Track “bad” habits like cigarettes and alcohol (by quantity and frequency)

At Bearable we’re big fans of helping people to find what habits work best for their health and that’s going to be different from person to person.

Keeping track of “bad” habits like caffeine, sugar, alcohol, tobacco, etc. Is a great way to understand how each of these things impacts your mood, sleep, energy, and symptoms.

To get a good understanding of the effect they have it’s important to track how often the habits occur (frequency) as well as how much you consume (quantity).

This will give you better quality insights that help you to find the right balance for you.

📈 Tracking “bad” habits by quantity and frequency:

There are two main ways to do this:

One: Tracking habits as factors.

The easiest way to track a “bad” habit is to create a custom factor group called something like “bad habits”. You’ll then be able to add customer factors to that group that track a range of behaviours e.g.

- - Drank Alcohol: Lots
  - Drank Alcohol: Moderate
  - Drank Alcohol: Little

An example of how your “bad” habits might look as Factors.

Two: Tracking habits as Health Measurements.

The more detailed way to track a “bad” habit is using the Health Measurements section (add it to your homepage using the Edit button at the bottom of your homepage). You can create a custom measurement by clicking “add/edit” in the menu in the top right corner of the Health Measurements section and then clicking “Create Custom Measurement” on the next screen. This will allow you to more specifically track your habit by units, millilitres, grams, etc. For example:

- - The number of units OR number of bottles of alcohol that you drank
  - The weight of tobacco OR number of cigarettes you smoked
  - The amount of coffee in ml OR the number of cups you drank

An example of how your “bad” habits might look as Health Measurements.

🔎 Where can you view the effect of these habits on your health?

There are a few different ways to view how your habits correlate with your health outcomes. The main ways include:

The Factor Effect Report

If you have a Premium Subscription you can click into ANY of the advanced insights reports for mood, symptoms, sleep, and energy. Then scroll down to the factor effect on report and click the arrows at the top of the section to view the “bad habits” factors. You’ll be shown the percentage change in your health outcomes that correlate with your “bad habits”.

An example of the Factor Effect of “bad” habits on Symptom Score.

The Comparison Graph

If you use Bearable for free, you can look for correlations between factors and health outcomes using the comparison graph. To access this, go to the Insights tab, wait for the screen to load, and then rotate your phone by 90 degrees. A new chart will appear where you can plot and compare:

1. Health measurements using the buttons below the chart
2. Mood, Energy, Sleep, and Symptoms using the buttons below the chart
3. Factors such as “Drank Alcohol: Lots” using the button in the top right of the screen

An example of how to plot Health Measurements, Factors, and Moods.

On Your Timeline

You can also view your factors and health measurements (and any notes you take relating to them) by using the timeline report on your homepage. Just click the timeline icon in the top right-hand corner of the app and sort the list using the buttons at the top of the timeline.

An example of how “bad” habits Health Measurements would appear in your timeline.

✋ Looking For More Info?

1. Check out our support blog for more content like this.
2. Chat with other Bearable users on our Subreddit and on our discord server
3. Take a look at our blog to see how Jesse learns about his health with Bearable.

Track your mental health | Tips from Bearable users

We recently reached out to our users that live with a variety of Mental Health Conditions to ask them how they use Bearable. The advice in this article is adapted from their recommendations as well as some useful tips of our own.

🛠️ Customise your symptoms and factors

One user simply recommends that you “Personalize EVERYTHING”. What they mean by this, is that you should create symptoms and factors that are unique to your mental health conditions.

To customize your symptoms:

1. Open the symptoms section on your home screen
2. Click the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner of the symptoms section.
3. In this section, you can show, hide, edit, and delete existing symptom groups
4. You can also add your own symptom groups using the Add Symptom Group button.
5. Name your group (e.g. Anxiety, Depression, BPD, etc.) and it’ll appear at the top of the Symptom Groups.
6. Click into your Symptom Group to add your symptoms to it
7. These will appear on your homepage in the Symptoms section where you can rate each symptom by severity

❗ Track the effect of significant events

“Use the significant events feature for anything that might have a big impact.”

