44 bathroom trips later: My unfiltered thoughts on the P Water app
In an effort to develop better hydration habits, I started using the Water Llama application. That was over a year ago, and after adopting healthier routines, I haven’t given it much thought since. That was until I came across the Skin app, which promises to make hydration tracking simple by recording and analyzing how often you pee.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not the type of person to talk about my urinary habits. It’s not a topic of conversation that comes up when I’m with friends or at the table with my family. But I was intrigued enough by the concept to download it and try it out.
44 pees later, and I’m now not only more comfortable talking about my bathroom trips, but also convinced of the value of having a simple app to help you maintain your well-established hydration habits in your daily life.
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Now, you may be wondering how useful urinary habits are in knowing if you’re staying hydrated. Well, P Water cites a number of different research articles to support his 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 incredibly simple. All you have to do is press the “Record Pee” button when you’re about to go pee, and P Water will take a picture of your pee frequency. It doesn’t ask or need any information about your pee, so the process of creating a log literally takes two seconds.
To make recording your pees as easy as possible, you don’t even need to open the app. Simply add the P Water smartphone widget to record your pees from your home screen or use an Apple Watch for an even easier process. I even heard of someone using their HomePod to record their bathroom trips.
Using this data, P Water can then determine whether you are drinking enough. It’s this vital information that allows the app to send you water reminders when your body needs it most. These are standard notifications that will appear on your phone, smartwatch, or other compatible device so you never miss that little nudge to drink water.
Keep you motivated
P Water offers a few innovative features that might get you hooked on pee recording. The first is a friend connection feature, which helps keep you accountable. This won’t appeal to everyone, but if you have someone you trust who can help you with your healthier drinking activities, it could be helpful. The incentive comes in the form of being able to remember to drink water when the app decides it’s necessary.
The second feature that might keep you connected is the ability to see where you’ve peed. Location data is stored securely on your device and in your private iCloud account (if configured). P Water tries to sell this feature by calling it “an effortless journal of your life and travels.” This isn’t something I’m personally interested in, as I prefer to use Google Photos geotagging for this.
Help manage urine 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 bladder, BPH, kidney stones, and more. Charts and visual logs help you see if you’re going to the bathroom often enough, which helps you rule out some of the potential causes of these medical problems.
Despite this, the app’s creators are keen to emphasize that P Water “is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment” and that you should “ask a healthcare professional if you have any questions about your health and hydration needs.”
Over the past week I have found P Water to be a great companion in keeping me hydrated. It’s simple, effective, and best of all, the free version offers enough features for most users.
If you want to upgrade, you can do so for $4.99/£4.99 per month. A subscription allows you to add pee notes, view your pee counting calendar for older months, and export your pee data.
Download P Water on iOS and give your water consumption a boost.
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