521834
research-article2014
NASXXX10.1177/1942602X14521834NASN SchoolNASN School Nurse
Dear Lillian . . .
I know my lifestyle choices ultimately correlate with how healthy I am, and as a school nurse, I realize I am a role model for healthy behaviors for my students, staff, and the community. This past school year I found it challenging to balance my school nurse workload and personal life with family and friends and to find time for improving my overall wellness. I am looking for something to “ignite” my interest in both physical behaviors and mental outlooks to healthier lifestyle choices. Do you have any ideas that will assist me? Signed, Needing Inspiration
Dear Needing Inspiration, School nurses can be a role model for healthy living. Here are ways to do this: •• Get 7-8 hours of sleep each night; •• Exercise 30-60 minutes daily; •• Limit unhealthy foods such as sweets, soda, and junk food; •• Drink plenty of water daily; •• Don’t use tobacco; •• Limit alcohol intake; and •• Reduce stress. A mobile app is a software program you can download and access directly using your phone or other mobile device, such as a tablet or music player with Internet access. Not all apps work on all mobile devices, as they each have unique operating systems, so you will need to select an app store that works with your particular device. To set up an account, you may have to provide a credit card number, especially if there is a fee to download the app. You can search by name and type of app as well as read and review what the app does. There may be sample screens or videos to preview the operation of the app, reviewer comments, and various links to the developer’s website and other comparable apps. Some apps are interactive, and others are informational (Federal Trade Commission, 2011; Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 2013).
124 NASN School Nurse | May 2014
There are countless apps that are available to help you stay on track with relaxation to help you rest, exercise to help you improve your health and fitness, and nutrition to help you make the best choices to nourish your body. Explore the following apps and get started in healthier living today. There is always room for improving your health.
Rest/Relaxation Relax Melodies— Introducing the most popular sleep aid app! Start sleeping now and enjoy full nights of sleep like you haven’t in a long time! Here’s how it works: Select sounds and melodies that you like and combine them to create a mix. Adjust the volume of each sound individually for better results. Lie back, listen, and enjoy falling asleep. It’s that simple and it works. Use timers and alarms if needed. Try different and new mixes every time! I Can Be Fearless— Relax and remove fear and anxiety with popular learning programs. All music/moods are free, and there are over 20 products available. Alarm Clock Sleep Sounds—This app really does make you fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly. The alarm is crazy—you do wake up just by the audible tones.
Life Positive—This app helps you achieve your life goals with good health, fitness, and happiness. It helps you to remain optimistic and cherished and maintain a positive mindset while you strive to better your life and those of your friends and family. GPS4Soul—Counteract the negative health effects of stress with this free app. Using the smartphone’s camera, this app measures users’ heart rates to determine how stressed they are and offers guides to calm them down. Guides vary from meditation to yoga poses and positive affirmation mantras. Users can also make their own guides using smiling photos of family and pets or songs.
Exercise/Fitness My Fitness Pal—When it comes to health and fitness tracking, this free app is one of the most popular. It allows users to record meals, water consumption, physical activity, and weight loss progression. Use the chart function to show your progress over the last week or month.
DOI: 10.1177/1942602X14521834 For reprints and permission queries visit SAGE’s Web site, http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav. Downloaded from nas.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2015 © 2014 The Author(s)
Fitness Buddy— Whether you are trying to tone down or bulk up, Fitness Buddy will have a workout for you, even if you don’t have any equipment. If that’s not enough, simply create your own. Nike Running—Map your runs, track your progress, and get the motivation you need to keep going. The Nike+ Running app tracks distance, pace, time, and calories burned with GPS, giving you audio feedback as you run. RunKeeper—Join the more than 24 million people who are using RunKeeper to turn their phone into a personal trainer in their pocket! Track your runs, walks, bike rides, hikes, and more using the GPS in your smartphone. 5K Runner—The OFFICIAL 5K Runner® Program! Get in shape and lose weight in 8 weeks. Nexercise—With the Nexercise app, your workout is transformed into a fun game. Play with friends, earn rewards, get support, lose weight, and track your progress on the largest fitness mobile app. The Total Couch to 5K app helps you go from the couch to running a 5K in 30 minutes per day over 9 weeks. Complete the 9-week workout plan to achieve your 5K run. Post your progress to Facebook, map your runs, track your progress and timings, and get audio or voice cues as you run. Charity Miles—Fitness is not only good for your health; it can also be a great way to raise money for your favorite charities. This app allows you to earn money and raise awareness for charities by walking, running, or biking. The app measures your distance and raises 10 cents per mile for cyclists and 25 cents per mile for walkers and runners, all thanks to the
app’s $1,000,000 corporate sponsorship pool. MapMyRun—Using a built-in GPS, this free fitness app enables users to access real-time fitness tracking. Follow your route on an interactive map while logging time, distance, speed, pace, elevation, and calories. MOVES—This free app tracks your movements, showing how small changes to your daily routine can turn into healthy lifestyle habits. Turn the app on and keep your smartphone in your pocket to allow it to record the distance, time duration, and number of calories you burned as you moved throughout your day. The app divides activities into walking, running, and cycling. miCoach—The app uses GPS and real-time voice coaching to pace you through your exercise regardless of whether you are indoors or outdoors. It additionally provides access to hundreds of strength and flexibility exercises to achieve your fitness goals. Runtastic—This app tracks your sports and fitness activities. Do you run to keep fit and stay healthy? Are you doing sports to burn fat or lose weight? Are you training for a marathon? With Runtastic, you can get more out of your fitness activities and training. Let Runtastic be your fitness partner and start tracking your activities today. Everhealthier Women— This is a web app designed for mobile devices. It empowers women to engage in important healthy behaviors by fitting tasks into their lifestyle. The tasks are the screenings and prevention behaviors that match users’ age and profile according to national guidelines.