You can track one-off or infrequent events that you feel might impact your health using the Significant events feature. You could use it to track an appointment with a medical professional or getting a new job.

To use Significant events:

1. Go to your Profile page
2. Click on the significant events section (at the top of the list)
3. Click the Add Event button
4. Enter the name of the event, the date, and the expected impact (good, neutral, or bad)
5. You can also add a note with extra details at the bottom

Significant events appear in your insights tab on the comparison graph, which you can access by rotating your phone.

⏰ Set reminders for yourself

“Set reminders for yourself so you don’t have to remember to input everything at the end of the day.”

Reminders can be used for a host of different reasons but this user recommends setting reminders for the times of day that you want to track your symptoms. Their recommendation is to track at least in the morning and evening.

To set reminders:

1. Go to your Profile page
2. Click on Reminders at the top of the Preferences section
3. You can edit your existing reminders by changing the times, adding new times, and changing the name of the reminder
4. You can also add new reminders for different things. For example, you may want separate reminders for tracking your Symptoms and your Sleep.
5. You can also set reminders for medication in the medication tab at the top of the screen
6. Reminders will appear as push notifications on your phone

Remember to make sure you adjust your push notification settings for Bearable so that you receive your reminders.

💭 Track negative thoughts as Symptoms

“Use the symptoms tracker to keep track of the intensity of negative emotions or thoughts”

If a symptom of your mental health condition is that you have negative thoughts you can track the severity of them in the Symptoms section.

You can either track them collectively as “negative thoughts” or if you have specific thoughts such as catastrophic thoughts, self-doubt, etc. You can track them individually.

To track your negative thoughts as symptoms:

1. Visit the relevant symptom group in the symptoms section on your homepage
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list of existing symptoms
3. Click the +Add/Edit button
4. Add your negative thoughts as symptoms in the bar at the top of the screen
5. These will now appear on the list of symptoms on your home screen where you can rate them by severity

You can view how the severity of your thoughts change over time by visiting insights, rotating your phone, and plotting them on the graph using the buttons at the bottom of the screen (where they’ll be listed under symptoms).

🤔 Take your time and reflect on how you’re feeling

“Be completely honest and spend the time to track your feelings morning, afternoon and evening.”

This user recommends tracking your feelings consistently throughout the day. Which will give you more data to reflect on and help you to spot patterns in changes in your feelings, moods, emotions, and overall mental health.

They also make the point that you should “spend time” and “be honest” about how you feel. This is a common recommendation we see from a number of Bearable users, especially those that have been using the app for a long time.

We find that this is because users that take time to reflect on how they’re feeling each day get more useful insights. The quality of the data they put in is better so the quality they get out is better.

📊 Use the Factor Effect on Symptoms Report

“The factor reports really help. It’s a really helpful feature to assess what helps improve my mood”

Factor Effect reports show users which of their Factor groups such as “medication”, “food”, “sleep”, etc. are correlating with positive and negative changes in the symptoms.

If you want to know what might be making your symptoms worse, this is the report for you!

To view the Factor effect report:

1. Visit the insights screen
2. Scroll to the symptom breakdown section
3. Click on any of your symptoms to be taken to the advanced report screen
4. Scroll past the average severity section and you’ll see a chart named Effect on X
5. Scroll left and right through the different factor groups
6. Sort the list by best and worst
7. View the average effect over a one day to a seven day period
8. Click the magnifying glass to compare any factor in more depth

It’s really important to question the correlations you see in this report.

You might find contradictory results such as your symptoms being worse with more exercise and also less exercise. This just means that exercise probably didn’t really have any effect on the symptom.

Findings like this can also be the result of inconsistent tracking or a lack of data. Some useful tips to help with this are:

1. Mark your Symptoms as none on days they didn’t occur
2. Track Factors on days they don’t occur by using a custom didn’t do y factor e.g. didn’t take meds

Good luck and don’t forget you can look for more inspiration on our subreddit.

—

If you’re a Bearable user that’s living with symptoms of mental health conditions and want to submit your own recommendations for other users, we’d love to hear from you. You can submit your advice here.

