier items. The app's food database contains more than 160,000 products.

Quick Meal (free): Android users can instantly find quick and easy recipes for healthy meals with Quick Meal. In just 15 or 30 minutes, you can have a tasty dish prepared from one of the nine different categories. If it's good, you can save it for future use.

Pocket Yoga: As with dieting, maintaining a consistent yoga routine can be a challenge given your sometimes hectic schedule. But with Pocket Yoga, you'll always have an instructor ready to visually and verbally lead you through 27 different sessions. Each practice is logged so that you can track your progress.

White Noise: A healthy mind and body require ample amounts of sleep. White Noise provides 40 ambient sounds — including the ocean, a rainstorm and a running stream — that make relaxing easier and sleep come faster. A sound shutoff timer ensures it doesn't play through the night and multiple alarms ensure you won't sleep through the morning.

Web MD (free): Working out and eating right will keep the doctor away, but unexpected health issues do occur, so it's convenient to have Web MD at your fingertips to check symptoms, learn about conditions, get drug and treatment information, find the proper first aid treatments, and find local health listings. Most unique: it can identify prescriptions and over-the-counter drugs.

Symptom MD: Punch in your problem and Symptom MD will tell you if you need help or how you can properly treat it yourself. If you have kids who regularly collect bumps and bruises, then Pediatric SymptomMD is sure to be useful as well.
Contacts and Sources:
Story by Tim Handorf
http://www.bestcollegesonline.net/blog/2011/15-best-apps-for-improving-your-health/

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