Nutrition Livestrong—The LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker can help you reach your diet, weight loss, and fitness goals by tracking
your daily calories and exercise. Lose weight easily by setting your weight goals and track your calories and progress with a comprehensive online food journal containing over 1 million food and fitness items. Tracking works. You will lose weight like millions of other members. Lose It—This app helps you set a daily calorie budget, track your food and exercise, and stay motivated to make smarter choices and achieve your goal, and it works as a seamless weight loss system. Fooducate—Lose weight, eat REAL food, and track your progress. Fooducate grades your food, explains what’s really inside each product, and offers healthier alternatives. Its database consists of UPC-based nutrition information—over 200,000 unique products and growing. Health Tips—Health Tip of the Day offers you easy-to-follow daily tips on how to be just a little bit healthier. By following one of these tips every day, you will be sure to live a healthier lifestyle and feel better too! Weightwatchers Mobile—Track your food, weight, and activity to stay on plan. Use the new Spaces and Routines tools wherever you are. The Snap and Track tool makes tracking a snap. Look up PointsPlus® values and make smarter choices. Access thousands of meal and recipe ideas on the go, too. Calorie Counter—This is the essential app to simply find nutritional information for the food you eat and to keep track of your meals, exercise, and weight. The Calorie Counter application has all of the cool tools to help you succeed, such as a food quick pick to find calorie and full nutrition information, a food diary to plan and keep track of what you’re eating, and an
Downloaded from nas.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2015
May 2014 | NASN School Nurse 125
activity diary to record all of the calories you burn. Recipes by Ingredients—This app allows for searching based upon ingredients, allergies, calories, servings, time to cook, and meal type! It is one of the first recipe mobile apps that allow you to search by multiple ingredients, with allergies, calories, serving time, and cook time. Search for recipes by simply typing in the ingredients and pressing enter. Add allergies and sort by time, calories, and servings to get the perfect recipe for you. This app will even let you sort by quickest, 20 minutes or less, no restrictions.
Tobacco Cessation Zombie Smokeout— When a craving for a smoke hits you, it may seem intense. It usually weakens in a few minutes, but during those few minutes, it’s a good idea to find something else to do. Take a walk, go get a drink of water, or play Zombie Smokeout. This action-packed mobile game can distract and entertain you to help get you past your craving. The best part is, while you’re squirting zombies, you’re not smoking. So if you’re a smoker, play this iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile game to help distract you from your craving and keep your hands busy until the urge to smoke passes. QuitSTART App—This is a free app that can help you track your cravings and moods, monitor your progress toward achieving smoke-free milestones, identify your smoking triggers, and upload personalized “pick me ups” and reminders to use during challenging times to help you successfully become and stay smokefree. It was created with teens in mind, but it can also be used by adults. Quit Smoking: Cessation Nation—See how long it’s been since you stopped smoking, the amount of money you’ve saved, cigarettes not smoked, and health
126 NASN School Nurse | May 2014
improvements. Play a fun distracting game while you forget about your cravings. Join the vibrant Facebook community offering support to everyone who has chosen to stop smoking! QuitNow—This app offers you real-time status, anytime, to help you cope with anxiety, including the time since the last cigarette, how many you have avoided, and the time and money you have saved. Also, it provides World Health Organizationbased indicators on your health improvement process and an achievement list that you will unlock one by one, as time passes, motivating you to achieve your goal. LIVESTRONG MyQuit Coach—As with weight loss plans, approaches to smoking cessation vary greatly. The personalized strategies to quit smoking in LIVESTRONG’s MyQuit Coach app can help you find the right program for your lifestyle. tweetsmoking—Known as one of the wackier apps, tweetsmoking helps you make Twitter part of your smoking cessation plan. The app facilitates shares about your successes, failures, and questions. tweetsmoking also features displays that exhibit your skin’s improvement and vitamin C replenishment since cessation. Butt Out—If seeing how much money you save by not smoking (a feature of this app) doesn’t convince you to stay quit, a running tally of how much your health has improved just might. For each day you go without a cigarette, the app shows you how much your risk for certain diseases has fallen. Mobile apps can help people manage their personal health and wellness, promote a healthy lifestyle, and gain access to useful information when and where they need it. Whether it’s instructing you on how to stay fit, relax, or improve your nutrition, a mobile app may be just what you need to stay motivated and successful
as you work to improve your overall health and wellness. ■
Authors’ Note The purpose of this article is to inform our readers of the multitude of wellness apps that are available in today’s market, some of which are free to the user. The reference to specific apps in this article in no way implies endorsement of the product or service by SAGE, NASN, or the journal editor.
