A flare is when symptoms temporarily increase in number or intensity, and can last anywhere from a few days to weeks. (1) When managing a complex or chronic condition, it is important to pay attention to these atypical events since flares often come quickly with or without a trigger and can be difficult to cope with. (2)
How do I track my flares?
There are two ways you can mark a flare event.
Directly from Journal: If you recognize and want to indicate flares yourself, you can open the flare form using the 'Add Flare' button at the top of your Journal
Flare Suggestion: Folia will also prompt you for possible flares based on your tracked observations at the end of your tracking flow. You have the option to indicate if you want to mark the day as a flare by tapping on 'Yes, let's track a flare' or ignore the suggestion by tapping 'No, return to the Journal'.
Once you have marked a flare, you will be directed to a Flare Form to provide more details on your flare.
Flare Form
You can use the Flare Form to note down more information about your flare, including a description, how you managed it, any possible triggers, and more. You can easily customize the tags by tapping 'Add/Edit' for each section.
We know that flares can vary from condition to condition, so we tried to customize the questions you answer to match your lived experience within your condition.
For certain conditions, there might be different types of flares that you would want to track. Accordingly, there are different versions of the flare form that are condition-specific, which will automatically pop up for you to choose based on the diagnosis and conditions you have set up in your Folia profile.
The Folia team is always working to make your tracking experience better, so if you have any feedback on how to improve our questions so that it can more closely match your condition and experience, please let us know!
References:
(1) Nichols, H., et al. How to recognize fibromyalgia flares. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/315646
(2) Chelsea and Westminster Management team. Managing flare-ups of chronic pain. https://www.chelwest.nhs.uk/services/surgery/pain-links/chronic-pain-ae-jun-2016.pdf