How the Apple Watch Can Help Improve Your Health

Most of us aren’t going to shell-out thousands of dollars for expensive exercise equipment, no matter how often those infomercials try to get us to. Companies love to promise that you can get fit with simple workouts or routines. Some offer great rewards with little effort that seem too good to be true. Thankfully, the road to good health doesn’t require gimmicks. Apple has a solution.

The Apple Watch can read your pulse and detect the amount of calories you burn throughout the day, thanks to some nifty “light?sensitive photodiode” sensors. This information is stored on your iPhone in the Activity App. It shows how long you have exercised though out the day, how long you’ve been standing, as well as calories burned.

The recorded data shows you when the activity occurred, and can be reviewed by day, week, or month. This data is also displayed in rings that move around as you move. The goal is to complete each ring at least once a day.

There are multiple health apps that work in conjunction with the Apple Watch to help you achieve your health goals, here we preview a few of them.

The Health App can be used as your health record database, pulling in tons of different information from your Apple Watch. It also uses other apps that record your activity and puts it all in one place. You can input data manually, like weight and height. There is a plethora of data that can be entered into the app, from nutrition and vitals, to sleep patterns, and it’s all displayed in convenient graphs too.

7 Minutes is a free app that features workout routines that you can do in, you guessed it, 7 minutes. There are 12 exercises that lasts for 30 seconds with a 10 second break between each one. Some of them include pushups and squats. The most helpful feature helps you learn how to do each exercise with a video built right into the app. It’s great if you need a refresher or are new to the exercise.

The free version is limited, but you can purchase two other workouts for $1 each. You can also purchase an option to create your own workout for $1. Still, the free workout you do get is good enough if you have just enough time for something quick.

The Kaiser Permanente app is useful for people who have that healthcare provider. You can use it to access your account information, medical record, and checkup on your upcoming and past appointments. You might want to find out if your healthcare provider has their own app. It could be quite convenient.

In the old days, we couch potatoes would sit in front of the TV late at night and watch infomercials about the latest exercise machine promising a ripped body just by following some simple routine. Being healthy is really about watching what you eat, how much, and making sure you exercise daily.

The Apple Watch helps in this regard, reminding us to get active and to keep track of our physical activity. Is it going to make my body ripped? Maybe not, but so far it has made me more aware of my own health, and that will definitely have a positive impact.