Virtual Caregiving: 10 apps for a healthier and more relaxed life

The theme of this month’s issue of the magazine Chronicles of Health and Narrative Medicine is focused on the sphere of caregiving. Nowadays the free and daily assistance, however, can also come from the various devices to which our daily lives are increasingly tied. Updates and applications of our smartphones and tablets can therefore, in some cases, be seen as a kind of virtual caregiver. In this short contribution we thought of collecting, for our readers, a selection of the 10 most interesting and downloaded apps for digital assistance (Android), focusing mainly in the field of stress management and wellness, issues that for better or for worse touch us all:

 

Calm – Meditate, Sleep, Relax

Calm is one of the most popular apps for meditation and sleep management. Millions of downloads to live with less stress, less anxiety and a more restful sleep: guided meditations, sleep stories, breathing programs and relaxing music. Recommended by psychologists, therapists and mental health experts.

 

Daylio – Mood Tracking 

Daylio allows you to have a private diary without having to write a single line. Choose your mood and add the activities you have done during the day. You can also add notes and keep an old-fashioned diary. Daylio records moods and related tasks in statistics and calendars. This format will help you better understand your habits. Keep track of habits and create patterns to become more productive.

 

Pacific – Stress & Anxiety

Pacifica offers you psychologically designed tools to deal with stress, anxiety, and depression based on cognitive behavioural therapy, meditation, relaxation, and mood/health monitoring.

 

Sleepo – Sounds of relaxation and dream

Sleepo offers a collection of high definition sounds that can be combined to create relaxing environments. You can choose from different types of sounds: rain, nature, city, white noise or instrument sound. Save your favorite sound mixes.

 

Moodpath – Depression & Anxiety Test 

Moodpath is an interactive program for monitoring depression and anxiety. It tracks your psychological, emotional and physical well-being and generates a personalized assessment of your mental health that you can discuss with therapists.

 

Lifesum – Healthy Lifestyle 

A personalized guide to a healthier lifestyle. Based on your state of health and the lifestyle you want to achieve, Lifesum creates a personalized plan to help you live better: gain weight, lose it, gain muscle mass or simply feel healthier.

 

Healthy Cooking

The meeting point between food and health: personalized recipes to help people feel better eating. “Our health is built at the table on the basis of the food we eat every day. It is therefore essential to give the right importance to a varied and balanced diet, characterized by the balanced intake of various nutrients.

 

Natural Remedies – Wellness, Beauty and Health

In the app you’ll find everything you need to feel good and stay in shape. From toothache to insomnia, acne to nausea, these are just some of the problems that can be solved or at least improved with natural methods without drug abuse. Some of the sections of the app: Remedies, List of Problems and Disorders, a weekly recipe, yoga exercises, the latest news from the world of science, fast “do it yourself” remedies and videos, color therapy.

 

Rootd – Panic Attack & Anxiety Relief 

An application to defeat panic attacks and anxiety, combining a guided process for immediate and long-term relief, with a clean and engaging design. The app includes: Rootr (app mascot and virtual caregiver), comprehension lessons, emergency contacts, personal statistics page, short term lessons, long term lessons.

 

Forest – Stay focused

The phone app against the phone. If you want to temporarily put the phone down and focus on what is most important in real life, you can plant a seed in the forest: as time goes by, this seed will gradually grow into a tree. However, if you cannot resist the temptation to use the phone and abandon the app, your tree will wither. A sense of accomplishment and responsibility will encourage you to stay away from the phone and help you make better use of your time.

 

Finally, we would like to remind our readers of the project promoted by the ISTUD Foundation dedicated to health and wellbeing, the Healthy project. Healthy, which is aimed primarily at people with obesity, is open and useful for everyone.

Matteo Nunner

Graduated in Literature at the University of Eastern Piedmont, he's now studying anthropological and ethnological science at the University of Milano-Bicocca. Journalist and writer, he collaborated with many local newspapers and in the 2015 he published his first book "Qui non arriva la pioggia". In the 2017 published "Il peccato armeno, ovvero la binarietà del male".

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