Track the effect of self-care routines on your health

How to track the effect of self-care routines on your health.

⚙️ How to set up a self-care routine:

1. Add the Factors section to your home screen using the Edit button at the bottom of the page.
2. Tap the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner of the factors section.
3. Click the Add Category button at the bottom of the next screen.
4. Give your category a name e.g. Self Care and select an icon to represent the section.
5. Click the checkmark in the top right corner.
6. Self Care will now appear at the top of your categories.
7. Click on Self Care to begin adding different self-care routines and activities e.g. meditation, cold showers, gratitude, etc.

You’ll now be able to log your self-care routines in the Factors section on your homepage.

📈 How to view the effect of your self-care routines on your health:

📊 Using the factor effect report:

1. 1. Go to the Insights tab
  2. Click into any of the advanced reports for Mood, Sleep, Symptom Score, Symptoms, or Energy
  3. Scroll down to the Factor Effect on section
  4. Scroll right or left using the arrows to find your Self Care category
  5. You’ll now be able to see a list of how your self-care routines are impacting your health outcomes
  6. You can sort the list by best or worst
  7. You can view the average effect from a one day to a seven day period
  8. Plus you can click on the magnifying glass to see the effect vs. a period of time without the selected self-care routine

📉 Using the Comparison Graph

1. Go to insights
2. Rotate your phone (make sure your screen lock is off)
3. In the top right-hand corner click on select factor
4. Click Self Care and select a routine from the list
5. Below the Graph, you can select health outcomes such as mood, energy, and symptoms.
6. Look for trends in your health outcomes on the days – and the days following – your self-care routines.

Track the effect of the Covid vaccine on your health

Track the impact of the covid vaccine on your Mood, Symptoms, Energy, and Sleep.

🤒 How to record the Covid vaccine:

1. Visit your Profile page
2. Click on Significant Events
3. Click on the Add Event button
4. In the description box, type the name of the vaccine you were given
5. Add the date that you received the vaccine
6. Click the checkmark in the top right corner once you’re done

📈 How to see the effect of the Covid vaccine:

1. Visit the Insights tab
2. Rotate your phone 90 degrees (make sure your screen lock is off)
3. Significant events like your vaccine appear as an exclamation point in a speech bubble at the top of the chart
4. You can select health outcomes such as Mood, Symptoms, Energy, and Sleep using the buttons at the bottom of the chart.
5. You can view how the vaccine impacted you factors such as habits and activities using the Select Factor button in the top right-hand corner of your screen
6. Once you’ve plotted your Health Outcomes and/or Factors on the chart, you can look for correlations with changes in your health that occurred after the date of your vaccine.

You can also view your average mood over a 30 day and 60 day period following the significant event, by visiting the Significant Events page in your More tab.

🔎 Looking for more info?

We recommend that you check out this article from the CDC to learn about side effects, helpful tips, and what to expect when you get your vaccine.

Track symptoms of pain | Tips from Bearable users

We recently reached out to our users with Chronic Pain to ask them how they use Bearable. The advice in this article is adapted from their recommendations as well as some useful tips of our own.

One Bearable user “wanted to keep track of chronic pain and its cycles and figure out if it correlated with activities.”

They recommended that “If you’re tracking pain, don’t downplay it. Create categories for specific areas of the body and be consistent in how you track intensity.”

🤔 How to think about tracking pain in Bearable?

One user recommends starting by keeping track of all of your symptoms so that you can determine which ones are most significant to you.

“Being able to see what other symptoms come and go vs what stays consistent helps weed out what is more significant.”

Taking this approach will allow you to focus on tracking what’s most important to you, as well as reducing the number of symptoms you need to track over time.

🏗️ How do you create Symptom Groups for Pain in Bearable?

