Medical Apps Part 2

Well that is interesting. I've been using the Samsung Health App for some bits such as tracking my daily walks, but not really looked at the other options as I had other apps doing that. It had become apparent that the NHS app for tracking my weight was restricting things, so I switched over to using the food element on the Samsung one and was pleasantly surprised that it also tracks my fibre intake and finer control on other elements. It still does not give all the answers I would like to see, and while it is a LOT better at giving details of UK foods, a lot of my Lidl products have to be loaded manually. Work in progress.

Over the weekend I looked at other areas I had not tried yet and found an option to scan for 'appliances', which picked up two of the four SilverCrest devices, the scales (SBF77) and the blood pressure monitor (SBM70). This morning after doing my morning blood pressure test, the phone burst into life, and the Samsung App updated with the last 120 readings. So that rules out the phone being the problem why the Health for You app is not updated without jumping through hoops. Only problem currently is that now the old app can't update without me unpairing from the Samsung App. The scale's data is not doing this, but I suspect it has to be polled by the app as I have always had to go to the My Devices page and select it to have the data downloaded in the Health for you app. So I'm a little stuck on if I should retire the other monitors and the Health for You app.

The other apps that I'm using are the weight loss and exercise apps from the NHS. Both of which are just mirroring the Samsung app and doing a poor job in both. The Samsung app has set my calorie intake at 1750kcal while the NHS app will not allow me to select anything less than 1900. Since following the lower level, my weight is finally drifting towards what it was in early December last year. In addition the Samsung app is flagging the balance of the nutrition, just annoyingly it does not display the products that affect the overall carbs and fat figures! Getting those to the balance it is pushing is proving difficult.

The '20 mins brisk walking' that the exercise app tracks is restricted to that, and I'm often doing 30+ minutes of walking of which some is too slow. The Samsung app gives details such as steps, distance and speed and gives a graph of the speed of a walk. It even records it automatically if I forget to start a walk! While I was keeping a good 5kph rate last year, this year there are is lot more variation in that graph with dips down towards the end of the walk. I've been managing 40 minutes many days which is over 5000 steps and 4 kilometres, with an average of 5kph, which the NHS app under reprots. I think the NHS app relies on the google one to get it's details and I am getting to the point where I think both of those will get switched off.

I have the wrist watch on this morning, and jumped through the hoops to get it working. The Samsung app can't see it, but I'm not going to pay for a Samsung one any time soon. What it will provide is a better count of my 'steps', and I want to see if it gets something I can use for 'sleep', although it's nannying that I need to be asleep before 10PM is just an irritation. 10:30 is the time I have been aiming for. But none of the current apps record interrupted sleep at all, and I am up to the toilet at least once a night.