References Federal Trade Commission. (2011). Understanding mobile apps. Retrieved from http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0018understanding-mobile-apps Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. (2013). Mobile health and fitness apps: What are the privacy risks? Retrieved from https://www. privacyrights.org/mobile-health-and-fitnessapps-what-are-privacy-risks#section%202
Downloaded from nas.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2015
Guest Authors . . . Descendants of Lillian Wald Christine Tuck, MS, BSN, NCSN Health Services Director Seaman USD #345 Topeka, KS Christine has been a school nurse in USD #345 for 23 years. In September 2013, she was named a “Physical Activity Champion” for Shawnee County. She currently serves on the Executive Committee for NASN and is also a marathon runner. Jodi R. Sheets, BSN, RN School Nurse Ascension Parish School District Donaldsonville, LA Jodi has been a school nurse in Ascension Parish for 14 years. She believes that fitness and nutrition go hand in hand with overall health. She has been a group fitness instructor for 13 years and personal trainer for 6 years and is currently a Level One Crossfit Coach.
research-article2014
NASXXX10.1177/1942602X14521834NASN SchoolNASN School Nurse
Dear Lillian . . .
I know my lifestyle choices ultimately correlate with how healthy I am, and as a school nurse, I realize I am a role model for healthy behaviors for my students, staff, and the community. This past school year I found it challenging to balance my school nurse workload and personal life with family and friends and to find time for improving my overall wellness. I am looking for something to “ignite” my interest in both physical behaviors and mental outlooks to healthier lifestyle choices. Do you have any ideas that will assist me? Signed, Needing Inspiration
Dear Needing Inspiration, School nurses can be a role model for healthy living. Here are ways to do this: •• Get 7-8 hours of sleep each night; •• Exercise 30-60 minutes daily; •• Limit unhealthy foods such as sweets, soda, and junk food; •• Drink plenty of water daily; •• Don’t use tobacco; •• Limit alcohol intake; and •• Reduce stress. A mobile app is a software program you can download and access directly using your phone or other mobile device, such as a tablet or music player with Internet access. Not all apps work on all mobile devices, as they each have unique operating systems, so you will need to select an app store that works with your particular device. To set up an account, you may have to provide a credit card number, especially if there is a fee to download the app. You can search by name and type of app as well as read and review what the app does. There may be sample screens or videos to preview the operation of the app, reviewer comments, and various links to the developer’s website and other comparable apps. Some apps are interactive, and others are informational (Federal Trade Commission, 2011; Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 2013).
124 NASN School Nurse | May 2014
There are countless apps that are available to help you stay on track with relaxation to help you rest, exercise to help you improve your health and fitness, and nutrition to help you make the best choices to nourish your body. Explore the following apps and get started in healthier living today. There is always room for improving your health.
Rest/Relaxation Relax Melodies— Introducing the most popular sleep aid app! Start sleeping now and enjoy full nights of sleep like you haven’t in a long time! Here’s how it works: Select sounds and melodies that you like and combine them to create a mix. Adjust the volume of each sound individually for better results. Lie back, listen, and enjoy falling asleep. It’s that simple and it works. Use timers and alarms if needed. Try different and new mixes every time! I Can Be Fearless— Relax and remove fear and anxiety with popular learning programs. All music/moods are free, and there are over 20 products available. Alarm Clock Sleep Sounds—This app really does make you fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly. The alarm is crazy—you do wake up just by the audible tones.