1. Open the Symptoms section on your home screen
2. Click the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner.
3. On the next screen click the button “Add Symptom Group”
4. Name the group Pain or Chronic Pain
5. This Symptom Group will now appear at the top of your list of Symptom Groups
6. Click into your new Symptom Group to begin adding Symptoms

If you want to track your pain at a more granular level, you might decide to track different types of pain and different places where pain occurs in your body. There are two ways you can configure your Symptom Groups to do this:

1. Create symptom groups for each part of your body e.g. “Back pain” and add types of pain as symptoms to this e.g. “muscle ache”.
2. Create symptom groups for each type of pain e.g. “Burning Pain” and symptoms for each part of the body e.g. “shoulders”.

However you configure your symptom groups and symptoms, they’ll appear at the top of your Symptoms section on your home screen.

😨 What if you feel overwhelmed by tracking pain in Bearable?

“When finding a shiny new app, it can be tempting to create a gazillion custom factors or metrics and then enthusiastically fill them out for a few days until the long list becomes daunting”

It’s common that new Bearable users can feel overwhelmed by the amount that they can track at first. Our users often recommend tracking fewer things to begin with to help you build the habit of using the app. For users with chronic pain, this could be:

- Tracking just the types and severity of pain BUT not the location on their body
- Track the severity and location of pain BUT not the type of pain
- Just tracking the severity of pain BUT not the type or location

You could also track your Pain at a granular level but choose to track a smaller number of factors. Some users recommend focusing on just the factors that you think are having the biggest impact on your health. When taking any of these approaches you will still be able to look for correlations between your pain and your Factors in the Insights tab.

📊 How to use Insights to compare your symptoms?

“The graph that maps out 2 different symptoms and how they interact is really interesting. I’ve been able to see how migraine days affect nerve pain immediately after and days later, and see patterns that have helped me know what to tackle next in possible treatments.”

This user is making use of the comparison graph to compare symptoms. To do this you can:

1. Go to the Insights tab
2. Rotate your phone 90 degrees (make sure your screen lock is off)
3. Using the left-hand button below the graph select a Symptom and it will appear as bars on the chart
4. Using the right-hand button below the graph select another Symptom and it will appear as a line on the graph
5. You can now look for correlations between trends in your symptoms

📈 How to use Insights to compare symptoms to Factors?

“I wanted to be able to find out how various factors (such as medication or what I do) affect my mental health and physical issues. Trying different medication, different routines, even changing therapists – I wanted to actually have the data to see what works best.”

If you want to compare your Symptoms to Factors like medication and activities you can:

1. Use the comparison graph (using the steps above) and click the top right hand button Select Factor to plot a factor onto the graph. OR
2. Visit the Insights tab and click on your individual symptoms in the Symptom Breakdown Section and scroll down to the Effect On Symptom report to view the Factors that correlate with changes in that Symptom.

🗓️ How to look for correlations and flare-ups on specific days?

“Recently I’ve been finding the calendar view helpful, e.g. during doctor visits (“this is when/how often…”) or to determine whether something is correlated with my period.”

This user has found the calendar view useful for finding correlations over longer periods of time and to pinpoint when specific symptoms flared up. To look at your symptoms in the calendar view:

1. On your home screen click the icon in the top left-hand corner next to the date
2. Using the two tabs at the top of the screen, select Symptoms
3. Toggle through symptoms using the left and right arrows at the top of the screen
4. Symptoms will appear as dots on the calendar for the days you tracked them
5. The colour of the dot indicates the severity of the symptom
6. To look for correlations with Factors you can click on the “select a factor to highlight” button at the bottom of the screen
7. Factors will appear as dark rings around the dates they were tracked

—

If you’re a Bearable user that’s living with symptoms that include pain and want to submit your own recommendations for other users. We’d love to hear from you. You can submit your advice here.

Track the effect of cold showers on your symptoms

🚿 How to setup cold showers:

1. Click the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner of the Other Factors section.
2. Click the add category button and name it something like Self Care (you can also add it to an existing category by clicking the +add/edit button).
3. Click into your new category Self Care on the Categories Screen and add Cold Shower
4. The new category Self Care and the Factor Cold Shower will now appear on your Home Screen under Factors.
5. Log Cold Showers on each day that you take one

🔬 How to view the effect of cold showers:

1. After you have taken at least three Cold Showers you’ll be able to begin to see how they impact your health (note: the more data the better the results).
2. Visit the Insights tab, scroll down to Factor Count (days) and click on Cold Shower
3. You can now scroll through this report to view how Cold Showers affect your Mood, Symptom score, and individual Symptoms.
4. Use the Factor Effect on Symptoms Report at the bottom of this screen to get an in-depth view of how Cold Showers correlate with changes in your specific Symptoms.

