Are your New Year’s resolutions on track? By the end of the first few weeks of 2024, the effects of a fresh start may have begun to wear off. Consistency and dedication always trump fickle motivation when it comes to succeeding at what we’re trying to accomplish or the habits we’re trying to instill.
But can technology, especially wearables, help us stay on track toward healthier choices and self-care? To find out, I decided to take the Oura ring for a test spin.
This smart ring uses 20 different biometric markers to track your sleep, physical activity, and its newest feature: stress tolerance.
I have to say that I felt instantly attached to the ring. I may not have started calling it “my precious” yet, but within a week I started calling it “my Oura.”smoother than any Fitbitand dare I say, hoop band (Sorry, Crossfiters.) The app itself is pretty beautiful, too.
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Measuring 7.9 mm wide and 2.55 mm thick, Oura rings weigh between 4 and 6 grams, depending on size. As someone who is already pretty health conscious (though not completely health conscious) Huberman Institute I was very intrigued to see what such a small titanium band with highly sophisticated technology inside could do.
“When I started my career, there was a distinction between what would generally be considered consumer wearables and clinical wearables. Today, that distinction is rapidly becoming blurred.” , Shyamal Patel, OURA’s scientific director, told TNW from his home in Boston, USA. However, Oura’s roots lie in a completely different place.
Stylish from Finland
Founded in Oulu, Finland in 2013, the company’s Ring initially focused primarily on sleep tracking. The wearable tech startup has become a unicorn, selling his one millionth ring in 2022 and now using third-generation hardware.
Mordor Intelligence (yes, that’s their name, and it’s not just a LOTR ring-related pun) predicts that the global wearables market will reach $186 billion in 2024. Reach $493 billion by 2029, there is ample potential for growth. And the technology is quite remarkable.Our competitors are doing so much more He is said to have tried to poach an engineer from a startup..
The Oura smart ring uses infrared photoplethysmography sensors (PPG) on each side of your finger to measure your heart rate and breathing. The system sends light through an LED and receives light with a photodiode, capturing how the pulses of light passing through the arteries reflect the heart’s activity. Oura says he has 99.9% reliability compared to a medical-grade electrocardiogram (ECG).
One of the most impressive features of the Oura ring is definitely its sleep monitoring. This technology analyzes your sleep by measuring heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), body temperature, restfulness, and time spent in deep, light, and REM sleep. This, when combined with other variables such as the consistency of your bedtime and wake time, makes up your overall sleep score.
This also takes into account things like your activity level from the previous day and the time you spent recovering, contributing to your overall readiness score. This suggests pushing yourself, “rewarding yourself with something fun,” or focusing on rest and recovery. Movements (including turning over in bed) are measured by a 3D accelerometer.
Data is the treasure trove of health technology, but context is everything
OURA released its latest sleep algorithm last year after two years of additional research and development based on approximately 1,500 nights of data from a variety of individuals. The result was a 15% improvement in measurement accuracy, reaching 79% compared to the 83% boasted by clinical sleep researchers. “If you’re going to make decisions about your health, you really need to trust that the data you’re getting is accurate and reliable,” Patel emphasizes.
We tend to be very good at negotiating with ourselves, but it’s hard to argue with hard data. For people looking to change behaviors that impact their sleep and overall health, having access to objective feedback can be a valuable investment in long-term health.
As Patel says, “If you drink a glass of wine before bed and see your nighttime resting heart rate rise by 10 beats per minute, you know this is putting a lot of stress on your system. Right? And when you change that behavior, the benefits of changing that small behavior multiply over months and years.”
“Data is a goldmine when it comes to understanding someone’s health status and making medical decisions,” he adds. However, OURA doesn’t just give you tons of data to make sense of. Patel emphasizes that context is everything.
If there’s something unusual about your sleep patterns or you’re trying to see how certain habits (like rummaging through the fridge late at night or scrolling on your phone in bed) are affecting your sleep. , you can add activity tags (pre-installed ones range from late caffeine and sugar to blue light blockers and hyperbaric oxygen therapy) to ensure your score matches that specific activity and over time. See how you respond.
Prediction of menstrual cycle
Another impressive feature is body temperature measurement. This is obtained through a negative temperature coefficient (NTC) sensor that can detect changes as small as 0.1°C. For those who experience monthly hormonal fluctuations, this is a very unique tool for understanding the effects of the reproductive cycle, i.e. perimenopause and menopause.
“I basically believe that menstrual cycles should also be considered as another vital sign,” Patel added. “We are investing in a lot of research to understand how to accurately predict events such as ovulation, and to understand more about people with regular and irregular cycles. ”
Oura’s stress tolerance features
The Resilience feature, which came online about a month after my trial started, measures things like daytime stress load and recovery markers to see how much stress users can tolerate. Although no score is provided, you can categorize resilience as limited, sufficient, solid, strong, or exceptional and track trends over time.
I find that being able to check my stress levels during the day is a great reminder to find ways to de-stress throughout the day so that it doesn’t build up over time, regardless of the nature of the stress itself. Ta. OURA has also partnered with his Headspace to offer short meditations directly through the app.
We appear to be experiencing an epidemic of burnout, characterized by chronic stress and fatigue, which may be of great help in regulating the nervous system, but potentially due to the experience of stress itself. may also be rebuilt.
“We have changed this view of stress as mostly negative to an inevitable part of our lives, our experiences, and how we grow and evolve. “We want to fundamentally change that,” says Patel. “The idea behind resilience is to help you understand the balance between the stress you experience during the day and how you recover from that stress.”
Should I buy an Oura ring?
So is the Oura ring right for you? The honest answer is, “It depends.” If you’re looking for a fitness-specific wearable, you’ll want one tailored to your main physical activity. The ring is very sensitive, so you can’t wear it while lifting weights, for example (although I wore it under boxing gloves and it was fine). The app, on the other hand, also uses information from your phone (and its extensions if you’re wearing a smartwatch), so you won’t miss any data even if you take your phone off.
However, if your goal is to monitor and understand your situation, whole If it improves your health, including what affects your sleep and stress levels, what helps you relax and recover, then I would say yes. The initial investment is from 329 euros to 399 euros depending on the ring design, and after the first 30 days he pays 5.99 euros as a monthly membership.
A new healthcare paradigm supported by wearables and AI
Now, let’s get back to New Year’s resolutions. Personally, other than a moderate to severe caffeine addiction, I don’t have any strong vices that I’m trying to cure (anymore). But the Oura ring has allowed me to build a holistic story about where I can better support my health. Where are you overtaxing your system without giving it a chance to recover? What habits are disrupting your sleep? When do you need a rest day?
For me, Oura is about how innovative technology tools can not only complement our efforts, but also provide a concrete data-driven framework for understanding and improving our well-being. This is an example. Like any other technological advancement, in a few decades the world of health tech and wearables will likely take us to places we can’t even imagine today.
And we hope this will meaningfully change the current medical model of waiting until something breaks and then fixing it.
“I think there will be a convergence of technologies between wearables, AI, and data ingestion capabilities,” Patel says of his vision for the sector over the next 10 years. “At Oura, we talk about health as a daily habit. I think 10 years from now, it will be the norm, where everyone thinks about their health more regularly and continuously. It will be like that.”