A diary can only record what happened. It can’t tell you what to do with it. You log a flare, and you’re left with the same question you started with: why?

So we added something to the Health Diary that does that part for you: Detective Cases. It’s a mechanism for connecting diary entries to causes, and lets you track those causes over time.

The basic idea

Every hard day gets a case. Any day with a flare, or one where your how-I-feel ratings average under three hearts, opens one automatically. At the top of that day, a small detective asks a single question: can you explain today?

Your answer is a culprit: the cause you think is most likely, picked from a short list. Pick as many as fit, and add a note if you like. A guess is enough. Then mark the case solved, leave it open, or let it go. You can reopen it any time.

Why we call them culprits

When a day goes badly, most people turn the blame inward: what did I do wrong? Naming a culprit points it somewhere else: the pressure drop, the smoke, the short night. Nobody gets blamed for the weather.

An explanation, even a rough guess, also takes some of the load off. An unexplained day tends to stay with you, and the worry that comes with it is stress, which can be a trigger on its own. And a named culprit is something you can plan around, test against the next hard day, or bring to your doctor.

What happens to your answers

One case is a guess. Twenty start to show a shape:

  • The Cases tab lists your open and closed cases, with a count of how many are waiting.
  • The Year tab shows which culprits you name most, and how many hard days came down to things beyond your control.
  • The Doctor Summary lists your most common culprits as “Suspected triggers.”
  • Health Findings nudges you when the same culprit keeps coming up, a sign it may be ready to become a discovery.

What it isn’t

Your cases are best guesses, not diagnoses: patterns, not proven causes, and not medical advice. That’s why the Doctor Summary says “suspected” triggers. It’s fine to close a case as unsolved.

Try it

Detective Cases is part of the Health Diary, which comes with a subscription. Every new account gets a free week of everything, no card needed. We’d love to hear how it goes. Get in touch.