You might not know this, but your gut health plays an important role in your overall health. Oftentimes, you might put food in your body without considering how it can affect your digestive system.
Before you grab that sausage roll or glazed donut, think about whether those processed foods influence your health negatively. Fortunately, mobile apps can help you learn more about how to take control of your digestive system.
1. FODMAP A to Z
FODMAPs are nondigestible carbohydrates, and since they could be contributing to your IBS, the low FODMAP diet may be beneficial for you. The diet works to eliminate these potential trigger foods so that you can eventually figure out which ones are causing your digestive problems.
FODMAP A to Z isn't strictly an app for food allergies but it is an app for maintaining a low FODMAP diet. There are clear ratings on each food: red, amber, and green. The ratings help you to see which foods to avoid and which are safe to consume.
If you're looking for a clear and simple database of food, that's exactly what this app is. By typing in a kind of food in the search bar, the app lets you know the color-coding, category, and serving size.
Download: FODMAP A to Z for iOS | Android (Free)
2. Cara Care
Being able to keep a daily log of your diet, mood, stress levels, medication, symptoms, and even your bathroom habits, can help you stay on top of your digestive needs. Cara Care is a comprehensive app that aims to make your life with IBS easier.
You can keep a detailed diary of the food you ate on your best and worst symptom days and save your own recipes along with the individual ingredients. The Cara Care app is fantastic, although it would be beneficial to be able to track your weight as well.
Download: Cara Care for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
3. Nerva
Over the course of a six-week program, Nerva uses the power of hypnotherapy to help you go on a gut-healing journey. The app can help you fix your gut-brain connection by using a combination of hypnotherapy sessions, different reading material, and deep breathing exercises.
Nerva might not be the most conventional way of dealing with IBS problems, but it could be the method that works for you. Using hypnotherapy to manage IBS may be especially helpful if you don't want to deal with changing your diet completely or logging all of your symptoms.
Download: Nerva for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
4. mySymptoms Food Diary
Easily record, track, and analyze your health with the mySymptoms Food Diary app. Log everything in your daily life, like your IBS symptoms, bowel movements, exercise, energy, sleep quality, and what you eat during meals.
Effortlessly scan food barcodes or add your detailed recipes with specific ingredients and then view your outcomes and events in your diary. If you've downloaded the app for free, you'll have to upgrade to a premium plan to gain access to detailed charts and results about your symptom trends. You can even save a PDF report to print out and show to your doctor!
Download: mySymptoms Food Diary for iOS ($4.99) | Android (Free, subscription available)
5. Endive
As previously mentioned, keeping a log of what you eat and how you feel can help you keep track of how these aspects affect your gut health. The Endive app makes it even easier to manage your condition, whatever it may be, by featuring a simple-to-read visual graph.
The graph lets you clearly see how you've been feeling over the past several days, weeks, and months. For example, if you're feeling severely bloated and stressed, rate your symptoms at a level five, and then watch as those feelings are represented visually. Thereafter, you can compare what you ate on a specific day and analyze how severe your symptoms were.
Download: Endive for iOS | Android (Free, in-app purchases available)=-o90
6. Zemedy
Zemedy is an app that specifically targets people who suffer from IBS. The app features six weekly modules that include IBS-specific tools and techniques along with useful resources and articles about your gut health.
To get started you complete an initial assessment, check-in, and welcome sessions from Mel, your virtual IBS coach. From there you can keep track of your weekly visceral sensitivity index, IBS severity score, and IBS quality of life measure. The only downside of the Zemedy app is that to access the full six-week program, you have to pay for a plan.
Download: Zemedy for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
7. Tummi FODMAP
If you have just started the low FODMAP diet and are looking for the best low FODMAP resources, this is an incredibly useful app to have. Not only is the design of the Tummi FODMAP app straightforward and painless to use, but it can quickly help you to learn what single foods lead to bad IBS symptoms in your body.
Search through the meal directory, input your daily meal entries, and then take note of what IBS symptoms occur when you eat certain foods. By tracking your flare-ups, you can come up with a diet that suits your gut's needs.
Download: Tummi FODMAP for Android (Free, subscription available)
8. IBS Coach
IBS Coach is an app that has all the basic features you want: symptom tracking, reports, and a helpful list of foods. The FODMAP food directory includes safe ingredients, potential triggers, and those that you must avoid completely.
Based on the answers you give during the assessment on the app, IBS Coach estimates how long it might take for you to start feeling relief from your IBS symptoms. Let the chef at IBS Coach plan your weekly meal plan or plan your own meal plan from scratch.
IBS Coach could be the app you need to help you reduce digestive symptoms like bloating, cramping, abdominal pain, and more.
Download: IBS Coach for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
Mobile Apps That Help You Love Your Gut
The human digestive system is an extremely complicated network that is often called the second brain. Yet, if your gut is so important to your health, why aren't you taking all the necessary steps to take care of it properly?
If you've got a gut feeling that you should be paying more attention to your digestive health, try some of these great mobile apps and learn more about what foods to eat, which to avoid, and the IBS symptoms to look out for.