💡 Need some more inspiration?

We recently tracked the impact of cold showers on our own health and you can see the results on our blog.

Track symptoms of Long Covid | Tips from Bearable users

💬 Advice From Bearable Users Living With Long Covid

We recently reached out to our users with Long Covid to ask them how they use Bearable. The tips and advice in this article are adapted from their recommended customizations as well as some useful tips of our own.

🚀 Create custom symptoms and keep adding to them

“Make a very detailed list of symptoms that makes sense to you and to add to these as new symptoms pop up”

This is great advice for any new Bearable user.

Everyone experiences health issues in different ways and taking this approach allows you to track your health the way that you experience it. It also allows you to track your condition in as much or as little detail as you’d like.

To create custom symptoms:

1. Open the Symptoms section on your home screen
2. Click the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner
3. Click the Add Symptom Group button
4. Type in Long Covid and press the confirm button
5. Then on the Symptom Group screen click Long Covid
6. Now you can begin adding symptoms

If a symptom already exists in another group you’ll be asked if you want to transfer it to the Long Covid symptom group. You can do this by clicking on the green square with arrow icons.

The Long Covid symptom group and your custom symptoms will now appear at the top of the Symptoms section on your homepage

If you begin to experience new symptoms you can click the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner and then tap into the Long Covid category/group to begin adding new symptoms.

🔎 What symptoms are other people with long covid tracking?

There’s quite a long list of suggestions from our users and one comment highlights why this might be especially important for people living with Long Covid.

“Researchers are still learning about symptoms of long covid so anything small could still be relevant.”

Whilst it’s useful to understand the symptoms that other people with a condition experience, remember that it’s important to track the things you feel are most relevant to you.

Here’s a list of the symptoms outlined by our users:

- Fatigue
- muscle and joint pain
- Chest pain
- Chest Tightness
- Breathlessness
- Palpitations
- Tinnitus
- PEM (post-exertional malaise)
- Constipation
- Nausea
- Headache (pressure behind eyes)
- Headache (swollen brain)
- Burning sensation brain
- Burning sensation base of skull
- Burning sensation spine
- Nerve tingling face
- Pulse
- Weak heartbeat
- Lung burning
- Cloudy or Humid lung
- Sensitive to sounds
- Sensitive to light
- Fatigue

🤒 Find ways to track your health even on bad days

“Try and stay on track and enter something every day, no matter how you’re feeling. You don’t know what’s ahead and it’s so helpful to be able to look back and see patterns and progress.”

Sometimes Bearable can feel overwhelming, especially when you have symptoms that include fatigue and exhaustion. However, there are some ways to make daily entries easier:

Set up your reminders in your ‘Profile’ tab so that they alert you at times that are convenient to you. This could be before you go to bed in the evening, or at the time of day when you typically have more energy. You can set as many reminders as you need.

Enter your symptoms for the entire day rather than for each time period (e.g. am, midday, pm) by tapping the big button under the name of each of your symptoms (on the left). This cycles through the severity rating from none to unbearable. On days when lots of clicking is overwhelming, it can be easier to enter symptoms this way.

Some users have recommended taking notes on low-energy / high-fatigue days instead of tapping in your symptoms. This way you can refer back to the note and enter the data on a day when you have more energy.

📊 How to use Insights to give you some control over your health.

“I use my symptom score to decide when I’m well enough to increase my activity levels.”

One Bearable user suggests reviewing your symptom score before making plans for the day. If your symptom scores are higher, then planning on undertaking fewer activities might help to avoid increasing the severity of some of your symptoms.

