By Rhiannon Williamsarchive: For Complete Post, Click Here…
Visible helps people to manage their symptoms—and could boost scientific understanding of the condition.
A new app could help people with long covid cope with their condition by giving them a clearer understanding of what helps—and hinders—their health.
People with long covid, defined by the World Health Organization as a post-covid illness lasting two months or more, suffer from symptoms that include headaches, fatigue, weakness, and fever. Some use a practice called pacing, where they balance activity with periods of rest to recover, to keep things under control. If they exert themselves too hard, it can make things worse.
The new app, called Visible, aims to help people manage that process by collecting data every day in order to understand how their symptoms fluctuate. Users measure their heart rate variability (the variation in time between beats) every morning by placing a finger over the phone’s camera for 60 seconds. This measures the pulse by recording small changes in the color of the user’s skin.