Guide
How to keep a health diary without it taking over your life.
Updated: 27 September 2026
A health diary is a record of how your days actually go. It isn't a project, it isn't a spreadsheet with forty columns, and it isn't something you have to be good at. On the days it matters most you'll have the least energy for it, so the only health diary worth keeping is one you can still fill in on a bad day.
This is how to keep one that stays useful, and what it can honestly tell you afterwards.
What a health diary is actually for
Two things, mostly. The first is memory. By the time an appointment comes round, six or eight weeks have usually passed, and the difficult week in the middle has blurred into all the others. A health diary gives you the dates back.
The second is pattern. Not cause, pattern. A record kept over a few weeks can show that your hardest days cluster at the end of the week, or that a symptom turned up three times rather than the once you remembered. That's worth noticing. It doesn't mean that one thing caused another.
A health diary is not a medical record and nothing in it replaces talking to your doctor.
The five things worth writing down
Most people start by recording far too much and stop after nine days. These five cover almost everything a doctor is likely to ask you.
- The date, and one overall word for the day. Good, okay or hard is enough.
- Which symptoms turned up, and roughly how strong each one was. A number out of ten is fine.
- What it stopped you doing. This is the one people leave out, and it's the one that carries the most weight in an appointment.
- Anything you took, and when.
- Anything that seemed to help, or seemed to set it off. Write it down as a question, not as a conclusion.
How long it should take
About a minute. If it's taking ten, it won't survive a flare, and a health diary with a three week hole in the middle is worth a good deal less than a sparse one that runs the whole way through.
On the worst days, write one line. The date and one word. That's still a real entry, and it's often the most important one, because the hard days are the ones you'll want a record of later.
Paper or phone
Both work. Paper is easier to start, and harder to drift away from, because it's physically in front of you. A phone is easier to keep up on a bad day, because it's already in your hand, and it can add the days up for you.
If you want paper, there's a free printable health diary here: one week to an A4 page, no sign-up, to print or to download as a PDF. If you would rather do it on a phone, that's what taluvu is.
What a health diary can and can't show you
It can show you how often something happened, when it happened, and what your days looked like around it. That's genuinely useful, and it's the kind of thing a doctor can work with.
It can't tell you why. A diary showing that your headaches were worse in the three weeks you slept badly has given you a coincidence worth mentioning, not a cause. Take it as a question to ask, and let the person with the training answer it.
Health diary, symptom diary or symptom tracker?
People use the three names for much the same thing. A health diary is the widest: anything about how you are, including sleep, mood, food and what you did. A symptom diary narrows it to the symptoms themselves. A symptom tracker usually means an app that keeps the diary for you, with the dates and the pattern worked out automatically. GPs understand all three. What they want is the record, not the name.
If you would rather keep it on paper, there is a free symptom diary template on this site, and a weekly diary for 30 conditions with the usual symptoms already printed down the side. If you would rather not write it by hand, taluvu is the tracker version of the same thing.
Taking it to an appointment
Don't hand over eight weeks of raw pages. There's rarely time to read them, and the parts that matter get lost in the rest.
Bring a short summary instead: how many hard days there were, which symptoms were worst, what they stopped you doing, and what has changed since last time. The guide on preparing for a GP appointment covers what to say, and there's an example of what a summary looks like.
Questions people ask
How long should I keep a health diary before it's useful?
Two weeks will usually show you something. Six to eight weeks is normally enough to show a pattern, and it happens to line up with how long people often wait between appointments.
What if I miss days?
It still counts. A record with gaps is completely normal and a doctor won't be surprised by it. The missing days are information in themselves, because people usually miss the hardest ones.
Is a health diary the same as a symptom tracker?
Close enough in practice. A symptom tracker usually suggests an app with structured fields, and a health diary suggests something more written, but both are a record of how your days go. Use whichever word suits you.
Will my doctor actually look at it?
More likely if it's short. A single page that can be read in thirty seconds tends to get used. A folder of printouts usually doesn't.
Where to go next
Keeping the record without the work
taluvu is a chronic illness tracker for iPhone and for your web browser. It records how the days actually go, in about a minute a day, and turns that into something you can take to an appointment. On iPhone it's on the App Store as Taluvu Chronic Illness Tracker, and on a computer it runs in your browser with nothing to install.
Taluvu Chronic Illness Tracker
TALUVU LTD · Health and Fitness · iPhone
Free to download, with a Taluvu Pro subscription inside
Nothing on this page is medical advice. If you are worried about your health, contact your GP practice or NHS 111. In an emergency ring 999, and if you are struggling to keep yourself safe, Samaritans are on 116 123.