To A Healthy New Year!

4 Top Health Care Phone Apps for Your Android

As a nurse, I feel good health should be part of everyone's New Year's resolution and plan to create a greener world. There are several reasons for this, which I some point I should detail in a blog post. But as you begin the New Year, consider these apps to help you become healthier.

Calorie Counter

The first app is a very cool calorie counter that goes far beyond any mobile calorie counter that I’ve ever seen. On the Android Market, it is simply called Calorie Counter.  The application lets you look up just about any food imaginable in order to learn the calorie and nutritional content. Obviously, having such convenient access to nutritional information will help you make much better informed food choices, and of course it will greatly improve your eating habits.

This app has every method of searching you could think of, including areas for general food, popular and supermarket brands, restaurant chains and even the ability to scan the barcode on food packages and instantly get information on its nutritional content. The application goes even further than just serving as a reference. You can keep a calorie log in the form of a “food diary,” you can keep track of how and when you exercise, and of course it helps you to track your weight over time so that you can monitor your progress.

In terms of nutrition, the app only provides the basics, such as protein, fat, carbs, fiber, sugar and of course calories. You may not get the mineral and vitamin content, but in all honesty the information that is provided is really all you need to make healthy food choices.

The food diary is an awesome feature that lets you quickly add whatever food you eat during the day. A major problem with many online calorie trackers is that you must log into the Internet in order to log your calories, you weight and other statistics. However, with this application installed on your Android, you will no longer have to worry about whether you’ll remember to log your daily calories when you get home. Just pull out your phone and add the entry to your Food Diary, and you’re done!

First Aid

The next health care phone app that I’d like to cover is aptly called First Aid. One of the first rules of staying health is avoiding injury, and to avoid injury you must stay safe. But how do you protect the health of your family members when tragedy strikes? Do you know the Heimlich maneuver? Do you know CPR? If you have First Aid by your side, you’ll never have to wonder if you’ll know what to do when something horrible happens.

The Android app provides large categories that are very easy to navigate through to find the condition that you’re looking for. For example, under Life Saving Procedures you’ll find a number of skills that can save lives in many life-threatening situations like a choking or a heart attack.

The instructions are brief and to the point, with clear and accurate images that portray how the current step is supposed to look. You’ll find that the instructions are very easy and quick to get at, and the instructions are simple and to the point. Whenever you need help knowing what to do, you can rest at ease when you have First Aid installed on your phone.

Medicinal Herbs

Another way to stay health is to take supplements. While some people take vitamins and call it good, I’m actually a believer in the power of herbal medicine. For centuries, herbs and plants have served as medicine and cures for humanity. Many common herbs have the ability to cure skin conditions, illnesses, allergic reactions and much more. However, at times it can be very difficult to know where to look for accurate herbal information. Enter Medicinal Herbs for the Android phone.

Medicinal herbs provides a decent sized database filled with all of the most popular and most effective medicinal herbs. If you want to dig any further and learn more, all you have to do is click on one of the herbs.

Once you do, you’re whisked away to the specific herb page, where you’ll learn everything you ever wanted to know about that particular herb. In particular, you’ll learn what the medicinal herbs are either proven to do for you, or at least believed to do. In some cases, the claims are questionable, but in other cases many people swear by them. However, in every case if you intend to use herbs to treat an illness, always check with your doctor first.

Workout Coach

The last health app I’d like to cover is called Workout Coach on the Android Market.  This is an app that I looked for for a very long time before stumbling across this one. There are a lot of Android apps that help to monitor your running patterns through GPS and manual data entry, but not quite as many useful apps that focus on your workout in the gym. Thankfully, Workout Coach does the job.

With Workout Coach, you can monitor your exercise behaviors through an activity log where you enter in the specific exercises and their details about your workout – like the target body area and how many reps you performed.

By keeping a log of your exercise routine and following the history of your workouts versus the results that you expect, you’ll have better insight to fine tune your workouts so that they are much more effective.

Have you ever used any of these health apps? Do you have your own favorite apps to add to the list? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Thanks to Ryan from Makeuseof.com for this content.