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Non Drug Pain Management Ideas: iPhone and iPad Apps for Chronic Pain Management

If you own an iPhone or and iPad, and you also suffer from chronic pain...this post is for you!

The smart phone revolutionized the way people use their cell phones.  It is more like having a pocket computer that's also a telephone than the other way around. In addition, the iPad so wonderfully marries the technology of a computer to the portability of a tablet.  Splendid, indeed!

Now to the part about chronic pain.  As owners, of these devices you must by now be aware of all the "apps" that you have available to you.  Some of them cost a little money..and by paying the fee, you have something to gain in the way of advertisement-free information. Some of us prefer that.  Others do not mind paying a little extra to get rid of those annoying ads.  In any event, today I am going to share with five or six of the most popular Apple
"apps" for smart phones and tablets.  I am going to share the free ones because I know that most people like being able to get free stuff!  These are all available through I tunes or through the "App Store" on your Apple device.  So, without further ado:

iPhone Apps




1)WebMD Pain Coach  

WebMD Pain Coach™ offers a holistic approach to balancing lifestyle with chronic pain conditions to help inspire a better day. WebMD’s new app is a mobile companion to help you through daily health and wellness choices so you can better manage your chronic pain. Enjoy a personalized experience as physician-reviewed tips related to your specific condition are delivered daily to you. WebMD Pain Coach™ puts you in control of your lifestyle choices so you can review personal patterns to understand triggers, set goals, and easily share progress with your physician.

2)Chronic Pain Tracker Lite

Take the guess work out of pain management with Chronic Pain Tracker. Record your pain history with 18 unique health categories. Review a Summary Report with your doctor in the app, or export a PDF for printing/emailing. For less than a typical insurance co-pay, you can improve the management of your pain.

3)Beat Neuropathy and Chronic Pain

Beating Neuropathy and Chronic Pain is an application provided by NeuropathyDR that helps patients understand what neuropathy is, how it contributes to chronic pain, interacts with different types of medical conditions, and dispels common myths about neuropathy in general. It also provides a diagnostic test to determine whether or not somebody may be a candidate to see a neuropathy specialist to assist in their treatment, and gives users a directory of neuropathy specialists across the United States. Further, neuropathy news and research is also available within the app so that users can be kept abreast of the latest news and finding in neuropathy.

4)Chronic Pain Diary Lite

Track your pain with symptom, treatment and note tracking, a color coded calendar, graphs, and quick and easy data entry.

Recording a new entry doesn't require longer than a few seconds; Chronic Pain Diary takes the pain out of tracking chronic pain.

Chronic Pain Diary allows you to name your treatments and symptoms. A few examples of the many possibilities: back and hip pain, pain relief, chronic pain, Lyme symptoms, Lupus symptoms, Fibromyalgia, and depression symptoms.

5) Pain Trackr

PainTrackr is an open-source app that monitors physical pain. It logs pain based on severity and location and stores this data so that it can be easily transmitted.


iPad Apps 







"Beat Neuropathy and Chronic Pain" and "Chronic Pain Diary Lite" as described for iPhone are also available for iPad.  In addition, the following apps are available from the iTunes store for Apple tablets:


Medical experts recommend you keep a pain diary in order to be able to treat pain effectively. Use CatchMyPain to
- create detailed color pain drawings to express the location and the intensity of your pain
- have the course of your pain visualized by a graph which is calculated based on your pain drawings
- export your pain diary and share it with your care providers 

Pain logger Lite Edition helps you track (and remember) your pain intensity levels over time. If you have ever sought medical attention for pain, you know one of the first questions your care provider asks is “What has been the highest level of pain you have experienced?” Pain Logger Lite Edition helps you definitively answer that question by tracking your pain levels over time. With Pain Logger LE there no longer is the need to guess the answer to this question. In fact, not only will you know the most intense level you have experienced, you will also know when it occurred, what might have triggered it, and how you alleviated it.

There are many, many more options available to you you at the iTunes store. Many of the ones that say "Lite" are trial versions of things that you can try for free, then pay for it if you decide it's a keeper. These are mostly pain diaries so you can keep some kind of record to share with your health care team. There are also magazines, podcasts, etc. etc.  I guess I will have to blog about all of that stuff at a later date!






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