Introduction :
A healty lifestyle is about more than just proper nutrition and consistent exercise. Getting enough sleep, taking care of your body and mind, and managing thinks like medications and doctors appointment also play important rules in saying healthy.
Although several definitions of health have been developed over time, most practitioners use the definition proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948. The WHO defines health as a state of physical, mental and social well-being that does not reduces the absence of disease or infirmity. Having the best health that a human being is capable of is one of the fundamental human rights.
In the medical field, health is seen by the pathologist as a state of integrity, by the clinician as a lack of symptoms and by the patient as a state of well-being. Health can also be defined as a unit of the following three points of view: biological, mental and social.
Definition of healthy lifestyle:
The World Health Organization defines health as "complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease."
Health is influenced by many factors, such as the environment in which we live, the social relationships, the habits we have.
Taking care of your personal health and having a healthy lifestyle means feeling better, means more productivity, means lowering the risk of illness and death. The absence of a disease does not necessarily mean that we are healthy. Physical and mental health are the two most commonly discussed types of health. We also talk about relational health, spiritual health, cognitive health, emotional health, and financial health.
Nowadays, a healthy lifestyle has a major influence on maintaining good health, this concept referring to a combination of actions and activities beneficial to everyone, often optional and which, for some reason, may not be available to each of us. . A balanced diet, exercising, reducing alcohol consumption, quitting smoking, adopting preventive behaviors (vaccinations or regular medical check-ups), observing sleep hours are such good habits, whose practice / "non-practice" is induced by information. , material and intellectual possibilities, temporal and spatial resources, personal and social beliefs.
All of these are interconnected and work as a whole for a healthy lifestyle. Physical health is maintained mainly through sports, nutrition, avoiding the risk factors that predispose us to diseases, and these elements are the cornerstone for other aspects of health.
Lifestyle is often defined by the following six components:
1. Physically
2. Mental
3. Emotional
4. Social
5. Finance
6. Spiritual
Various applications that help people lead a healthy lifestyle :
Applications already cover almost all areas of human life, and the fitness industry is no exception. Due to the fashion for a healthy lifestyle and sports, is possible to find a lot of software in the app stores to help reduce the dose of nicotine consumption, monitor body hydration level, develop a training program, etc.
A healthy lifestyle app is a software product that allows users to form healthy habits and assists them with sports one way or another. the apps offer both a complete course and programs designed to achive specific goals, such as weight loss, sleep improvement or mental health.
Living a healthy lifestyle has become a fundamental goal for today's society. Quality of life is continuously improved through various activities and applications that support lifestyle through sports, healthy eating or other activities.
Healthy lifestyle apps may differ by categories (sports goals, weight loss, others), functionality, tracking activity (permanent and periodic), type of monetization, etc.
Features are usually determined by the category of an app; for example, applications for running require speed and distance tracking, heart rate control, fixing records, and so on. Slimming program - accurate calorie count and control of weight changes dynamics. Utilities can contain a huge number if exercises with the ability to download videos to clearly demonstrate their correct performance.
Classification :
1. Nutrition applications :
a. PlateJoy
b. Nutrition Facts
c. MyNetDiary
d. My Plate
e. My Fitness Pal
2. Workouts & Fitness applications :
a. Workouts Trainer: FITNESS coach
b. Sweat Flix
c. 8fit Workout and Meal Planner
d. Jefit Workout
e. FitBody
3. Mental Health applications:
a. Headspace
b. Moodpath: Depression and Anxiety
c. Calm
d. Remente- Self improvement
e. Elevate: brain training
Top 10 best applications to follow a healthy lifestyle :
The most useful and widely used strategies for maintaining a healthy lifestyle are exercise and certain eating patterns. To this end, several apps have been created, the most popular of which are:
1. Lift
The Lift app is designed to help you reach your goals and get rid of bad habits. With everything you do in the gym, if you are not motivated to reach your goals, then you will be less likely to get the results you want. Lift is an app that will encourage you to stick to your healthy habits and achieve your goals. It influences you in a positive way to carry out your physical workouts to get more satisfaction.
