In an attempt to build better hydration habits, I began using the Waterllama app. That was over a year ago, and after getting into healthier routines, I’ve not thought too much about it since. That was until I stumbled across the P Water app, which promises to simplify the tracking of hydration by logging and analyzing the frequency of your peeing.
Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not the sort of person who goes around talking about my peeing habits. It’s not the subject of conversation that comes up when I’m with friends or at the dinner table with my family. But I was intrigued enough by the concept to download it and give it a go.
44 pees later, and I’m now not only more at ease with talking about my bathroom trips but also convinced how helpful it is to have a simple app to help keep your hard-formed hydration habits an ongoing part of your daily life.
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Now you might be wondering how helpful peeing habits are to tracking whether you’re staying hydrated. Well, P Water points to a number of different research articles to back up its claim that pee frequency is a good measure for this, including the Void Frequency Reliability Across Hydration States study by Tucker et al. in the European Journal of Nutrition.
How does it work?
It’s unbelievably simple. All you have to do is tap the ‘Log Pee’ button when you’re on your way to pee, and P Water will build up a picture of your pee frequency. It doesn’t ask for or need any information regarding your pee, so the process of making a log literally takes two seconds.
To make logging your pees as simple as possible, you don’t have to even open the app. Simply add the P Water smartphone widget to log your pees from your homescreen or use an Apple Watch for an even simpler process. I even read about someone using their HomePod to log their bathroom trips.
With this data, P Water can then work out if you’re drinking enough. It is this vital bit of information that enables the app to send you water reminders when your body needs them most. These are standard notifications that will appear on your phone, smartwatch, or other compatible devices so you’ll never miss that little nudge to drink some water.
Keeping you motivated
P Water features a couple of innovative features which might keep you hooked on pee logging. The first is a friend connection feature, which helps you stay accountable. This won’t appeal to everyone, but if you have someone you trust who can help you in your healthier drinking pursuits, then it could come in handy. Encouragement comes in the form of being able to remind each other to drink water when the app decides it’s needed.
The second feature that might keep you logging is the ability to see where you’ve peed. Location data is stored securely on your device and in your private iCloud account (if set up). P Water tries to upsell this feature by calling it a “low-effort journal of your life and travels.” It’s not something I’m personally interested in, as I prefer to use Google Photos geo-tracking for this.
Helping manage peeing problems
By shifting the focus from measuring what you drink to tracking how often you go to the bathroom, P Water can be used to manage symptoms related to UTIs, overactive bladders, BPH, kidney stones, and more. The graphs and visual logs help you see if you’re going to the bathroom often enough, which in turn helps you root out some of the potential causes for these medical issues.
Despite this, the app’s creators are keen to point out that P Water is “not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment” and that you should “ask a medical professional if you have questions about your health and hydration needs.”
Over the past week, I’ve found P Water to be an invaluable buddy to keep me hydrated. It’s simple, effective, and best of all, the free version offers enough functionality for most users.
If you’d like to upgrade, then you can do so for $4.99 / £4.99 per month. A subscription allows you to add notes to pees, see your pee count calendar for older months, and export your pee data.
Download P Water on iOS and give your water intake a boost.
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paulo.n.hatton@gmail.com (Paul Hatton)
