This is Part Two of a three-part review of the most amazing One Drop diabetes phone app and will focus on meds and activity. Part one focused on Blood Sugar data analysis.
YOUR REGULAR MEDS
Besides it’s strength in number crunching, the One Drop app excels at recording all of the other aspects of diabetes and a few non-diabetes things as well. There are so many things in diabetes that change from day to day, but there are others that stay the same day in and day out. I don’t want to have to record those things over and over.
With the One Drop app I don’t have to. I set them up once and don’t have to remember again. I can enter my pump’s basal rates once and it will automatically record them. Under the Settings tab, click on Medications and Automations. Then set up the pump’s basal rates by typing in each rate. It shows an amazing graph of your basal profile. If you do a temporary basal rate, you can adjust that on the Home page as well.
This Medications and Automation is also a good place to enter any basal insulin that you take everyday. I use Levemir basal in a pen as well as an insulin pump, so I have it set up to automate my morning and evening dose. Then when I turn on the app it will let me check off if I have taken the doses. I can also change the doses if I change my basal shot, say, after a huge workout.
You can even enter non-diabetes meds in this screen. I have my thyroid meds here.
IRREGULAR MEDS
If there are meds that you take that aren’t on any schedule, like boluses or an inhaler, you can record when you take them using the meds drop on the home screen. You get to indicate dose, time, and which medication. You also can make notes, a picture, or note how you are feeling on a sliding scale. Adding tags will make it easier to search for this entry later.
I have used this to track how often I have to use an asthma inhaler and even to record if I have to take Migraine meds. It is a great tool to have for when your doctor asks how often these things happen or to see if they are getting better or worse.
ACTIVITY
I also have been using the app to record my workouts. Every time I finish a workout I get to record how long and intense it was. There’s a place for a picture and notes. It will also suck in data from your activity monitor like a Garmin watch.
It’s nice to be able to scroll through my days and see the huge orange spots that show me that I kicked butt that day. And it makes it very easy to see how my sugars stay very stable if I’ve worked out recently and how they tend to creep up if it’s been a few days since I have had a decent workout.
And it makes it easy to brag online about my workouts. Just hitting the share button let’s me create a quick post to tell the world about my workout so they can celebrate my successes along side me.
It also tracks my daily activity from my iHealth app. So I can tell at a glance if I have had a more active day and how that has affected my sugars.
The ease with which all of this data entry happens makes me want to keep up with my records, which is something I have never really been good at with diabetes.