You can view your total symptom score by visiting the insights tab, then rotating your phone, and selecting Total Symptom Score using the bottom right and/or left-hand buttons below the chart.

“I use the 30 day review of my overall symptom load to figure out what my overall trajectory is.”

Another user suggests keeping an eye on the trend of your overall symptoms score in the insights tab. On the total symptom score graph, you can see if the trend (or trajectory) is up or down. It might also help to understand what’s having an impact on this trend, by using the Factor Effect Report on your Advanced Symptom Insights screen. This shows you the Factors having the biggest impact on your symptom score.

“Keeping track of my Steps vs fatigue helped me to understand how to pace myself and my activities.”

This user is looking at correlations between their steps and fatigue by going to insights and rotating their phone. In this chart, they’re selecting the symptom fatigue in the bottom left, and the health measurement steps in the bottom right. This gives them an overview of how the number of steps they take is affecting their levels of fatigue.

This user might be finding that the day after taking a certain number of steps, they’re more fatigued and less able to undertake activities. Making planning for high fatigue / low activity days easier.

—

If you’re a Bearable user that’s living with Long Covid and want to submit your own recommendations for other users, we’d love to hear from you. You can submit your advice here.

The Factor Effect Report: What’s improving or worsening your health

🤔 1. How Do Your Factors Affect Your Health?

If you’re using Bearable then you’re probably interested in the things that improve or worsen your health. This might be that you want to know how your diet is impacting your sleep, or how a new treatment is affecting your symptoms.

There’s one type of report that does this better than any other:
The Factor Effect Report.

The Factor Effect Report shows you the correlation between a Factor and your Health Outcomes such as Sleep, Symptoms, and Mood. This means you can see the things that correlate with improved and worsened moods, symptoms and sleep.

Essentially, it takes some of the work out having to hunt down those correlations for yourself.

Images showing the effect of activities on health — *Click to enlarge the image

📈 2. How To Use The Factor Effect Report

The Factor Effect Reports can be accessed from a number of different places within the Insights tab (more on that below). However, the options remain the same regardless of which version you’re looking at.

Here’s a quick guide to the basics:

1. You can scroll left and right to view different categories of Factor.
2. You can organize the factors by Best or Worst to see which Factors had the biggest positive or negative impact.
3. You can view the effect of the factors on your health outcomes over different periods of time. For example, your average mood on the same day as the Factor was entered and up to your average mood over the seven-day window after the factor was entered. This lets you see if a factor might have a longer-term effect or delayed effect.
4. You can tap the looking glass icon to view a comparison between the effect with and without the Factor.

With all these tools at your disposal, you can find the Factors having the most significant effect on your Mood, Symptoms, & Sleep.

Remember, it’s important to be critical of the results. If something doesn’t seem right it’s important to question why.

If you’re not seeing a Factor, it might be because you haven’t entered it enough times. Bearable needs three entries with a factor and three entries without before it will appear in the Factor Effect Reports.

🧭 3. Where To Find The Factor Effect Report

Here’s a quick overview of all the different places you can access the Factor Effect Report.

😀 Factor Effect on Mood

In Advanced Mood Insights, this report shows you the Factors improving or worsening your mood.

Image showing the effect of Screen time and work on Mood — *Click to enlarge the image

🤕 Factor Effect on Symptom Score

In Advanced Symptom Insights, this report shows you the factors affecting your total symptom score (the total score allocated per day based on the number and severity of your symptoms).

IMage showing the effect of personal care habits on Symptoms — *Click to enlarge the image

😐 Factor Effect on Individual Symptoms

In Symptoms Breakdown, you can select individual symptoms to view how they are made better or worse by different factors.

Image showing how stress is impacted by diet — *Click to enlarge the image

😴 Factor Effect on Sleep

In Advanced Sleep Insights, this version of the report shows you the effect of factors on your sleep quality AND quantity.

Image showing how Sleep is impacted by social media — *Click to enlarge the image

🔎 View the way that ANY Factor affects all your Individual Symptoms

In the Factor Count (days) Section, you can select any Factor to be shown how it improves or worsens specific symptoms.

