icon-account icon-glass

Popular Searches

Popular Products

The Lean Protein
Whey protein powder for weight-loss.
The Energy Booster
Pre/intra-workout powder with BCAAs.

CATEGORIES

The Top 8 Mental Health Apps You Need In Your Life

29th June 2021

Fitness Health

29th June 2021

By Shivraj Bassi

Recent years have shown a increase in mental health apps offering a wealth of resources from de-stressors, and sleeping aids to meditation guides. Therapeutic techniques are quickly becoming more accessible, portable and cost-effective and we want to give you a heads up on some of our favourites.

If you're looking to de-stress, improve your breathing and increase your wellbeing, read below our lowdown of Innermost's top 8 mental health apps...

1. Calm

Voted Apple’s ‘App of the Year’ in 2017, Calm is designed to reduce anxiety, improve sleep and help you feel happier. The app is made up of four key areas; meditation, breathing, sleep and relaxation and overall aims to bring a sense of joy, clarity and clam into your life.

2. Buddhify

Buddhify is a meditation app designed to fit into a busy modern lifestyle. Whether you’re on your morning commute, scrolling through your phone, trying to fall asleep or simply feeling overwhelmed, this app has the meditation session tailored to every situation. With over 80 tracks, you are bound to find something suited to your needs.

3. Breathe2Relax

Breathe2Relax is a portable stress management tool which provides detailed information on the effects of stress on the body. It’s made up of instructions and practice exercises to help users learn the stress management skill called diaphragmatic breathing to help bring a sense of calm and relaxation to day-to-day life.

4. 7 Cups

If you’re feeling lonely, stressed, sad or worried, 7 cups may be the app for you. With more than 160,000 licensed therapists and trained listeners, 7 cups provides anonymous online therapy and emotional support for issues ranging from bullying, panic attacks, eating disorders, relationship breaks and more.

5. SuperBetter

SuperBetter is an app that applies mental health in a gameful way. It brings the same psychological strengths you naturally display when you play games, such as optimism, creativity, courage and determination to your real life. By providing you with challenges, quests, boosts and even villains, this app is a fun way of keeping happy and forming better habits.

6. Remente

Remente allows you to tag your mood with feelings to quickly develop a deeper understanding of yourself and your emotions. It does this by first assessing how happy you are with life, then identifying the areas you want to improve and finally helping to set manageable tasks. If you’re looking for an app to help track your mood, then Remente may just be the one for you.

7. Sleepio

Sleepio uses a program of cognitive behavioural therapy that helps to lower stress levels and improve REM sleep, restoring your emotional balance for the next day. Researchers closely studied 164 insomniacs who used the app and found that its use drastically slashed their time taken to fall asleep.

8. Moodscope

Created by psychologists at King’s College London, Moodscope measures how happy you are with mood-adjective playing cards, letting you spot patterns and possible triggers for grumpiness.

Summary

Whilst a lot of people claim that the dominance of technology is a huge influence in mental health issues due to increased pressures, overwhelming screen time, harmful online communities and a host of other issues, one of the positives that has come from technology is the introduction of self-help apps to assist in the management of mental health issues. 

Here at Innermost we regularly set time aside to engage with these apps to ensure we are feeling calm, collected and at peace, as we've noticed just how much of a difference taking some time out for yourself can be for your overall wellbeing and even your performance.

If you're really struggling to relax, we recommend you check out The Relax Capsules. Formulated with natural stress-busting ingredients such as Ashwaganda, Lion's Mane Mushroom and Valerian Root, this nootropic sets out to help you switch off from the struggles of daily life and improve your quality of your overall health. We all know all our health is linked, so it's important to take care of everything; your mind included.

References

  • Anthes, E. (2016) Mental health: There’s an app for that. Nature 532, 20–23. Click here.
< Older post Newer post >

Need Expert Advice?