2. Yummly
Yummly is the most complex recipe app designed to help users with real problems. To keep your preferences in mind, Yummly offers a search filter that helps you get straight to your favorite recipes. Yummly can also take into account other parameters such as cooking time, cooking techniques, ingredients needed and calories consumed.
3. Gain Fitness
Gain Fitness can now be your much-desired trainer that will set your workout schedule to help you reach your goals. Exercises will become much more interesting and interactive and progress will not be slow to appear. Gain Fitness offers flexibility and convenience, so you won't have to go to the gym to do the necessary workouts. The app has a calendar, which keeps track of calories burned and workouts, so you can easily observe your personal progress. Perfect for people with a busy schedule, Gain Fitness recommends a personalised fitness plan based on your personal data and requirements. In order to perform the exercises as correctly as possible, Gain Fitness offers you the possibility to watch videos of athletes performing various exercises.
4. MapMyRun
MapMyRun is a fitness app that allows you to set up your route via GPS and Google Maps. It records the details of your workout including duration, distance, pace, speed, calories burned and route covered. Practical and efficient, the app also tells you how many calories you should burn per day to stay in enviable shape. As well as keeping a personal record of your progress, MapMyRun allows you to join a great community of people to race and interact with.
5. Fitocracy
This app is built on the video game model, to move to the next level you need to complete certain tasks and accumulate some experience. The app offers a range of workouts and expert advice, along with a large community of like-minded people who will help you stay motivated.
6. Couch to 5K
Running is the easiest and most convenient way to maintain good health and fitness. Couch to 5K is a proven training method that can get you to a minimum of 5,000 steps a day in just nine weeks, with no previous experience. The app allows you to track your progress and record your workouts through four motivational coaches.Mobile apps have managed throughout their evolution to be used in various areas of society, such as healthcare. The main areas of health where they have been used are: nutrition, mental health , as well as symptom monitoring and medication treatments.
7. Buddyfit
The app offers programs lasting several weeks which, thanks to a progressive increase in intensity, will help you reach certain goal: weight loss, rock abs, relieve stress, be more toned.. For the "do-it-yourself" fanatics, on the other hand, thanks to the rich schedule of workouts and yoga and meditation exercises, it will be possible to independently build your own routine following your needs day by day. Thanks to our expert trainers, you will be able to achieve your goals in a guided way.
8. MyFitnessPal
Whether you want to lose weight, tone your body, improve your lifestyle or start a new diet, this app will be right up your alley. MyFitnessPal calculates your calorie count, with a database of over 6 million foods. You can scan the barcode to find out how many calories the food has or check the calorie count of the recipe you want to prepare. What's more, the app keeps track of the nutrients in the food you eat.
9. Deliciously Ella
Created by Ella Woodward, a healthy eating guru, this app is a great guide for those who want to follow a vegan diet. Here you'll find plenty of recipes and a diverse range of foods you can easily prepare.
10. CarbsControl
CarbsControl is very useful for people with diabetes or who are on a low-carb diet. This app keeps track of carbohydrates, with a database of over 10,000 foods.
Top 5 best applications to improve Mental Health :
1. Headspace
It is an app that helps you take care of your mental health, with the main effects of reducing stress, improving sleep and mantaining emotional health. More and more people feel the need to find a way to calm down and cope with the stress of busy everyday life, which is why the practice of meditation and mindfulness techniques is increasingly used nowadays. Also, more and more studies attest to the benefits of meditation.
Some of the benefits include:
- Hundreds of meditation sessions to choose from.
- The length of a session can be customized to last 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes, depending on how much free time you have.
- Based on scientific research.
2. Moodpath
Depression and anxiety. The Moodpath app is yout daily check-in tool. It can help you take stock of your emotional life each day, get insights on specific moods to better learn how to grasp what's happening in your mind, and use many proven techniques, like cognitive behavioral therapy, to work against negative or toxic behaviors.
3. Calm
Calm is the 1st app for sleep and meditation. Calm is for anyone, whether you're brand new to meditations or a seasoned expert but it's also for anyone who needs mental break of a peaceful night's rest. The app offer a new 10-minute Daily Calm every day, Sleep Stories narrated by well-know voices like Matthew McConaghey, a music library with exclusive tracks from top artists, soundscapes and nature sounds to use during meditation or to help your sleep, breathing exercises to help your sleep, and more.