Image showing how weather affects stress, anxiety, and depression — *Click to enlarge the image

📊 4. Spotting Correlations With Graphs

If you don’t have access to the Factor effect reports you can still view correlations between your Factors and your Health Outcomes.

When you visit the Insights tab, rotate your phone, and you’ll be shown a graph that lets you select your health outcomes and plot them against your Factors.

Image showing how meditation correlates with symptoms — *Click to enlarge the image

When you select Factors in the top right of the screen, they appear as a shadow (or a light gradient in Dark Mode) behind the bars on the graph.

You can identify correlations between your Health Outcomes and Factors by identifying periods of time when a Factor occurred at the same time as you see a consistent change in Health Outcome. This could be that you see an improvement in your symptoms in the days after taking medication, or that your energy improves with a change of eating habits.

Have fun hunting for correlations and don’t forget that you can reach out to our community on Reddit for advice.

—

Note – you will need to upgrade to premium to scroll back through all time periods using this graph.

✋ Looking For More Info?

1. Check out our support blog for answers to common questions.
2. Post questions on our subreddit or chat with users on our discord server.
3. Take a look at our blog to see how our team member Jesse uses Bearable.

The Bearable Starter Pack | 7 useful things to know on day one

Below are some tips that will make Bearable easier to use. We really recommend taking the time to read these to get the most from the app. By the end, you’ll be able to control exactly what you track. When you open the app, it will be personalised for you and your objectives.

🏠 1. Customise Your Homepage

There’s a lot you can track in Bearable and you can customise your home page so you only see what’s relevant to you. Just click the Edit button at the bottom of your homepage. From here, you can reorganise the sections to suit your tracking needs.

But that’s not all. You can also customise how you track things in the sections you’ve chosen. For instance, under ‘Symptoms and Factors’ you can add custom symptoms and group any of your symptoms together into categories. This feature will feel much more straightforward when you’re inside the app.

To customise a section of your home page, you simply click on the ellipsis menu (…) on any of your home screen sections to open a sub-menu. Then, tap the Add/Edit button to begin adding to, reordering and editing categories, symptoms, factors, and more.

Home Screen Edit Button — *Click to enlarge

💡 2. Track things you think impact your health

It’s normal to want to track everything. But it’s more insightful and sustainable to track just the things you think have a positive or negative effect on your health.

It might be useful to think about these as ‘triggers’ and ‘treatments’ (or ‘helpers’). You could even create custom factor groups with these names using the ellipsis menu (…) in the top right-hand corner of the Factor section.

Tip: If it’s something you do every day of the week the insights you get might not be as useful as if you’re tracking something you do less regularly.

🧐 3. What the heck is a Factor?

Factor is a catch-all term we use to describe anything that might impact your health. This includes your habits, activities and routines. Your factors might be a workout routine, a holistic treatment, or even the weather.

Factors relating to Diet and Sleep have their own unique sections on the homepage. Also, Medication added in the “Meds/Supplements” section is also treated like a Factor.

When you track something as a factor, you can easily see how it impacts other aspects of your health.

Tip: This section can be fully customised. You can add your own Factors and Factor Categories by pressing the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner of the section.

📈 4. How much data do I need to start seeing insights?

Before you’ll see any useful insights in Bearable you need at least three entries with and without a Factor. For example, if you were tracking the impact of sugar on symptoms, you’d need three entries in which you had a high sugar intake, and also three in which you had a low sugar intake.

If you log a Mood entry at 6 am and track no factors this counts as an entry without a Factor. Later the same day, you log your mood again but this time also track the Factor Work, this counts as an entry with a Factor. 3 entries with and 3 entries without a Factor gives Bearable enough data to begin correlating the effect on your health, but they will be weaker correlations until you amass more entries. The more you use the app, the more powerful it becomes for getting in control of managing your health.

Tip: If you want to speed things up you can add entries to last week.

🤕 5. Create Symptoms unique to you.

We have a good list of default symptoms, but you may wish to track something specific to you. It’s important to track Symptoms that represent your health conditions. We recommend you spend some time customising your Symptoms on Day 1 so you’re doing this from the beginning.

