How to use health tracking features of your iPhone

Apple’s main selling point for the Apple Watch is to track your health, including activity, sleep, and certain medical conditions.

But it’s not the only Apple product that can help you get in shape and stay healthy. The humble iPhone also has many features for tracking health.

You may already know that you can follow your steps, for example. But the Health app built into your iPhone can do a lot more, such as tracking how long you’ve been aware through third-party apps, determining how long you’ve been in bed, your walking speed, and more.

Here are some examples of how the iPhone can help you recover:

The Health app can automatically track the number of steps you take in a day. It can also track the number of stairs climbed and the total distance you traveled.

Apple does not have its own meditation app unless you count some exercises in its Fitness + subscription service, which includes careful cooling and yoga workouts. But it can keep track of the time you spend meditating on third-party programs like Calm or Headspace. If you install the apps, you will be asked to store information with Apple Health, and once you do, you can keep track of how long you meditate in the app each day.

You need an Apple Watch to track your sleep, but the iPhone can keep track of how long you’m been in bed storing the information.

This is not a good analysis of your sleep, but you can get an idea of ​​your sleep pattern and whether you will pick up the iPhone at night. You can turn it on by selecting “Options” under the “Full Schedule and Options” menu.

The iPhone also has a “wind-down” feature that automatically puts your iPhone in Do Not Disturb mode and dims the screen. Once in mode, you can set shortcuts on your lock screen to access meditation apps, a reading app like Kindle or Apple Books and more. I use it every night so my iPhone does not disturb me when I sleep.

For women, the iPhone can follow menstrual cycles and predict your next period and fertile windows. You can also keep track of your periodicals, the symptoms you want to share with your doctor, and more. It can also affect things that can affect your fertility window, such as pregnancy or contraception.

A feature called “Headphone Sound Levels” can track how loud your headphone sound is and will let you know if you have listened to music too loud beyond the recommended limit. For example, if you listen to music for more than 90 hours more than 90 hours a week, your alarm may sound.

You can keep track of your doctor’s health records if your doctor’s office supports integration with Apple Health. Allows you to view all kinds of information, including vaccinations, blood test results, previous medical procedures and more.

Review your health checklist

Apple has also built a “health checklist” into iOS 14, which appeared in September 2020.

Health checklist helps to create a medical ID on your phone that you or someone else can show to first responders. There is important information, such as whether you are an organ donor, the type of blood you have, allergies and reactions, medications you are taking, your height and weight and more. You enter this data yourself, so you do not need to include any of it if you do not want to.

The health checklist can also help you set up the Emergency SOS, a feature on your iPhone that will automatically call emergency services when you quickly tap the sidebar of the phone in succession. Holding down the button will also send a message to any contacts you add in SOS for emergencies. For example, I set up my immediate family members in mine.