How to keep a health diary

For quite a while I have been keeping a diary about my dizziness and while it hasn't shown anything
ground breaking it has been useful to pinpoint when my dizziness has gotten worse and use it as a time line. I do it in a notebook and while I'm sure you could find an app or do it on a word document I find it easier to do it by hand. I grabbed a notebook that I had lying around and then because I am on a labelling kick I did a label using my Cricut. I write out a bunch of days (each take up half a page) every couple of weeks and then at the end of each day I quickly fill it out. My doctor only asked me to give my dizziness a score at the end of each day, I ended up making up super detailed which he commended me on as there's no point giving it a rating unless you can work out a pattern. I did the following:

• Dizziness rating - this is out of 5, with 5 being the worst. 
• Food diary - anything I eat and drink, I tend not to give the exact amounts. I also don't list water as it's a given I will drink it.
• Activity log - what I do during the day such as the gym, running errands etc. There are days where I just crash so I include that as recharging.
• Amount of sleep - just an approximate of how many hours, if it's restless sleep I mention that as well. 

I also write in the extra space anything out of the ordinary or that I think needs to be highlighted, like if
I have a headache, nausea, if I took panadol, if my anxiety was bad that day, anything that's not routine. 

I then type it up (normally the morning of) on a table in Word, just before my fortnightly doctors appointment and print it out for my doctor so that way he has a record of it. The document is over 20 pages long at the moment so I just retype the column headings for each new lot of entries and select the new pages to print. 

For me it's something that makes me feel productive and like I am doing something to treat the dizziness even though I'm not and it has been helpful to see the dizziness increase and pinpoint when that happens. It's also been interesting to see my eating habits and I can pinpoint when I have been having a rough day or I had no energy due to my diet (I snack a lot when I am feeling anxious or have bad fatigue and I tend to go for sweet things because I subconsciously hope that the sugar will give me a much needed boost). 

I highly recommend giving a health diary a go if you're dealing with weird health issues because it might just lead to some answers.