4. REMENTE-Self improvement
The Remente app gives you many resources to help search your life for happiness and fulfillment, with goal setting, a daily planning tool for day-to-day tasks and longer-term goals, and written and visual features to help you track your feelings in detailed ways that can help you better understand what brings your life purpose .
5. Elevate: brain training
This brain-training program helps to improve your focus, speaking abilities, processing speed, memory, math skills, and more. You can get a personalized training program that adjusts the more you use it to maximize your results.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Health-Apps
Advantages
- Applications are easily accessible
- Most of them can be downloaded and installed for free using the App Store for IOS and Google Play for Android
- Create a personalised programme based on the information provided by each user
- Apps can record previous information, allowing the user to monitor their progress
Disadvantages
- Does not offer security and privacy to users, as their data is exposed in the public environment;
- Provide information about different symptoms, but are not able to give a correct diagnosis;
- Individuals are beginning to distance themselves from doctors, who put all their trust in the information found online. A study by Nuance Communications, a multinational IT company, shows that globally about 40% of people use online to get medical help and trust the information provided online.
A study conducted by MedicOne on the effects of technology on Romanian users shows that over 70% of them use applications for a healthy lifestyle. It has been found that by accessing these mobile applications, individuals have more control over their health and are less prone to stress.
Half of them use technology to inform themselves, and about 35% use it to organize their lifestyle and to monitor their medical treatment. Also, 23% of them managed to communicate better with doctors or other patients through technology. Oana Cociașu, partner of Medic One states that: "Although technology makes them feel in control and less stressed, most Romanians get information from unauthorized and unverified sources such as forums and blogs, which can have a negative impact on their health . Therefore, our recommendation is that doctors, especially specialists, communicate more online to reach patients and thus minimize the influence of unsafe and misleading sources.
Pros and cons of applications that support a healthy lifestyle
Pros :
- accessibility
- non-stop availability
- lower costs for downloading the application than for a specialized consultation, permanent verification and updating, the possibility to benefit from the reviews of other users
Cons :
- the uncertainty of the concrete results, slightly hallucinatory variety, the possible lightness with which a diet or sports program is viewed
- prejudices
- possibility of the application disappearing from the online environment and data loss
Conclusion:
With the Covid-19 pandemic and related continuing restrictions, healthy lifestyle apps have never been more important for people around the globe to maintain the regime they had before 2020 happened. Now users are able to choose from plenty of applications that would help track their steps, achieve skin care routine goals or relieve their anxiety.
Nowadays, technology has become an important part of a person's life. Although it can have negative effects on humans through the "comfort" it offers us, we can use these devices to influence our physical activity and with it our health, for the better.
References
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/top-healthy-lifestyle-iphone-android-apps
https://www.elpassion.com/blog/15-best-lifestyle-apps
https://www.hellomagazine.com/healthandbeauty/health-and-fitness/2019010866354/wellness-apps-to-download/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-lifestyle-mobile-apps
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/best-apps-new-year-stress-sleep-health-success-habits/
https://www.docwirenews.com/blog/best-apps-to-keep-you-healthy-in-2020/
https://massmediagroup.pro/blog-mmg/healthy-lifestyle-app
https://impakter.com/lifestyle-apps/
https://fourwellness.co/blog/the-best-apps-for-healthy-living-2020
https://www.prevention.com/health/sleep-energy/g24736063/best-health-apps/
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/top-healthy-lifestyle-iphone-android-apps
https://massmediagroup.pro/blog-mmg/healthy-lifestyle-app
https://ein-des-ein.com/blog/the-best-lifestyle-apps-to-download-in-2022/
https://vilmate.com/blog/how-to-create-a-health-app/
Done By :
Midhuna Kunjan Babu
Bahareh Alizadeh Kord
Odichinma Esther Ehiemere
Attanasi Greta Andrea
Campochiaro Mariaemilia
Cappi Margherita
Year 2022/2023 - Serie A - Group 2 - Subgorup 3
