Health psychology is the study of how biological, cognitive, social, and environmental factors interact with health and illness.  Health psychology also involves using the aforementioned knowledge to provide evidence-based behavioral health treatment to patients with various health behavioral difficulties and medical difficulties to improve their health, medical symptom management, thought patterns, and behaviors.  Health psychologists treat individuals with chronic pain, various injuries, illnesses, traumatic brain injuries, substance use (smoking, tobacco), sleep disorders, overweight/obesity, and eating disorders.

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Overweight and obesity are complicated conditions that are impacted by dietary choices, eating patterns, physical activity, genetics, stress, metabolic changes, the presence of certain medical disorders, medications, and other factors.  Sometimes diet and exercise alone cannot lead to sufficient weight loss to protect one’s health and improve one’s quality of life.  Bariatric surgery is an amazing medical tool, that when coupled with a nutritious diet and exercise can produce significant weight loss.

Learn more about bariatric surgery procedures here:

https://asmbs.org/patients/bariatric-surgery-procedures

Eating disorders can be incredibly isolating disorders that contribute to depression and anxiety, interfere with important activities and relationships, and lead to reduced quality of life. Some examples of eating disorders include: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, and night eating syndrome.  These disorders all involve over-restriction and/or dysregulated overconsumption of food.  These disorders can lead to significant changes in weight, body image disturbance, and medical complications.

Learn more about common eating disorders here: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/information-eating-disorder

Pain Coach by VA- You use a physical map to pick the part of your body that is in pain.  The app has you provide daily information on your mood, achievements, how your achievements are related to your values, what coping skills you’ve tried recently, and confidence in use of your skills.  You list out your values when you first log into the app and you can track how your actions fit with your values across time.  It provides education on various pain coping skills (e.g., pacing, muscle relaxation) and ways to promote your wellbeing (e.g., social connection, SMART goals, ways to change your thought patterns).

PainScale- Pain Diary and Coach (only for Apple)- It tracks pain intensity (0-10), uses a pain map to locate your pain, tracks triggers, associated symptoms, activity level, treatments (including medications), your emotional states, the quality of your sleep, the weather, your food intake.  You can also add notes about your pain and journal entries.  It can connect with Apple Healthkit or Fitbit to track physical activity. It combines data to help you determine what is triggering your symptoms the most, what treatments are working the best, and how your pain is influencing your other health behaviors.  It provides education on acute versus chronic pain, pain related facts and definitions, how pain is assessed, specific types of pain, pain theories, coping with pain through health behaviors, medical treatments (alternative and conventional), and the opioid epidemic.  It also provides stories from PainScale users.  It features articles, videos, exercise videos, meditations, and daily health tips.  It aggregates data from multiple users and shares their data with you, so you know what other people with your pain condition are doing to cope and how their pain is influencing them.

Manage My Pain (Also available in Spanish)- You pick your pain condition (headaches, stomach pain, back pain, etc.).  You can also add a different pain condition if yours isn’t listed.  You can rate your pain intensity on a scale of  0-10, log the location of your pain, associated symptoms, provide a pain description, identity triggers/maintaining factors,  log what coping strategies you used (medication and others), log the continuity of your pain (constant, intermittent, breakthrough), log the duration of your pain, log your environment, and log personal notes about each pain episode.  The app graphs your pain severity across time and shows a calendar with your pain episode information

Migraine Buddy (Also available in Spanish)-  You record each migraine attack or headache.  You record the location of the head pain using a pain map, duration, pain intension (0-10), provide a description of the head pain and associated symptoms (e.g., nausea, phonophobia, photophobia), triggers, medications you tried, and your sleep patterns. It provides education on migraines, fatigue associated with migraines, migraine medication, medications that can trigger migraines, etc.  The app provides education on self-care, finding migraine treatments that work, meditation, etc.  You can pay extra for more information on migraine coping.

UCLA Mindful (Also available in Spanish)- Download the app or go to https://www.uclahealth.org/marc/mindful-meditations for basic mindfulness meditations, loving kindness meditation, and body scans

CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-Insomnia)- It tracks your sleep quality and quantity.  It teaches you progressive muscle relaxation and guided imagery to help improve your sleep.

MyFitnessPal-Download the app or go to https://www.myfitnesspal.com/ to track your calorie intake, learn about your macronutrient intake (carbohydrates, protein, fats), and track your weight.