News

These days we all seem to be attached to our mobile phones. There are apps for everything, from navigation and online auctions to star maps and you can even turn your best friend into a zombie (so I’m told). And of course, there are loads of health related apps. The Department of Health recently ran a survey to find the nation’s favourite health app so I’ve been checking them out.

First on the list was moodscope, which uses a short card game to measure and track your mood everyday with the option to involve your friends to support you if you’re having a bad day. It works on the theory that continued monitoring improves performance – a bit like weight watchers or running with a pedometer – and, according to initial research by King’s College London, it seems that users are reporting a significant improvement in their mood. With long waiting lists for NHS talking therapies and the need for patients to understand mood patterns over a period of time this little app could help us monitor what makes us tick and create a more open forum to share our ups and downs.

Check Moodscope out for yourself…

As I was editing my own little bit of internet real estate, www.leedsosteopathy.com I realised my safe clinic website was really just a static view of my own practice, minus the people that really matter … the patients.

Gone are the days when we just went surfing the net, riding the waves and maybe learning a thing or two. The internet these days is a far different beast. These days, we are all creating our own waves using our own personal sites; Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and millions of blog sites on every conceivable subject. Type in the questions, ‘how do I’ or ‘what is’ and bets are that you will land on a blog site.

Just as the internet has changed, so has medicine, with an increased focus on the patient rather than the practitioner. We are now more than ever active participants in our own care. Rather than relying solely on the advice of our doctor, we will look it up on google, seek online advice or even discuss the problem with other sufferers on blog sites. This openness between patient and practitioner is fundamental to getting the diagnosis and treatment right for each individual. Simply put, good health care comes from good communication.

As an Osteopath I am always keen to develop my patient’s understanding of their own health care. So I decided to update my website, add more information about what to expect from your local friendly osteopath and add this blog page. You can even follow me on Facebook, please ‘like’ me at www.facebook.com/leedsosteopathy. I hope that setting up these forums for us all to share health and wellbeing advice, stories, research trends and new discoveries we can help each other to live life more comfortably.