Came here to request this. Something similar to the mood or energy levels widget would be great.

Yes and to be able to have a section where you define what each number means to you for consistency.

There is an existing standard in use for this scale. Use that. I think it’s called the WONG-BAKER scale. It’s much better than mild,moderate, severe.

I prefer the comparative pain scale: https://chsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/0-10_Pain_Scale.pdf

An effect of chronic pain is adjusting to extreme levels of pain. i.e. my face is not going to look anguished at a high level of pain like someone who does not struggle with chronic pain issues.

I hope this gets more upvotes.

I would love to have a Pain Levels section that works like the Energy Levels section only with a 1-10 instead of 1-5.

The ability to quickly track a current pain level with a time stamp would be so incredibly useful for me. Especially when talking to my rheumatologist or even my chiropractor. My GP asks too.

Honestly just a straight copy of the energy levels with 1-10 would be awesome.

I completely agree with Shalina’s approach. In fact, everything should be “right now” and “it is” and “this level”. Those four-hour blocks are not helpful in tracking responses to food, or to changing pain levels within a time-period. For me, over the course of four hours, I go from ‘no’ pain to ‘unbearable’ pain. The speed of escalation is important. Anyway, I second what Shalina said.

Agree with this 100%

I also agree with this suggestion. My pain level waxes and wanes with the barometric pressure changes, my moods, stress level, etc. The four-hour blocks do not do these changes justice.

came here to request this – the app does all the other things I need to track after my ankle fracture, but there is no app out there that does both meds and pain on 1 to 10 scale at whatever time you want to enter it. At least I haven’t found one. So it seems that that would be a great competitive differentiator.

I really need this

I would have to agree with some of the comments. This would be great if it was like the energy and mood mechanisms, that allow users to put in a time and set the pain level from 1- 10, with notes like to what type of things they are feeling. The generic <6am, 6am - 12 pm, 12pm - 6pm, and >6pm etc is a bit mundane and doesn’t help people see when they are in pain at specific times.

eg widespread pain; level 5; at 9am and it feels like pins and needles, cold, and dull.

with the notes as with energy level you can add your own info, like dull; sharp; numb; hot; cold; electric shock etc.

I also would like the ability to track pain levels please.

Yes, this pain scale is excellent! Thank you.

This would also be very useful for tinnitus, the standard 4 levels are not enough

This will be really useful for fibromyalgia. Even more so if the scale could have some description of what each pain level feels like because when in pain I tend to score it higher than it is, and I’m sure that I would end up scoring the same pain level on different days with different numbers

Pain Section Suggestions

This combines a bunch of different suggestions already posted, and some of my own thoughts. Pain has a lot of aspects that currently can’t be tracked in the symptom tracker (aside from notes, but those don’t influence insights). I would suggest updating the symptom tracker or creating an entirely new section for pain that could track the following:

Location of pain - this would help those who are tracking pain in multiple locations and want to remember those locations, but don’t want to create a separate symptom for each location - marking a body image would so helpful, as words sometimes aren’t specific enough (even something as specific as “lower right abdomen” can mean several different things)

Type of pain - e.g., sharp, dull, ache, cramp, shooting, stabbing, burning, etc. - tags could probably be used for this Intensity of pain - this is already available, but a 1-10 scale might be an improvement for some (I personally favor making every scale in the app 1-10)

Frequency of pain - constant, frequent, intermittent, once, etc. - again, could use tags for this

Time of pain - it would be great to allow users to choose the current pre/am/mid/pm sections or timestamps - each system is useful in different contexts

-Miceala MacDougall

Came here to request this. A 5-pt scale doesn’t really capture my symptom levels. My fatigue usually varies between a 7 & 9/10. I’m not bedridden, so don’t want to record 5/5. This means that my fatigue varies between 3 & 4/5. This isn’t enough to capture the variation between a good day & a bad day; or between days where I’m reacting to something I did or ate & a relatively good day. So, I end up using the 5-pt scale to mark my normal range. Then, when I report my symptom levels for specialists and disability funding, I double the score to give 10/10. But that isn’t accurate either.

I know that a 10-pt scale would mess up the symptoms interface. Perhaps we could have default values for each symptom, plus up and down arrows;or a slider pop-out that expands across the screen?

The default values could be a configurable option: - disabled (checkbox) - use the average of the past x days (checkbox + number of days) - average across each time period, rather than using the daily average (checkbox)

Thanks!

I concur. Many of us are using this to track and report to doctors and I wish this app allowed you to reflect what doctors ask you to report on when discussing pain- like the pain scale 1-10 (option to add descriptions that work for you for consistency/reflect how your doctors are asking you to track).

Ideally, I wish I could set a custom numerical scale. Since I’m always in pain, 1-10 is hard but 1-5 is more manageable to track.

@Adi, I think we’d enter the pain score differently if it were on a 1-10 scale. It would be great to have a default value. Then we just press ‘Up’ or ‘Down’. For example, I’m usually at a 6, so I’d enter that as my default. On an 8/10 day, I’d press the up button twice.

This is EXACTLY what I want in a pain tracker. I have two conditions that cause pain so it’s the thing I most need to track.

It would be so helpful if I could track my Fibro pain in detail so I can give my doctors updates of what the trends seem to be.

