This is an article for all of you to write.
The web is awash in apps for tracking fluid intake, and kidney stone prevention is all about fluids.
Some ‘smart bottles‘ have arrived on the market. They track what you drink and keep the results on your smartphone. Since some of these are kickstarter efforts there is even an article on Slate about them. Some appear to be finished and rather sleek products. We know nothing about them.
There are apps for sodium intake, calcium intake – We think. The field looks thin for calcium apps.
Low sodium and high calcium diets are important in stone prevention.
We even found one app for preventing kidney stones – see if you can find it.
Elaine looked up phone apps for water tracking and easily found a number of them. Fred looked too, and found the same. How can we know which ones are any good except we ask you to tell us. Likewise for sodium, and calcium, and for the rather pricy smart bottles.
Please comment.
Say which apps you use or have used. What did you think of them? How long did you use them. Would you recommend them? LIkewise for smart bottles. Are they worth the price – do they help you?
About 30,000 people come to this site every month. Please share your experiences.
This Article Will Get Longer as We Get Your Opinions and Experiences
Since we know nothing about these apps and devices, we need to learn, from you. So please help.
A number of comments have come in, either posted as comments or by email. For the latter I have entered the comments with only the first name and avoiding any email identifiers. Thank you, everyone so far, and we will soon compile a table as promised.
The Score as of April 2
A tally of the results to date.
DEVICE |
LIKED |
DISLIKED |
|---|---|---|
| NO APP | 22 | |
| JUST A JUG | 11 | |
| MY FITNESS PAL | 6 | 2 |
| SPREADSHEET | 1 | |
| KIDNEY FUNCTION TRACKER | 1 | |
| SODIUM TRACKER | 1 | 2 |
| HYDRO COACH | 1 | 1 |
| GULP | 1 | |
| FIT-BIT | 1 | |
| WATERLOGGED | 1 | |
| LOSE IT | 1 | |
| TOTAL | 45 | 7 |
No app at all wins by 33 of the 52 comments. Of these 22 were just no app the other 11 were just a jug. The former meant none used, no interest.The latter meant jugs of water, one kind or another, stashed about or planned the night before in innumerable combinations.
Each of the other devices had a tiny scatter of love or hate or both as the table shows.
This is not science: Some people were hard to score and I left them out – could not tell if they used anything or not.
Dislike meant either not good or good for a while then discarded. Liked means used, valuable, and in play for a significant time.
There are so many people on this site every month, I hope more stop by and comment.
So far I would not buy stock in special water bottle companies, but might want to try out a line of nice colored water jugs – come to think of it the web is saturated with them!
Regards, Elaine and Fred
84 Responses to “Web Apps and Smart Bottles”
Mary
Hi, used to be a reporter, editor and PR/marketing hack, so things that bother me, probably don’t bother others, but here goes: I don’t think that your website is very user friendly. Useful, but not friendly. Example? This quote: We even found one app for preventing kidney stones – see if you can find it. I understand where a question like that might increase engagement, but people are busy and just want news they can use in a useful format.
It may be time to engage a graduate student with some experience in web design/writing/editing – a student in medical writing would be ideal! – to improve your web page. Your enthusiasm, commitment and knowledge come through on each an every page, but the site is exhausting. Thank you
Fredric L Coe, MD
Dear Mary, You are right, it is. Partly it grew like a week, partly it is exhausting to write the articles because each one – not so much the one on web apps – needs to make a considerable swathe of science habitable by a general audience yet stay accurate to the science we have. We have lots of students here, many who write well, but that is yet another effort for me – to be sure the points stay sharp. This is what happens when one decides to do a personal treatment of a big field in a public space – enthusiasm, commitment, knowledge, and lots of weaknesses. We have a redo planned in terms of the site structure, and I hope that helps. Thanks, Fred
Judith Taylor
I used MyFitnessPal for years, intermittently. Since Under Armour sold it and it’s not being maintained well, it is so bad that I quit using it. Which is good, because after trying other apps, including LoseIt (I quit the paid version in about a week) and exploring, I found a truly amazon app/website called Cronometer: https://cronometer.com/
It’s a Canadian company, and far more focused on nutrition AND it even track oxalates, magnesium, calcium:magnesium ratio, and more things that are relevant to people who get kidney stones (I loathe “stone formers,” which feels like being blamed and some kind of reject). The free version could be enough, but the Gold paid version offers significantly more options, and it’s less than $1 a week if you pay $49.99, the annual rate as of 5/2022.
It also tracks weight, blood pressure, body measurements, and a lot more, even lab test results! Highly recommended.
Fredric L Coe, MD
Thank you, Judith. Appreciate the evaluation. Fred