Improving my mental and physical health through data. Where to start?

Quantified Self QS newcomers
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#1

Hi y’all.
I’ve been facing a number of health issues that I’d love to generate insight on. I’ve been experimenting with different apps and hardware in the last few years, but never really found a system that works for me.

As background, here is a summary of things I’d like to use data to understand:

  1. I have a history of anxiety and depression
  2. I also have ADHD which results in volatile focus and productivity. For instance, when my meds wear off, I tend to start stimulating activities (e.g. social media, youtube, etc) and abandon them rather quickly as my mind attempts to find the stimulation it craves. I’d love to be able to quantify that and track it to factors related to my diet and meds
  3. I am on multiple meds and supplements related to depression and ADHD, with doses and time of intake changing all the time. I would love to be able to compare the effects of different configurations on my day-to-day functioning
  4. I am prediabetic and I’m working actively to get out of that status. An important part of this is paying closer attention to my diet. An automated way to monitor my blood sugar in a way that works with the diet data would be life-changing for me
  5. Energy and mood are a problem for me. I would love to see the hourly patterns based on what I’ve eaten or the meds I’ve taken

An important requirement for me is to have a daily log that consolidates the automatically captured data with my symptoms, meds, diet, physical activity, biometrics, mood, and energy manual entries. Many of the stuff I consume daily have bounded periods of effect within the day, so I’d love to study that.

Tools that I have access to/dabbled with:

  1. My phone is an iPhone 12 pro
  2. Apple Watch series 5
  3. Gyroscope Pro (it’s, uh, stylish and highly opinionated. Doesn’t have custom metrics as far as I can tell)
  4. Exist.io (no ability to enter custom data with timestamps within the day, only as tags for a single daily entry)

I really don’t mind splurging on software or hardware for this project, as long as the data collection is relatively frictionless and sustainable and not live in silos.

What would be tremendously helpful for me if all the data entered or collected is automatically routed to a single dashboard with a daily timeline/log, and the standard periodic trends dataviz views.

Do you guys have any recommendations, ideas, suggestions, resources, etc?
Thank you in advance.

2 Likes
#2

Hey just wanted to drop a note that I’m also looking for the same thing. I have some medical issues and do a lot of tracking via smart devices and manual tracking in spreadsheets.

I want to mention/plug my own project called Habit Dash. The goal of the project is to provide a unified dashboard and statistics that integrates with all major fitness devices AND manual habit tracking.

However, right now the manual habit tracking is still in development. I hope to have it available within the next few months. The site also lacks Apple Health support because the only way to connect to Apple is via an iOS app unfortunately.

So I can’t say this is a solution for you right now, but I do want to say that I am attempting to solve this problem and will have something usable soon. I would love to hear what others are doing as well.

2 Likes
#3

Hi Sam and Edward. I’ve been discussing exactly this need with some experienced self-trackers and I’m going to organize a Meetup specifically on QS dashboards. I’ve promised myself to get it announced and scheduled next week. It’s an important topic.

#4

Thanks @Agaricus I’d love to be involved.

@rbkn - I did some more research since my last post and you may want to look at this comparison grid I put together.

The following sites appear to allow for uploading spreadsheets where you track manual habits:

  • Fitness Syncer
  • Heads Up Health
  • Zenobase
  • Quantimodo
#5

Analysis seems to be only available on existio and maybe open humans in the future. I like Mysymptoms’s symptoms tracker which is great for subjective ratings. If you want to search for more try woop/awesom-QS and ran88dom99/QS-data-flow-network on github.

#6

Exist.io only allows for tagging if I’m not mistaken. That’s a big downside in my opinion and doesn’t allow for inputting magnitude, like amount of medication, or scale of something like mood or pain.

#7

I would love to participate :slight_smile:

#8

Hello. I’m trying something similar, better say trying to try. I haven’t found the right place to store the data / apps to unify it. I’m uploading files manually into google spreadsheets but couldn’t manipulate the data the way I wanted (it is too different from excel). Also I haven’t found a way to reach data from all apps I use.
So I can’t really help you, only throw some ideas.
-Rescue time might help with tracking online distractions.
-Next samsung watch 4 is announced to have continuous sugar measurements. But samsung doesn’t have cloud data, just tables that need to be uploaded. Maybe there is workaround to sync it to fitbit or something. Maybe there is a way to automate uploading data from the phone.
-there is dedicated device for actual continuous blood glucose levels, consisting of base unit and measuring pad that lasts 2 weeks, it sounds like reasonable investment.