Stress Doctor app review

Stress Doctor

Price: $4.99 (as of 2/27/13, marked down to Free)

Stress Doctor by Azumio Inc. is a fantastic app for your iPhone or iPod touch that helps you become aware of your breathing and shows you how to control it in order to calm yourself down when you’re feeling stressed. It’s free right now, in celebration of Heart Awareness Month, so check it out.

Wondering what your breathing has to do with stress? Quite a lot, actually! Using proper breathing techniques as shown in this app will help you lower your stress, focus in on what’s really important, and give you tools that can actually improve your health and interpersonal relationships.

When you use this app, your iPhone or iPod touch becomes an actual bio-feedback machine that tells you your heart rate and breathing over the period of time in which you practice your breathing techniques.

Just hold your finger over the rear camera and press the start button. Breathe and hold your device for between two and five minutes. You can actually bring your breathing and heart rate into sync, which calms your autonomous nervous system, which controls your stress response to flight or fight situations.

Practicing your breathing just five minutes a day can really affect your stress levels, your heart rate, and general health when you realize how much your breathing affects all those things.

Stress Doctor was updated to Version 1.2 on May 5, 2012. The update introduced heart rate markers and improved the app’s algorithm. The current version has 43 customer ratings with an average of 3.5 out of five stars. Feedback comments are positive.

I am really amazed at how well the iPhone 5 acts as a bio-feedback device. I just downloaded this today to review and am looking forward to seeing how daily practice can affect my stress levels.

For: iPhone 4, 4S, 5, and iPod touch (5th generation) with iOS 4.0 or later

Stress Doctor app review

.