Take the quiz

Take the quiz

If you're not sure where to start, take our 5 minute health consultation to get product recommendations tailored to your goals.
Read more

Other Insights

The Ingredient We Almost Didn't Put In The Energy Booster

The Ingredient We Almost Didn't Put In The Energy Booster

There's a question we ask about every ingredient before it goes into a product. Not "is this trending?" Not "does it look good on the label?" Just: does the evidence actually support putting this in? Most of the time, that question is straightforward. Either the research is there or it isn't. But occasionally you land on an ingredient where the science says yes and something else gives you pause. That's where formulation gets genuinely interesting. Beta alanine was one of those decisions. What Beta Alanine Actually Does Most people who've taken a pre-workout have felt beta alanine without knowing it. It's the ingredient responsible for the tingling sensation you get in your face, your neck, your hands. That feeling has a name: paraesthesia. It's harmless. But it's also the reason we nearly left beta alanine out. Before I get to that, the science. Beta alanine is a non-essential amino acid. On its own, it doesn't do very much. But inside muscle tissue, it binds with another amino acid called histidine to form something called carnosine. And carnosine is where the real work happens. During intense exercise, your muscles produce hydrogen ions as a byproduct of energy production. It's the build-up of those hydrogen ions, not lactic acid as most people think, that causes the burning sensation and the drop-off in performance. Carnosine acts as a buffer. It mops up those hydrogen ions and delays the point at which fatigue kicks in. The research on this is substantial. A 2012 meta-analysis published in the journal Amino Acids, covering over 40 studies, found that beta alanine supplementation consistently improved exercise capacity, particularly in high-intensity efforts lasting between one and four minutes. The effect size was meaningful and reproducible. This wasn't a promising pilot study. It was a decade of accumulated evidence pointing in the same direction. In practical terms: more reps before failure. More output before you hit the wall. Sustained performance over a longer window. So why the hesitation? The decision we almost got wrong The tingling. Not because it's dangerous. It isn't. The paraesthesia from beta alanine is a well-understood pharmacological response and there is no evidence of harm at the doses used in supplementation. But we had a real concern: if someone takes The Workout Blend for the first time and feels an unexpected tingling in their face, and nobody told them it was coming, we've just lost their trust. Possibly permanently. The easy path was to leave it out. Plenty of pre-workout formulas do exactly that, either because they're being cautious or because they want a smoother consumer experience. No ingredient, no explanation required. We talked about it a lot. And the conclusion we kept coming back to was this: removing an ingredient with strong evidence because it might confuse people is not how we want to make formulation decisions. That's the same logic that leads brands to include ingredients with weak evidence because they're more familiar, more comfortable, more sellable. The answer wasn't to remove it. The answer was to be upfront about it. The tingling means the beta alanine is working. It's a real physiological response to a real ingredient doing a real thing. If we believe in the science, we include the ingredient and we explain what's happening. That felt like the right standard to hold ourselves to. What the rest of the market does Most pre-workout formulas fall into one of two categories.The first is the stimulant-heavy formula. Stacked with caffeine at doses that produce a short spike, a noticeable crash, and not much else underneath. These sell well because the immediate sensation of energy feels like evidence that something is working. It often isn't, not in any meaningful physiological sense beyond what caffeine alone would do. The second is the proprietary blend. A long list of ingredients with no disclosed amounts, making it impossible to know whether any of them are present at doses that match the research. Proprietary blends let brands list an ingredient without committing to a dose that would actually work. Both approaches optimise for perception. Neither optimises for performance. What I'd recommend The Energy Booster (soon to be renamed to The Workout Blend) contains beta alanine alongside citrulline malate, which supports nitric oxide production and blood flow during training, BCAAs at a 2:1:1 ratio to safeguard lean muscle, and natural caffeine from guarana for sustained energy without the spike you get from synthetic sources. The formulation is built around what the research supports at doses that match the evidence. If you feel the tingling the first time you take it, that's the beta alanine. It's normal, it fades within 20 minutes or so, and it's a sign the formula is doing what it's supposed to do.
Read more
Our Top Tips For Maintaining A Healthy Daily Wellness Routine

Our Top Tips For Maintaining A Healthy Daily Wellness Routine

Not to be confused with fitness, which is essentially a measure of your physical strength and conditioning, wellness is a huge topic in the world of health – and for good reason.
Read more