Life Positive—This app helps you achieve your life goals with good health, fitness, and happiness. It helps you to remain optimistic and cherished and maintain a positive mindset while you strive to better your life and those of your friends and family. GPS4Soul—Counteract the negative health effects of stress with this free app. Using the smartphone’s camera, this app measures users’ heart rates to determine how stressed they are and offers guides to calm them down. Guides vary from meditation to yoga poses and positive affirmation mantras. Users can also make their own guides using smiling photos of family and pets or songs.
Exercise/Fitness My Fitness Pal—When it comes to health and fitness tracking, this free app is one of the most popular. It allows users to record meals, water consumption, physical activity, and weight loss progression. Use the chart function to show your progress over the last week or month.
DOI: 10.1177/1942602X14521834 For reprints and permission queries visit SAGE’s Web site, http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav. Downloaded from nas.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2015 © 2014 The Author(s)
Fitness Buddy— Whether you are trying to tone down or bulk up, Fitness Buddy will have a workout for you, even if you don’t have any equipment. If that’s not enough, simply create your own. Nike Running—Map your runs, track your progress, and get the motivation you need to keep going. The Nike+ Running app tracks distance, pace, time, and calories burned with GPS, giving you audio feedback as you run. RunKeeper—Join the more than 24 million people who are using RunKeeper to turn their phone into a personal trainer in their pocket! Track your runs, walks, bike rides, hikes, and more using the GPS in your smartphone. 5K Runner—The OFFICIAL 5K Runner® Program! Get in shape and lose weight in 8 weeks. Nexercise—With the Nexercise app, your workout is transformed into a fun game. Play with friends, earn rewards, get support, lose weight, and track your progress on the largest fitness mobile app. The Total Couch to 5K app helps you go from the couch to running a 5K in 30 minutes per day over 9 weeks. Complete the 9-week workout plan to achieve your 5K run. Post your progress to Facebook, map your runs, track your progress and timings, and get audio or voice cues as you run. Charity Miles—Fitness is not only good for your health; it can also be a great way to raise money for your favorite charities. This app allows you to earn money and raise awareness for charities by walking, running, or biking. The app measures your distance and raises 10 cents per mile for cyclists and 25 cents per mile for walkers and runners, all thanks to the
app’s $1,000,000 corporate sponsorship pool. MapMyRun—Using a built-in GPS, this free fitness app enables users to access real-time fitness tracking. Follow your route on an interactive map while logging time, distance, speed, pace, elevation, and calories. MOVES—This free app tracks your movements, showing how small changes to your daily routine can turn into healthy lifestyle habits. Turn the app on and keep your smartphone in your pocket to allow it to record the distance, time duration, and number of calories you burned as you moved throughout your day. The app divides activities into walking, running, and cycling. miCoach—The app uses GPS and real-time voice coaching to pace you through your exercise regardless of whether you are indoors or outdoors. It additionally provides access to hundreds of strength and flexibility exercises to achieve your fitness goals. Runtastic—This app tracks your sports and fitness activities. Do you run to keep fit and stay healthy? Are you doing sports to burn fat or lose weight? Are you training for a marathon? With Runtastic, you can get more out of your fitness activities and training. Let Runtastic be your fitness partner and start tracking your activities today. Everhealthier Women— This is a web app designed for mobile devices. It empowers women to engage in important healthy behaviors by fitting tasks into their lifestyle. The tasks are the screenings and prevention behaviors that match users’ age and profile according to national guidelines.
Nutrition Livestrong—The LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker can help you reach your diet, weight loss, and fitness goals by tracking
your daily calories and exercise. Lose weight easily by setting your weight goals and track your calories and progress with a comprehensive online food journal containing over 1 million food and fitness items. Tracking works. You will lose weight like millions of other members. Lose It—This app helps you set a daily calorie budget, track your food and exercise, and stay motivated to make smarter choices and achieve your goal, and it works as a seamless weight loss system. Fooducate—Lose weight, eat REAL food, and track your progress. Fooducate grades your food, explains what’s really inside each product, and offers healthier alternatives. Its database consists of UPC-based nutrition information—over 200,000 unique products and growing. Health Tips—Health Tip of the Day offers you easy-to-follow daily tips on how to be just a little bit healthier. By following one of these tips every day, you will be sure to live a healthier lifestyle and feel better too! Weightwatchers Mobile—Track your food, weight, and activity to stay on plan. Use the new Spaces and Routines tools wherever you are. The Snap and Track tool makes tracking a snap. Look up PointsPlus® values and make smarter choices. Access thousands of meal and recipe ideas on the go, too. Calorie Counter—This is the essential app to simply find nutritional information for the food you eat and to keep track of your meals, exercise, and weight. The Calorie Counter application has all of the cool tools to help you succeed, such as a food quick pick to find calorie and full nutrition information, a food diary to plan and keep track of what you’re eating, and an
Downloaded from nas.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2015
May 2014 | NASN School Nurse 125
activity diary to record all of the calories you burn. Recipes by Ingredients—This app allows for searching based upon ingredients, allergies, calories, servings, time to cook, and meal type! It is one of the first recipe mobile apps that allow you to search by multiple ingredients, with allergies, calories, serving time, and cook time. Search for recipes by simply typing in the ingredients and pressing enter. Add allergies and sort by time, calories, and servings to get the perfect recipe for you. This app will even let you sort by quickest, 20 minutes or less, no restrictions.