You can see the default symptoms in the app by pressing the ‘add/edit’ button in the menu in the top right corner of the section and going into any of the groups. You can add both your own custom groups and custom symptoms here also.

Tip: Remember to mark “None” for the days you don’t experience your symptoms, as this will make your insights/stats more accurate!

💗 6. Sync with Google Fit & Apple Health

Automatically track your Sleep. Steps, Heart rate, Blood Pressure, and Weight by syncing Bearable with your phone’s native health app. You can also sync other apps and devices with Google Fit or Apple Health, and import some of that data into Bearable too!

To import Sleep, simply press the Track automatically button in the Sleep section and make sure the toggle is on.

To import anything else (e.g. Steps and Heart rate), you’ll need to go to the Health Measurements section and tap one of the Sync off buttons for the item you want to activate.

🤔 7. Track the way YOU feel

When you enter your Mood in Bearable you’re presented with a list of different emotions. You can click +Add/Edit to adjust the default emotions. You can also create your own emotions to better reflect the way that you feel. For example, instead of feeling Excited, you might feel Over the Moon.

Tip: you can organise the order of your list using the Edit button (in the top menu) after selecting +Add/Edit.

✋ Learn more about the app

1. Discover more useful resources on our blog to get the most from the app.
2. Check out our support blog for answers to common questions.
3. Post questions on our subreddit or chat with users on our discord server.

Who really makes you happiest? How to track your Social Life and Mood to get useful insights

Ever wondered who really makes you happiest?

Being more mindful about who you hang out with and what impact they have on your mental and even physical health, can help you to make some valuable decisions regarding your social life.

Below I’ll show you how you can set up the app to help you track your mood and your social life, so you can start getting these insights for yourself.

1️⃣ Track Your Family & Friends

Add new factors to an existing Factor Category by navigating to the ‘Add/Edit Factors’ page using the three dots icon (…) in the top right corner of the Other Factors section on your home screen.

Go into the “Social” category, first making sure the toggle on the left is green, meaning it will show up on the homepage.

Using the “Add Factor” box at the top, start adding the specific people you see on a somewhat regular basis. Or you can be more general, like “With Best Friend” or “With family”.

Image showing how to track the impact of different people on your health. — *Click to enlarge the image

2️⃣ Keep Track Of Your Mood

Try to record your mood at least once each day.

Open the factors section and simply tap on the people you see each day. Again, the more times you do this the better your insights will be.

You can also use the toggle at top of the section to enter your factors into more specific time periods for even more accurate statistics (this works especially well if you’re making two mood entries per day, once in the morning and once in the evening).

3️⃣ See The Results

After just 2-3 weeks of doing this, you will already be able to start seeing some interesting and possibly surprising patterns! Just think of the insights you’ll be able to get after doing this for a few months or even a year!

Go to the Insights page and Press the “Advanced Factor Insights” button at the bottom of the Mood graph.

Scroll down to see the Advanced Factor Report and navigate across until you get to the “Social” category.

Note – Bearable Premium is required to see these insights.

😡 Social Life vs Headaches:

This doesn’t just have to be for Mood either, maybe you’d like to know who gives you the biggest headache!?

Make sure you record your symptoms at least once a day (remember to press the “Mark none for remaining” button to ensure you get the most accurate insights, as we don’t assume you didn’t have a symptom if you don’t make any entry)

Once you’ve been entering your symptoms for a while alongside your Social Life factors, head to the insights page and tap “Headache” or any other symptom you’re interested in (under Symptoms Breakdown).

Just like with Mood, you’ll see a Factor Effect report for each Symptom – scroll across to “Social” and see the effect each person has on your headaches!

⭐ We’ll be adding many more tips like this to give you some inspiration as to what to track in Bearable and how to make the most out of your insights. Stay tuned!

✋ Looking For More Info?

1. Check out our support blog for answers to common questions.
2. Post questions on our subreddit or chat with users on our discord server.
3. Take a look at our blog to see how our team member Jesse uses Bearable.