Spend more time in gadgets & be healthier

I am not going to talk about how to avoid using it; instead let us see how you can use it in a smart way to keep yourself healthy. If someone asks you to reduce the usage of smart phone or tab, what will you do? In my case, my hands will start to shiver and I will tend to look at my gadgets more than before. If you watch yourself on why you use the gadgets frequently, there is no specific reason and it is just an addiction.

How to stay healthy by looking at the gadgets frequently?

Nowadays, there are many free and paid apps available in all mobiles. It covers a wide range from measuring the heart rate, tracking diabetes, walking and jogging, monitoring the sleep cycle and so on. These apps are amazing and there are more than 40,000 apps in the market already. The new mobile phones will bring more and new features focusing on health to support the apps. The wearable devices like Apple watch that track the health will increase and the usage of those devices will bring dramatic change in our lives. Today the Apple watch can monitor the heart rate, blood pressure and can send an SMS, message and even call an ambulance if it is alarmingly low.

Can we keep seeing these health apps frequently?

We may not and it doesn’t make sense because it takes little time to see the data. How to keep using the gadgets and still be healthy? Let me talk about another usage now. How about reading a good book using the gadget? It serves two purposes;

1. A reason to use the gadget, which we are anyway addicted

2. Reading a book is anytime good compared to any other hobby

It is proven that reading a book can reduce the stress by 68%. The e-books and e-book readers are becoming hugely popular nowadays. For example, there are more than 600,000 books in Kindle library alone and many more websites provides e-books in different formats. There is a huge demand in India for e-books and people are continuously looking for e-books in all languages. This shows that the tech savvy people are becoming smart and they have chosen the right way of using the gadget.

Have you started using your gadget in a smart way? Try it now and be healthy!!

- Dr. Rajesh Devadas, Ph.D., Director