Dr. Niveditha Navin

Staying healthy and keeping track of our health goals has never been easier, with a great variety of wearable health trackers and apps. We’ve put together some of our favourite health and wellness apps, to help you improve your brain power, sleep better, and enjoy more effective workouts.

1. Elevate: Brain Training

4.7 stars

As we age, our brain function declines. However, studies have suggested that keeping mentally active, particularly as we age, can help to maintain cognitive function. Brain training apps are a way to keep your brain active, and build new neural networks.

Elevate caught our attention, because unlike other apps, it not only helps you train your brain through brain games, but also monitors reading speed and comprehension. There are six practice areas in the app that encourage you to learn more as you progress. It helps you articulate your thoughts more clearly, improve focus while reading and listening, improve your problem solving skills, retain more of what you read and hear, improve your mental vocabulary, and process information faster. Elevate is a great way to enhance brain function, and guard your mental sharpness against cognitive decline.

2. Myfitnesspal

4.6 stars

MyFitnessPal covers over 14 million foods on it’s database, and helps you accurately log everything you eat. Whether you want to lose weight, improve your fitness, change your diet, or keep track of your caloric intake, you'll find a wealth of inspiration and recommendations to motivate you to get healthy, stay healthy and achieve your health goals. You can track your daily diet and water intake. MyFitnessPal is not just any health tracker, it helps you refine your habits, and empowers you to make smarter choices, based on your existing lifestyle.

3. Happify

4.3 stars

Unhappiness may contribute to unhealthy behaviours, such as excessive drinking or smoking - habits can decrease your lifespan by 7.6 years and 10 years, respectively - along with other self destructive behaviours.

Happify is a personal growth app that gives you a wide variety of articles, meditations, and games, each of which deliberately helps you create more happiness in your internal and external life. Whether you are feeling anxious or unhappy about specific areas in you life, or are generally happy, but want to be fully present and thriving, these science based exercises help you manage stress and increase your level of happiness. Happify improves your happiness score, and resilience, through exercises that help:

• Stop negative thought patterns
• Decrease anxiety and stress
• Build mindfulness and optimism
• Improve confidence and self-esteem

It is a fun, engaging, and highly interactive app, that puts your well-being in your own hands. One of the biggest benefits of regular engagement in Happify is that it increases mindfulness, which is shown to improve longevity.

4. mySugr

4.7 stars

mySugr helps keep track of blood sugar levels, along with nutritional data, exercise, medications, and more. It is designed to help diabetics manage their blood sugar levels, and provides an easy way to log meals, carbohydrate targets, physical activity, and insulin levels, and helps customize the management of diabetes.

The clean, intuitive interface makes it easy to use, with a customizable interactive interface, and the ability to sync to a glucose monitor.

5. Sleep Cycle

4.6 stars

Struggling to catch enough zzz's? Well, there are so many sleep apps that promise to help you fall and stay asleep. But if you want to learn how you sleep, Sleep Cycle is for you. It tracks your sleep patterns, detects snoring, sleep talking, coughing and other sounds, and provides tips to optimize your snooze time. The alarm clock gently wakes you up when you're in your lightest sleep phase, so you wake feeling refreshed. With over a dozen alarm and soothing sounds to choose from, getting up and going to bed is much more enjoyable.

About Dr. Niveditha Navin

Dr. Navin is a clinical research specialist, who holds a degree in dentistry. After completing her postgraduate diploma in clinical research, she has experience working as a clinical affairs specialist in the pharmaceutical industry. She is passionate about medicine and wishes to carve a distinct niche in the field of research.