Unless you were on a different planet for past several years, you have heard about the controversies over the health risks of your cell phone. I almost never carry my cell phone on me and would advise doing the same to everyone, or at least avoid having your cell phone next to your body as much as you can.
In case you absolutely have to have your cell phone on you, I wanted to tell you about one thing that you can do to have a better use of your cell phone. Today I would like to talk specifically about apps that will make your cell phone function as a pedometer, or even almost a treadmill too. You have probably heard about a recommendation of walking approximately 10,000 steps each day. However, even if you exercise regularly, it doesn’t warrant that you meet this guideline (this depends on what kind of exercising you do, of course).
This is where pedometers, and now several apps, come to use, helping those of us who wouldn’t even know how long we should walk to reach the goal of 10,000 steps. And what happens usually is that people hugely overestimate how much they walk daily. I have been advising people to get a pedometer for several years now and have given them as presents to several friends and family members. But now there are apps that can count your steps and do much more, including monitoring the distance you walked, your current and average pace, time elapsed and calories you burned.
Perhaps the most praised pedometer app, mainly for its accuracy, is the iTreadmill. Another one that people seem to love a lot is called All-In Pedometer. However, there are several other pedometers apps, and some are even free of charge. They might have differing interface design, but they all do pretty much the same measurements.
So, get an app-pedometer that appeals to you the most and keep track of how much you typically walk each day. Whether you use a regular pedometer or an app, you don’t necessarily need to, unless you want to, use it every single day, especially if you are in a good shape and feel well and healthy. Just have it on from time to time to get an idea how many steps you make each day. This will show whether you have to adjust your routine in order to walk more.
Enjoy your walking, hiking and anything that keeps you going!
Hi, Roza,
COngratulations on a wonderful website.
So I absolutely have to have my cell phone by me at all times — it now serves as my cell phone, PDA and a mini-computer. Plus I need to have it on me at all times in case of emergencies, as I have a partner who is ill.
DO you have any suggestions as to what you might due to make the cell phone safer?
I wondered if using a head-set or speaker phone to talk on it — thereby keeping the cell-phone at least away from your head would be of some use.
DO you have any other suggestions (apart from pedometers)?
Hi, Justitia,
So nice to see you here — and thank you!
There are certain things that you can do to make it safer, and you are on spot with the two options you mentioned. As you know very well, scientists are not unanimous about health risks of cell phones, mainly because research data are not really conclusive. I will write a separate post on this soon.
Nice post. Knew nothing about these apps.
Thank you, Kara. I hope you will enjoy your phone’s new functions.