When running the race to meet personal and professional needs of life, our health often takes a back seat. The decreasing quality of life is posing a big threat to human health across the world.

In a developing country like India, an overwhelming population suffer from serious health and fitness issues. Increasing pollution, unhealthy eating habits, sedentary lifestyle, and the lack of hygiene are amongst the top factors for diseases in India.

While a part of the country’s population still doesn’t have the liberty to choose their lifestyle habits, the ones who can afford to take care of their health often ignore it until sickness creeps in. cardiovascular and respiratory diseases are the top reasons for the increasing death toll in rural and urban India, and calls for serious lifestyle changes for one and all.

While leading a lifestyle that leaves us hard pressed for time, technology offers the best options to stay alert about our overall health through fitness apps. They’re easy-to-use, customizable to cater to Indian food and lifestyle habits, mostly available for free, and assist in leading a healthier life.

Here are a few health and fitness apps worth being on every Indian’s smartphone.

1. 1mg

Price: Free | Availability: Android and iOS

Rated as one of the best “Made in India” apps by Apple, 1mg comes with a smooth user interface and offers an exceptional database of over 1 lakh medicines along with their cheaper substitutes. The app offers valuable health tips by practitioners and makes the user aware of the side-effects of medicine usage as well. The effects of medicine on pregnant women, lactation, and overall health are also listed. Some cheaper substitutes with the same combination go as low as 90% in cost. The app also allows you to consult doctors online for free.

The app not only allows you to buy medicines online at a flat discount of 20% and get home delivery, it also helps you save on medicine and lab test reports. 1mg has won the Frost & Sullivan Award for "Innovative Healthcare Service Delivery Model of the Year”.

2. Healthifyme

Price: Free | Availability: Android and iOS

The app encourages you to watch your food intake and club it with the daily dose of exercises to lose weight and regain fitness. Dedicated entirely to Indian food habits, the app contains a huge database of food items, offers over 1000 activities, and provides on-demand instant access to reputed nutritionists, fitness trainers, and yoga instructors who assist you in losing weight. Healthifyme syncs activities and sleep data by flawlessly integrating with YUFIT, Google Fit, Mi Band (via Google Fit) and Fitbit and tracks your fitness progress effectively.

It has the largest online food calorie counter in India and offers a database of more than 20000 food items across 13 regions in India.

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3. Couch to 5K

Price: Free | Availability: Android and iOS

India ranks amongst the top 5 countries in the world with 9.8 million obese men. The country ranks third with 20 million women in the obese category. Sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest contributors to obesity after unhealthy food habits. The award-winning Couch to 5K is an exceptional app with millions of success stories around the world and over 100,000 Likes and 1000 success photos on social media. Specially designed for inexperienced runners and those new to routine exercises, the app only asks for your 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week, for 8 weeks in total. The program starts with a combination of walking and running routines, progressively building up the body’s stamina and strength to run 5K in a short span of 8 weeks.

The app allows you to listen to your favorite music when walking or running, and can be integrated with Facebook and Twitter communities as well.

4. Daily Yoga

Price: Free | Availability: Android and iOS

Yoga is an ancient way of realizing holistic wellness given by India to the world. The practice of yoga has been on a steady rise amongst old and young population of India and Daily Yoga further assists in helping interested yogis in practicing the art form in a convenient manner. The app offers more than 500 yoga poses with detailed instructions along with 100-plus HD videos updated on a monthly basis. The yoga sessions are timed between 5 and 70 minutes to allow beginners and pros to perform it with ease and as per their expediency.

The app focuses on healthy weight loss through yoga along with boot camp, body toning, body strength, flexibility, mental and physical relaxation, balanced menstrual cycle, body detox, meditation, and more.

5. 7 Minute Workout

Price: Free | Availability: Android and iOS

Rated amongst the top health apps in almost 57 countries around the world, 7 Minute Workout is great for the Indian mindset that, in general, isn’t inclined towards exercising. The app only asks for 7 minutes of your time anywhere, anytime during the day for a quick-fit workout. The 7 Minute Workout app is based on the High Intensity Circuit Training (HICT) program, proven to be the safest, most effective, and efficient way to improve muscular and aerobic fitness. The app offers a set of 12 exercises to be done just for 30 seconds each with a 10-second break in between each exercise.

The app comes with adjustable circuit time, rest time, and voice guidance. It offers the flexibility of pausing the workout and skipping to the next or previous exercise.

Conclusion

With the availability of numerous health apps on smartphones, the focus on fitness in India has definitely increased. Adopting a healthy lifestyle is a conscious decision and these health apps works as constant motivators in adhering to the better health resolutions.

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About Author

Swati Kapoor is a qualified dietitian at Practo. She has a Masters degree in Dietetics and Food Service Management. She is a strong believer in spreading the goodness of ‘nutrition through healthy eating’. As a responsible dietitian Swati examines her patients’ health history carefully before recommending any diet or workout regimen, because everybody has different requirements.

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Tags : Healthcare, health apps