Coughing

Coughing in Apple Health stores a reported symptom and its severity. It is not an automatic cough counter, audio recording or lung-function test.

Apple uses HKCategoryValueSeverity for this type. Unspecified is not the same as notPresent, and a missing record is neither. The integers identify labels; numerical averages and physiological reference ranges do not apply.

No. One category sample is one saved observation, which may cover a moment or an interval chosen by the source. Its severity does not encode how many times a user coughed, whether the cough was dry or productive, or what caused it. Record those details separately when they matter.

Several mild entries and one severe entry cannot be compared by multiplying their integer codes. Category frequencies describe logging; they do not measure cough frequency.

Wheezing and Shortness of Breath can document different aspects of breathing symptoms. Peak Expiratory Flow Rate is a separate measurement. A cough label cannot supply a missing peak-flow reading or diagnose asthma.

If coughing is reported as waking a user, that reported disruption is more specific than simply matching a cough record to a sleep interval. A sleep record does not detect coughs or establish why an awakening occurred.

This is a logged symptom, with no fixed sensor sampling schedule. Start-to-start gaps describe when observations were saved. A sample’s start and end times describe the interval supplied by its source; their difference does not establish the full duration of a clinical episode. Repeated or overlapping records need review before counting episodes.

This category is not currently listed in the PulsHealth sync catalog. No observations were present in the reviewed user data, so recorded severity frequencies, source differences and logging intervals could not be measured. That database coverage does not establish whether entries exist in Apple Health.