Health & Fitness

The Apple Watch Series 7 is here, and it looks a bit different. The redesign gives the newest Apple Watch a softer shape with more rounded corners and a larger, brighter display. The other more prominent changes include new and improved fitness features, a full keyboard, faster charging, a higher dust resistance, new colors, and more! Let's dive into every Apple Watch feature covered in the September 14 Apple announcement, including when you can get the new Apple Watch and the Apple Watch Series 7 price.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but it’s OK to slow down. Whether you have a case of the winter blues or need a reminder that everything is going to be all right, a digital gratitude journal may be for you. Take some time out of your schedule to appreciate the little things in life: a friendly stranger saying hello or someone paying it forward at your favorite coffee shop. Getting in the routine of writing your own affirmations can prove to be game-changing for your mental health.

Apple prides itself on making everything on its devices intuitive. So you could probably figure out how to make an emergency call on a locked iPhone pretty quickly. But do you want to take even those precious moments to do so in a real emergency? Why not learn how ahead of time? Read on to learn how to make an emergency call and how to activate emergency SOS on your model iPhone.

How do you work out in a world where COVID-19 has made gyms unsafe? The simple answer is to work out at home, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Home workouts seem lackluster when you've been stuck at home for months already. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Apple has met this need head-on with a tech subscription offering, complete with a free trial. The advent of their newest fitness app, Apple Fitness Plus, is timed just right, but the expectations are high for this new service. So how does it measure up?

The Blood Oxygen app for the Apple Watch Series 6 is a timely and important update in our COVID-affected world, but it's not obvious how to set up the Blood Oxygen app the first time you use it. We'll show you how to set up your Apple Watch oxygen monitor, plus we'll help you understand the basics of how to read your results so that you can monitor your oxygen saturation levels.

This article will tell you how to use the iPhone's new Wind Down feature to benefit your bedtime routine. The Sleep Schedules introduced with iOS 14 have a lot of potential to get people on the right track when it comes to their bedtime routines, but it can also be a nuisance if you don't optimize it for your personal habits. Wind Down Time is a mode where your phone goes into Do Not Disturb mode to encourage you to stop your usual activities and — you guessed it — wind down. This can be overridden on your lock screen, and you can also set up shortcuts to the activities that help you wind down, so you don't have to open your whole phone and see all the notifications vying for your attention that you should really leave until the morning. When I set up my first Sleep Schedule I was annoyed at the Wind Down notifications and subsequent Do Not Disturb mode. However, if you take just a little extra time to think about your own habits and what helps you settle down at night, Wind Down mode can be a very useful tool to help your mind settle down at the end of the day. So here are the best ways to get the most out of Wind Down mode and, if all else fails, how to turn off your Sleep Schedules.

The iOS 14 Sleep tool in the Apple Health app is one of the many features Apple is offering to improve your health. You can set a bedtime, complete with a Wind Down Mode and Do Not Disturb, so your phone isn't buzzing or pinging with notifications while you try to sleep. And if you have an Apple Watch you can track your sleep. While this is a very helpful feature to those trying to get more serious about catching Z's, not every wants to go to bed at the exact same time every night of the week. A weekend or a regular early morning might lead you to need the option for different routines depending on the day of the week, so here is how to set up multiple bedtimes in the Sleep section of the Health app.

Prior to iOS 13.5, iPhones had the option to store a Medical ID, which could be viewed from the Lock screen by selecting it from the emergency call screen. On iOS 13.5 and later, you can conveniently automatically share your Medical ID information with emergency dispatchers. By immediately giving access to your medical conditions and blood type, among other information, dispatchers and first responders can waste less time gathering that data. They can then spend more time attending to your needs! Follow our guide to set up your iPhone to automatically send your Medical ID information during an emergency call.

The Noise app on your Apple Watch is there to help protect your hearing against harmful decibels, but to get the notifications, you’ll need to enable the app. With the Noise app, you can set the decibel at which you want to be notified and set how you receive the notifications. Let’s dive in with how to protect your ears with the Noise app.

Apple's new operating system, iOS 13, has a helpful new feature in the Health App; Cycle Tracking. This period tracker is useful for not only logging your menstrual cycle, but also symptoms associated with it, such as spotting, basal body temperature, fertility tracking, and calculating when your next period will start. Let's get started learning how to set up Cycle Tracking on your iPhone. 

Apple's Health app can tell you how many flights of stairs you've climbed or steps you've taken, your cycling distance, calories, weight, and, starting with iOS 13, how often your headphones were too loud. Sorting through all that data could be daunting, but the Summary tab can be customized to show only what you want to see: simply go open the Health app, tap the Summary tab, tap Edit in the top right corner, and then select the kinds of data you want to see in your summary. More health minded? With a HealthKit accessory, you can track your resting heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. Looking to focus on nutrition? The Health app can show your nutrients including sodium, fat, carbohydrates, and fiber. Choosing which of all these metrics to view is easy! Let me show you how.

If you use a sleep tracking app or otherwise like wearing your Apple Watch while you sleep instead of charging your watch overnight, you might struggle to find times to charge your watch and keep your battery levels up. Here's a list of suggestions for how to save Apple Watch battery life at night, while you sleep! While there's no way to keep your battery fully powered, if you try one or a combination of the suggestions below, you'll notice a difference and be able to roll out of bed without having to recharge your Apple Watch battery as often!

All of us have had to plow through at least one difficult day of school or work after a less-than-optimal night of sleep. But what happens when a rough night becomes the norm? The Centers for Disease Control collects data about the sleep habits of Americans and reports that one in three of us are getting fewer than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night. Whether you can’t fall asleep, can’t stay asleep, or both, insomnia is not only miserable but bad for your health. I’m one of those insomniacs who wakes up more nights than not after about four hours of shut-eye, and who’s unable to drift off again for at least an hour or two. If you’re like me and have spent many wakeful hours wishing you could just relax and sleep, it’s time to find some help. I’ve been researching why insomnia occurs, as well as testing iPhone gear and apps meant to deliver a good night’s sleep. Here, I’ll share the tips, apps, and gear that have been most effective so far in my quest to cure my insomnia.

If the Apple Watch is too geeky and a typical fitness tracker doesn't do enough for your overall health and well-being, the GoBe 2 ($169) from Healbe may be of interest. They sent me their "Smart Life Band" which is something inbetween a smartwatch and a fitness tracker. The GoBe 2 measures (or recommends) calorie intake, energy balance, sleep quality, emotional states, water balance, burned calories, heart rate, stress level, steps, and distance. In short, it addresses all or most of the health benefits of a smartwatch, and perhaps more, but without the excess capabilities many fitness users wouldn't bother with.

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