According to a 2021 study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 20.9% of American adults, a whopping 51.6 million people, experience chronic pain. Organizations like the Institute of Medicine and the American Society of Anesthesiologists put this number even higher, at over 100 million US adults.
Chronic pain, also called chronic pain syndrome, is any pain that lasts for three months or longer. Doctors may not yet understand the exact source of chronic pain, but it commonly appears alongside many disabilities. But with so much to consider day-to-day, how do you know if your chronic pain treatments are working? And what impact does your pain have on your mental health, concentration, or lifestyle?
Chronic pain is hard enough to manage on your own, but there are programs that make it a little easier to tackle the day-to-day.
In this article, Ability Central shares eight of the most popular apps used for chronic pain management. What we like about these services is that they’re flexible for multiple platforms, easy to learn, and easy to share with your provider.
Here are eight of our favorite apps that help people with chronic pain track their pain levels, manage their symptoms, and find real relief.
Our selections include:
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Beginners: Bearable
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Mood Tracking: Moodflow
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Identifying Triggers: Life Notes
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Customization: Chronic Insights
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Communicating with Providers: Guava Health
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Activity Trackers: Journal My Health
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Education: Curable
Best Chronic Pain Management App for Mindfulness: Pathways Pain Relief
Best Chronic Pain App for Beginners: Bearable
Available for both iOS and Android, Bearable is a cute, quick, and easy platform for tracking chronic health issues. Reviewed by clinicians at Cedar Sinai, Bearable was created by someone living with chronic migraines. The team incorporates reviews and community suggestions to keep the app improving over each new update.
We like Bearable because it’s not just designed for chronic pain: you can use it to track any number of chronic conditions and syndromes, which is especially helpful for people still seeking a diagnosis for their pain. With both a free version and a paid upgrade, Bearable is a great choice for people starting out on their pain management journey.
Check it out on the Apple App Store here or the Google Play Store here.
Best Chronic Pain App for Mood Tracking: Moodflow
Designed first for tracking moods, Moodflow has become a popular app among users with chronic pain because of its simplistic, uncluttered user interface. It’s also ad-free (even without a subscription!) which is a huge plus for people who just want to enter their info and get on with their day.
Moodflow lets you track moods, emotions, thoughts, and general well-being. Their goal is to “give you a more profound understanding of yourself,” both by tracking your pain and by analyzing which factors in your life make you happiest. Especially helpful for people whose chronic pain impacts their mental health, Moodflow is a great free option for understanding your moods, goals, and habits.
Check it out on the Apple App Store here or the Google Play Store here.
Best Chronic Pain App for Identifying Triggers: Life Notes
Life Notes, a free and open-source app created by a team of volunteers, allows you to record your chronic symptoms and lifestyle habits on a daily basis. The goal is not only to monitor your symptoms, but to identify connections between them that may trigger pain or other chronic discomforts.
The app is colorful and image-driven, making it easy to pop in and enter your information without having to dig through endless menus. Once you’ve been tracking your symptoms with Life Notes for long enough, you can view graphs, charts, and other information that gives you an idea of the scope of your pain and its potential triggers.
At this time, Life Notes is only available for Google devices. Check it out for Android here.
Best Chronic Pain App for Customization: Chronic Insights
Highlighting itself as a “symptom diary app that’s private, easy to use, and customizable,” Chronic Insights is designed by James Allen, who lives with chronic fatigue and chronic pain every day. Users can record their pain in a variety of charts (bar charts, line charts, pie charts, and graphs) with customizable entries for scale, colors, and more.
What makes this app so great is its huge amount of customization: you can assign individual tags to recurring symptoms to make them easier to sort and filter, record personal notes, and even attach photographs to your entries. Chronic Insights also offers recording features for tracking what medications you’re on, any dosage changes, and how often you remember (or forget) to take them.
One of Chronic Insights’ nifty premium features is a 3D model, which allows you to “paint” your pain onto various body parts of a 3D-generated human figure. This is helpful for explaining pain points to doctors and therapists, especially if you meet with them online.
Try Chronic Insights for iOS here and Android here.
Best Chronic Pain App for Communicating with Providers: Guava Health
Guava Health is a great option for anyone who needs up-to-date conversations with providers. This secure, easy-to-use app connects to patient platforms from many doctors’ offices and hospital networks so you can immediately add updates from your appointments to the app. Guava Health is a way to store your lab results, symptoms, medications, scans, doctor reports, and more in one easy-to-find place.
One neat feature of Guava Health is that it tracks the efficiency of your medications. For example, if you start a new anxiety medication and track your moods for a few weeks, the app can identify trends in your mental health since you started taking the medication, like percentage changes in your daily anxiety mood rating over time.
Because of Guava Health’s secure connection to patient portals, the app is easy to bring to doctors’ appointments and helps smooth the process of explaining your symptoms. Stop having the same conversation about your pain levels every time you come into the office, just hand them your phone!
Try Guava Health for iPhone here and Android here.
Best Chronic Pain App for Activity Trackers: Journal My Health
Ideal for people who also use activity trackers and wearables like smartwatches, Journal My Health is a quick way to keep track of your symptoms on the go. A daily journal entry tracks things like pain, symptoms, sleep, mood, and medications all in one place.
One neat feature of Journal My Health is that you can also sync it with the weather conditions you’ve been in to identify trends in your symptoms related to your environment. Does your pain get worse right before it rains? See these triggers in action right in the app.
Journal My Health is also great for communicating with care teams: you can send compiled reports of your symptoms to a registered care team with just one tap of a button.
Check out Journal My Health for iOS here and Android here.
Best Chronic Pain App for Education: Curable
One thing that sets the Curable app apart from the others is its educational approach to chronic pain management. In addition to regular pain tracking features, Curable offers science-backed guided meditations, visualizations, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques, and freewriting exercises to help you understand the source of your pain and find ways to move past it.
Curable recommends using the app for about 10-20 minutes per day, at least 2 or 3 times per week. According to reviews, about 70% of Curable’s users experience some degree of pain relief after the first 30 days, which is pretty impressive!
Give Curable a try on iOS here or Android here.
Best Chronic Pain App for Mindfulness: Pathways Pain Relief
Designed for people who have experienced pain for longer than 3 months, Pathways Pain Relief offers pain tracking along with “wellbeing masterclasses” that are designed “to train mind and body away from pain.” With hundreds of guided meditations available on the app, all of which are designed specifically for pain management, Pathways offers a mental release from pain that can be helpful for people who have trouble relaxing.
Pathways use a “biopsychosocial” approach to pain, a path that considers the relationship between mind and body. Users on the paid platform can get connected with a personal pain therapist to help you manage your individual triggers and symptoms.
At this time, Pathways is only available for iOS devices. Try Pathways Pain Relief for iOS here.
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Additional Information
The content provided in this article is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for legal, medical, or other professional advice. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date resources, some information may become outdated or incomplete. Always consult with your provider about personal medical concerns.
