The Oura Ring is a wearable device designed to track and analyze various aspects of your health and wellbeing. It has gained popularity among biohackers, professional athletes, and anyone looking to improve their sleep and overall health. In this article, we will explore the features of the Oura Ring and how it can help you optimize not only your sleep.

Why your sleep matters?

Sleep is an essential aspect of life that helps the body and mind to function optimally. Without proper sleep, our bodies cannot perform at their best, and our mental health may suffer. Sleep plays a crucial role in our physical and mental health. It allows our bodies to repair and regenerate cells, and it helps our brains consolidate memories and process information. Inadequate sleep has been linked to a wide range of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, and anxiety.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, while children and teenagers require more. However, many people struggle to get enough sleep due to busy lifestyles, stress, or medical conditions. And that’s where the Oura can help!

Design and Features

The Oura Ring is a small, lightweight device that you wear on your finger like a traditional ring. It comes in two different styles. Both styles come in a variety of colors and sizes to fit your individual preferences.

The ring is equipped with sensors that track your body’s signals, including your heart rate, body temperature, and movement. It is water resistant up to 100m, you don’t have to put it off for a shower/bath or swimming (salt water doesn’t matter either — I swam in the ocean and was horrified to find that I was wearing Oura — nothing happened ). The battery lasts for 7 days when in airplane mode, but it is recommended to charge it by a few percent each day — I usually do this when I have breakfast. The ring is full charged from 20 to 80 minutes. The Oura Ring utilizes Bluetooth Smart® technology to seamlessly sync with your smartphone

The technology behind the Oura Ring includes the following features:

1. Sleep Tracking: The Oura Ring is primarily designed to track and analyze your sleep patterns. It measures the duration and quality of your sleep, as well as the amount of time spent in each stage of sleep, including deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep. This data is used to provide insights into your sleep habits and overall health.

2. Body Temperature Monitoring: The Oura Ring uses a sensitive infrared sensor to measure your body temperature throughout the day and night. (Night only for gen2) This data is used to monitor changes in your circadian rhythm, which can affect your sleep and overall health. You can also used beta version with gen3 for your period tracking or use old gen 2 to track your period manually with calendar. You can also synchronize your data from gen2 or gen3 with Natural Cycles, app for your automated period tracking. The Oura Ring is designed for accuracy above all because it measures from the palm side of your finger, where the pulse signal is strong to read from.

3. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Tracking: HRV is a measure of the variability in time between each heartbeat. It is a useful indicator of your body’s stress levels and overall health. The Oura Ring uses advanced algorithms to calculate your HRV based on your heart rate data, providing valuable insights into your physical and mental wellbeing.

4. Movement and Activity Tracking: The Oura Ring includes an accelerometer and a gyroscope, which measure your movement and activity levels throughout the day. This data is used to track your steps, active time, and calories burned, providing insights into your overall fitness level. You can also sync the Oura with Apple Health, Google Fit or Health Connect.

5. Personalized Insights: The Oura Ring connects to a mobile app, which uses the data collected by the device to provide personalized insights into your health and wellbeing. The app includes a dashboard that summarizes your sleep and activity data and provides recommendations to help you optimize your health.

In January 2022 Oura announced version 3, which is now available for sale. There are some differences between gen2 and gen3, so let’s take a look what is added!

• There are 7 NTC (negative temperature coefficient) sensors instead of 3, for better tracking your temperature

• Green LEDs — for daytime heartrate tracking instead just the night tracking

• More red LED to measure blood oxygen level

Hack your sleep!

The Oura Ring is primarily designed to track and analyze your sleep patterns. It measures the duration and quality of your sleep, as well as the amount of time spent in each stage of sleep, including deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep. It provides insights into sleep patterns, such as the time it takes to fall asleep, the number of times waking up during the night, and the total duration of sleep.

It also tracks your heart rate variability (HRV), which is a measure of your autonomic nervous system’s activity and a predictor of stress levels. It is a good indicator of how rested the body is. It provides a score that reflects how well the body has recovered during sleep.

The device also includes a feature that measures your body temperature throughout the day. This can be useful for detecting changes in your body’s circadian rhythm, which can affect your sleep and overall health.

Based on the data collected, the Oura Ring provides personalized recommendations to improve sleep. For example, it may suggest adjusting bedtime, reducing caffeine intake, or incorporating relaxation techniques before sleep. The Oura Ring can track the impact of lifestyle changes on sleep quality. For example, if you make changes to your diet or exercise routine, you can see how these changes affect your sleep.

Wear your ring for few weeks, see your patterns, add tags to better understand your day/night life impact on your sleep.

App and Insights

The Oura Ring connects to a mobile app, which provides detailed insights into your health and wellness data. The app includes a dashboard that summarizes your sleep and activity data and provides useful tips for improvement. Every measurement has it’s own description, which can be very helpful at the beggining of using the ring. The app is easy to use and there are a lot of improvements over the time. I love the Oura interface!

If you buy the new generation 3 Oura ring you may want the Oura membership subscription, which is $5.99/month. You can read more here. You can also find interesting articles on The Pulse Blog.

Conclusion

The Oura Ring is a powerful tool for tracking and analyzing your sleep => health. Its advanced sensors and algorithms provide detailed insights into your sleep, activity levels, and overall health, which can help you optimize your daily routine to improve your physical and mental wellbeing. The clarity and objectivity of the data presented by the Oura Ring can be a powerful motivator for making positive lifestyle changes. While it doesn’t mean that you have to completely give up on fun activities like parties (because you can see that one party ruined your sleep for 3 days), the data can help you make more informed decisions and avoid habits that may negatively impact your health in the long term.

The Oura Ring has been a true game changer for my life. While I knew that certain habits like drinking alcohol, eating late, consuming junk food, and exposure to blue light in the evening weren’t ideal for my health, the app has provided me with concrete data to really see the impact of these habits. With the detailed insights and personalized recommendations provided by the app, I have been able to make positive changes to my daily routine and have noticed significant improvements in my sleep quality and overall wellbeing. The Oura Ring has empowered me to take control of my health and make informed decisions that support my physical and mental health.