Tobacco Cessation Zombie Smokeout— When a craving for a smoke hits you, it may seem intense. It usually weakens in a few minutes, but during those few minutes, it’s a good idea to find something else to do. Take a walk, go get a drink of water, or play Zombie Smokeout. This action-packed mobile game can distract and entertain you to help get you past your craving. The best part is, while you’re squirting zombies, you’re not smoking. So if you’re a smoker, play this iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile game to help distract you from your craving and keep your hands busy until the urge to smoke passes. QuitSTART App—This is a free app that can help you track your cravings and moods, monitor your progress toward achieving smoke-free milestones, identify your smoking triggers, and upload personalized “pick me ups” and reminders to use during challenging times to help you successfully become and stay smokefree. It was created with teens in mind, but it can also be used by adults. Quit Smoking: Cessation Nation—See how long it’s been since you stopped smoking, the amount of money you’ve saved, cigarettes not smoked, and health
126 NASN School Nurse | May 2014
improvements. Play a fun distracting game while you forget about your cravings. Join the vibrant Facebook community offering support to everyone who has chosen to stop smoking! QuitNow—This app offers you real-time status, anytime, to help you cope with anxiety, including the time since the last cigarette, how many you have avoided, and the time and money you have saved. Also, it provides World Health Organizationbased indicators on your health improvement process and an achievement list that you will unlock one by one, as time passes, motivating you to achieve your goal. LIVESTRONG MyQuit Coach—As with weight loss plans, approaches to smoking cessation vary greatly. The personalized strategies to quit smoking in LIVESTRONG’s MyQuit Coach app can help you find the right program for your lifestyle. tweetsmoking—Known as one of the wackier apps, tweetsmoking helps you make Twitter part of your smoking cessation plan. The app facilitates shares about your successes, failures, and questions. tweetsmoking also features displays that exhibit your skin’s improvement and vitamin C replenishment since cessation. Butt Out—If seeing how much money you save by not smoking (a feature of this app) doesn’t convince you to stay quit, a running tally of how much your health has improved just might. For each day you go without a cigarette, the app shows you how much your risk for certain diseases has fallen. Mobile apps can help people manage their personal health and wellness, promote a healthy lifestyle, and gain access to useful information when and where they need it. Whether it’s instructing you on how to stay fit, relax, or improve your nutrition, a mobile app may be just what you need to stay motivated and successful
as you work to improve your overall health and wellness. ■
Authors’ Note The purpose of this article is to inform our readers of the multitude of wellness apps that are available in today’s market, some of which are free to the user. The reference to specific apps in this article in no way implies endorsement of the product or service by SAGE, NASN, or the journal editor.
References Federal Trade Commission. (2011). Understanding mobile apps. Retrieved from http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0018understanding-mobile-apps Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. (2013). Mobile health and fitness apps: What are the privacy risks? Retrieved from https://www. privacyrights.org/mobile-health-and-fitnessapps-what-are-privacy-risks#section%202
Downloaded from nas.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2015
Guest Authors . . . Descendants of Lillian Wald Christine Tuck, MS, BSN, NCSN Health Services Director Seaman USD #345 Topeka, KS Christine has been a school nurse in USD #345 for 23 years. In September 2013, she was named a “Physical Activity Champion” for Shawnee County. She currently serves on the Executive Committee for NASN and is also a marathon runner. Jodi R. Sheets, BSN, RN School Nurse Ascension Parish School District Donaldsonville, LA Jodi has been a school nurse in Ascension Parish for 14 years. She believes that fitness and nutrition go hand in hand with overall health. She has been a group fitness instructor for 13 years and personal trainer for 6 years and is currently a Level One Crossfit Coach.
