Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Fibromyalgia and Smart Diary Suite

One of the original ideas back in 2002 or so was to provide people who suffer from fibromyalgia a means of keeping tabs on their progress. This concept integrated quite nicely into Smart Diary Suite and thus SDS Medical was born (although it wasn't called "Medical" back then, but rather a "Fibromyalgia" edition).

Well, what is fibromyalgia?

Wikipedia describes it quite well: "Fibromyalgia is a disorder classified by the presence of chronic widespread and a heightened and painful response to gentle touch (tactile allodynia). Other core features of the disorder include debilitating fatigue, sleep disturbance, and joint stiffness. In addition, persons affected by the disorder frequently experience a range of other symptoms that involve multiple body systems, including difficulty with swallowing, functional bowel and bladder abnormalities, difficulty breathing, diffuse sensations of numbness and tingling (non-dermatomal paresthesia), abnormal motor activity (i.e. nocturnal myoclonus, sleep bruxism), and cognitive dysfunction. An increased prevalence of affective and anxiety-related symptoms is also well known." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromyalgia)

When I started working on SDS v3, I worked closely with a great person - Bob Hall, who runs a site dedicated to fibromyalgia - http://www.menwithfibro.com - he provided me with the inside knowledge I needed to write the additional module for Smart Diary that would become the fibromyalgia extension. He's got an excellent community going on there filled with wonderful people.

So, how does SDS relate to fibromyalgia?

Ah, SDS does provide a trule unique experience - it can be adapted to any condition (or a number of) that one has. For example, as mentioned on our "Medical features" page, there's a Pain Map to keep track of where and how it hurts today and see how it relates to other factors in your life. Also, keep track of your medication and get reminders of when to take it and also when to renew.

There's a specific Life Factor pack dedicated especially to fibromyalgia sufferers and it monitors such things as pain levels, physical symptoms (sleep, fatigue, weakness, diziness, eyesight, motion, urination, hearing, IBS, body temperature), mental symptoms (thinking, anxiety, depression, angriness, irritation, happiness), weather (pollens, mold, temperature, humidity) and many others.

Print your records out for your doctor and it'll be easier for both of you to discuss your condition - what works and what doesn't.

To learn more about fibromyalgia, check out the following pages:

Wishing all the best health,

Dennis

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

8 ways to keep your life organized

Our lives are becoming busier every day and the amount of information around us is multiplying at an astonishing rate, so how can all of this information be managed? How do you keep track of what and when you need to do?

One way would be to use Smart Diary Suite. Please let me show a few ways how it can help you cope with your day-to-day activities:

1) Use the Life Factors to monitor how things that happen to you and around you affect your inner and outer self. They are part of the Diary, so describe your day while you're there - it makes a very interesting read a few years down the track!

2) For the multitude of appointments (e.g.: doctor's, car service, concert tickets, etc...) why not use the Schedule - it can accommodate all of those and more and it will even e-mail you to make sure you don't miss that important event!

3) Most of us have some global tasks that need to be planned and done (e.g.: planning a vacation, cleaning out the garage, writing a blog, etc...), but that don't have a specific date (although they could, if you wanted to) - use the Tasks feature for those. It'll quickly show you what's been done and what still lays ahead.

4) As you move along life, you may come across bits and pieces of information, web sites, newspaper articles and whatever else that may trigger your interest and you'd want to keep for later. The Notes feature will let you do that - just copy and paste whatever you need and organize as you please.

5) Love to eat? Love to cook? Well, use Nutrition to keep track of your favorite recipes and their nutritional values and it'll even let you make a shopping list!

6) Do you have friends, business contacts or relatives? Do you remember all their birthdays, anniversaries, their kid's birthdays and other special dates? Well, it's not easy, frankly, but Contacts will help you and will allow you to set reminders, so that you never miss those events.

7) If you suffer from chronic pain or pulled a muscle during a workout you can easily track that using the Pain Map - see if you start seeing relevance to pain spikes and life factors!

8) Sometimes we need to take medication, some of us more than others. To keep track of what you need to take and when, use the Medication feature - set reminders and it'll do it's best to make sure you don't miss that pill!

These are just some of the way SDS can help you organize your life.

To learn more, visit the website or let's discuss it here.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Life Factors and SDS

What are life factors? Well, they're small bits of information that you can fill in and which in turn will turn into pretty graphs that will (... turn into butterflies? well, almost!) provide visual feedback on how some things in your life affect other things. It really starts to make sense after a few entries and you can track anything you want - from your health and romance to fishing and cooking.

I'll talk a bit more on life factors later, so stay tuned!

Related links

Some of the links related to SDS (apart from its site) are:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/smartdiary
Forum: http://forum.psunrise.com/

This is just so you know who and where we are ;)

Welcome

Welcome to Smart Diary Suite's own blog!

What is Smart Diary Suite? Well, it's a feature-rich, fully-customizable, revolutionary diary software (or PIM - Personal Information Manager).

I'll be talking more about it and other things related to the world of information organization and health management over the coming months (and years). Meanwhile, you are welcome to check SDS out at http://www.sdiary.com

Dennis