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Your Nokia Lumia smartphone can do many things for you but perhaps one of the most important is that it can help you stay active, get fitter and monitor your health.

As well as general exercise and training apps there are also some great tools in the Windows Phone Store that allow you to monitor your physical well being, such as blood pressure, BMI and your heart rate. 

We all know that keeping fit and looking ourselves is vitally important but it can sometimes be difficult to maintain that commitment in our daily lives. Here’s where these apps and your Lumia can make all the difference!

Medical Wallet (£3.99)

Medical Wallet

If you’re after an all-in-one app for your medical records then Medical Wallet is just the thing for you.

You can monitor your weight, BMI, allergies, blood pressure, blood glucose and keep track of your prescriptions; there’s a digital pedometer, you can search for nearby medical centres and gyms and, should you wish, you can even share records of your progress on social networks!

The app is integrated with Microsoft’s HealthVault service so you can back up all your records without any fear of losing vital information.

Instant Heart Rate (£1.49)

instant heart rate

Where apps such as Medical Wallet or Medicine Tracker (£1.49) are great for keeping track of your medical records, there are also some tools that give you instant, real-time information.

Instant Heart Rate measures your heart rate as it actually is, at the very moment you are using the app. It works by measuring the pulse in your fingertip when you place it over the Lumia’s camera lens.

It sounds like voodoo but it seems to work. While monitoring your heart rate should be a sobering experience, I couldn’t help thinking that this was also great fun! I blame the bleeping hospital sound effects.

Test Your Ears (free)

test your ears

Another similarly interactive health app is Test Your Ears. This plays small bleeps at different frequencies (which you control on the dialler) to see how high you can go before they become inaudible. 

We tend to lose the ability to hear at the higher frequencies as we get older – hence the use of sonic alarms to deter groups of unruly teenagers.

I’m afraid I maxed out at 15,000Hz, but you can turn it up all the way to 20,000Hz. The developer has another app worth checking out – Test Your Eyes (free).

EatSmart (£0.99p)

eatsmart

If you’re concerned enough to be monitoring your health, then you should also be watching what you eat.

This app gives you nutritional information about various foods and drinks so you can carefully monitor your intake. 

Each food type is listed with different facts such as calories, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, fat and fatty acids. Even meals at popular fast food restaurants are listed! 

Runtastic (free)

runtastic

So, after monitoring your blood pressure, measuring your heart rate and improving your diet, what’s the next step to living a healthier lifestyle? Exercise!

Runtastic is a genuine all purpose fitness package. It tracks your runs or walks using GPS, tells you how many calories you’ve burnt off, the speed, time, distance and all sorts of other statistics.

It saves all this data so that you can track your progress over a period of time. Of course, there’s also a Live Tile so you can see the information at a glance.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s plenty of other health and fitness apps in the Windows Phone Store so check them out if running is not your thing.

Also, don’t forget, as useful as these apps are, they are no substitute for professional medical advice!

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