5 Ways Technology Can Improve Your Health
Technology has made some serious leaps within the past few years.
The growth seems to be exponential and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
We’re all familiar with the obvious everyday signs of technology.
Laptops, smartphones, and other trappings of modern life are evident.
The amazing thing is that technology is also working furiously to improve our health, such as with medical insert molding in surgical equipment.
That’s right; even with all the fuss about completely natural and disconnected living these days, we may not enjoy a healthy or long life without technological assistance.
Want to know just how this works?
Let’s explore how technology is making its mark in incredibly different ways.
1. Alleviating Inactivity
Think about it; a normal office job today would have you sitting most of the time in any case.
On your lunch break, you’d be sitting and eating.
You’d be taking the subway, bus, or carpool to work. Even after all this physical inaction, your couch time could take up the rest of the day.
With such a sedentary lifestyle, many people are fast moving towards ill-health and even death.
Surprisingly, while technology is responsible for most of your inactivity, it can also motivate you to get up and to run!
Think of all the Fitbits, activity-boosting apps, and other devices that manage your movement.
Plus, they’re easily manageable, only needing a USB charging every few days.
Fitness bands or hooking devices have become all the rage, especially in the millennial generation.
Besides, the young folks, middle-aged people, and even the elderly have become mesmerized by fulfilling a healthy step count each day.
With this heightened activity level, we stand to lose more weight in a healthy and natural manner.
In general, moving around and keeping our body fluid can stave off several illnesses and negative physical conditions.
2. Sleeping Trends
Losing out on a good night’s sleep can play havoc with our bodies and minds alike.
Unfortunately, the blue light emitted from our screens doesn’t really help us to fall asleep easily.
Add that to our stressful and partying lifestyles, which is why sleep can be quite an elusive thing.
Apps like the SleepBot may help you alleviate such cases instead of making them worse.
This program tracks the quality and frequency of your sleep.
Since impaired sleep can be as damaging as alcohol addiction, you should learn how to control your schedules.
In all cases, it’s wise not to head to work after getting little to no sleep at night.
With this app, you can make sure to check up on your sleep just like you do on your reps and steps.
Getting better sleep will also help you say goodbye to horrible illnesses like obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and even heart disease.
What’s even better is that as you go to bed, you can activate this app to switch off Wi-Fi, silence the phone, and generally eliminate all distractions.
For waking up on time, the SleepBot also has a handy alarm clock. Your sleep data can be synced to a website, where you can analyze and compare your sleep patterns with others.
3. Losing Weight
Just moving more won’t help you lose all that weight accumulated over the years.
Health experts say that weight loss is around 80% diet control and 20% exercise.
The processed food, junk food, and fast food we eat are contributing to our expanding waistline every single day.
Luckily, while apps have made it easier to order food, they’ve also made it easier to limit our intake and make our eating habits much healthier.
This is where apps like MyFitnessPal come in.
Enter in just about anything you consume or are thinking of consuming, and this app will give you nutritional information about it.
This may help a lot of people stick to a low-calorie diet, follow a low-carb lifestyle, or watch their eating habits in several other ways.
Another way in which technology contributes to healthy eating is by giving us access to healthy recipes.
Yummly has a ton of recipes that can be filtered to give you the healthiest and easiest options for homemade food.
What’s more, social media platforms have brought many people together who share their success stories, support each other, and get guidance from proven weight-loss regimes.
4. Preventing Eyestrain
This one may be a bit of a paradox since it’s these screens that end up bothering our eyes so much.
However, the main culprit is not the screens themselves but the poor settings on them.
This includes poor lighting, a bad pasture, too-small fonts, or a too-bright light shining into your eyes.
If you’re not careful, your eyes can be seriously damaged with the constant use of laptops, smartphones, and personal computers.
However, technology has sought to make up for these issues by also giving us the solutions to them.
Did you ever notice how some professional gamers wear special glasses while playing their video games?
Advanced technologies like the Gunnar Optiks glasses are specially designed to reduce eye strain so you can enjoy your screens to the utmost!
They have lenses that are amber-tinted and filter artificial light while sharpening image contrast.
They also provide a magnifying effect.
5. Relieving Stress
Many of us are workaholics, which is excellent for our bank accounts and productivity levels.
However, the health effects are highly negative, ranging from strained eyes to backaches to high-stress levels.
As we now know, stress can lead to a number of negative physical and mental repercussions.
The technology could again come to our rescue through the apps that remind us to get up, stretch, take a nap, take breaks, or otherwise go a little easy on ourselves.
There’s even an Evo prompt that makes the computer go blank after a while, encouraging us to look at something in the distance or just relax for some time.