I also came here to request a pain scale, glad (but sad) to see so many others also looking for this. I’m here to track worsening endometriosis ahead of new consultant appointment & pain would be a key metric if it was possible to record. Thank you for considering this!

Yes! On same note, the symptom tracker doesn’t include time points like the medication and other groups do. So when my symptoms changes from mild to moderate after 1 hour, I can’t record that. Using time stamps like medication group does and adding a scale option would be sooo much better than the generic “am”/“mid”/“pm” anchors with mild/moderate etc. For the specificity in the other areas, this one is just too vague.

Please, please make this happen. For a health tracking app it not having a pain scale tracker is just shocking. It shouldn’t even be all that hard to implement. Just copy the Mood tracker section and make it Pain Scale instead. 1-10 is already there. Just needs to be adjusted where 1 is best and 10 is worst. Why doesn’t this exist yet?

Honestly came here to say this. Because this is very important for anyone with chronic pain. As much as I love the app the lack of ability to do that just makes it hard to use. I need a different app to track my pain on a 1-10 scale

I would also love a custom numerical scale, also the idea with up- and down arrows is great.

My rheumatologist uses 0-10 scale at each appointment so without this, I have to log my history elsewhere.

As someone who sufferers pain all the time in different severity for each part of my body that has decided it’s mad and as someone who has worked nursing many years I can not agree more with this suggestion. It’s needed.

I totally agree

This would be useful for.me too!!

New to Bearable as of yesterday and immediately signed up for the premium subscription. Fabulous app but what I really REALLY need to track is PAIN. I have severe chronic pain from several diseases and as other commenters have said, the current pain section on Bearable is lacking. I think lots of people out there are looking for a good pain tracker and if you implemented what @William Munro @Eoghan and @Jackie are suggesting, you’d have thousands of people immediately signing up for a Premium subscription! Please make these changes! Thank you so much!

Considering that every medical pain scale in the US is 1-10, I find the 1-5 scale to be inadequate. Also, I would like to see the symptom rating changed to a 1-10 scale as well, because “mild, moderate, severe, and unbearable” aren’t adequate to rate chronic pain/illness symptoms which have a great range of variation. Today, for example, I woke with a migraine, pain level 7. Took medicine, now it’s at a 5. It didn’t go from severe to moderate, it went from mildly severe to severely moderate! “Unbearable” for me would be a 10, and things rarely get that bad, but “severe” could cover a 7-9; if my medication takes it from a 9 to a 7, it helped some, and that needs to be able to be reflected in the symptoms

This would be amazing. 1 - 10 is the standard thing that health care folks ask, so align to that. And symptom entries at a specific time, not in blocks. Honestly I use the notes more than the symptom levels because I can log them at a given time and I can put a 1 - 10 score in the note name.

Can we please have this? It’s difficult to rate my pain 1-4 on the current scale, there’s just not enough variation. This app has some great features, but I have to use a second app to track pain on a 1-10 scale to do it accurately to show my doctors.

Thank you for this! I’ll be sending that to my doc so I can stop being at a 7 on average. This would also be great for a pain scale in the app!

There is a separate roadmap entry called “Ability to change symptom severity scale” that seems basically the same as this. It was suggested in December 2020 and moved to “Under Consideration” in October 2022. This currently has 220 votes, the similar entry that is Under Consideration has 211 votes. I just wonder how much overlap there is in those people voting, or if duplicate entries leads to a lower number of votes for both.

Yes!!! Like sometimes my symptoms score isn’t reflecting my actual pain properly. I’d like to rate it out of 10 like overall mood.

Option for pain scale of 1 to 10 is a must. Not having this feature is currently the number one drawback.

We received a similar suggestion from another member of the community:

“Opportunity to rate pain more often like “mood” category. A scale of 1-10 and ability to add pain ratings at anytime.”

If the pain section was more like medication it would be useful. You can have sections for different symptoms (like medications) and you tap to indicate you’re having pain at that time, along with a rating from 1-10 and optional notes. I can’t use the pain section add is because 6 hour blocks are too broad and the 1-4 scale isn’t meaningful.

Posting from another user:

More options for custom ratings

You have custom ratings where you can choose 1-5

But it would be cool if you would have different options for a custom rating for example 1-10 Or being able to fill in your own number (just like with KG,heart rate etc)

My app “visible ” gives me a score 1-5 so that’s perfect but I would also like for example to be able to note down the body battery of my Garmin watch (1-100)

Similar request from another user:

Switch to 1-10 pain system for easier communication with doctors

“One thing I’d love to see to make it easier to share information with doctors would be using a 1-10 system, same as they chart with”

I have chronischen pain and a pain scale from 1-10 would be better. Espacially with time stamp when I have more pain.

Include type of pain (zaps, ache, dull etc) and location as tick boxes etc

It is not explicitly related to pain, but from a psychometric point of view (I’m a psychology PhD student), every scale should default from 1 to 7 or from -3 to +3. Some questions should be counted and not rated, for example, the amount of coffee cups, pills, alcohol, etc…

For example: “How bad was your pain level today?” 1 (or -3): Very bad 2 (-2): Bad 3 (-1): Slightly bad 4 (0): Neutral 5 (1): Slightly good 6 (2): Good 7 (3): Very good

This will allow for a more neutered measurement of most of the questions. Of course, every question should be considered to determine if this default is appropriate.

This will immensely improve the “scientific” appearance of the app.