What 30 Months on My Finger Taught Me About Bio‑Tracking

Oura Anniversary

Happy Oura Anniversary to me! After using the Oura ring for 2,5 years, it was time to do another review post. (Thanks Judy for the nudge!)

I’m still a big fan of my Gen3 ring and still wear it every day.

Oura ring

How has Oura impacted me those past years?

• Better sleep schedule and more sleep

• I switched my routine, having dinner earlier so my body has plenty of time to digest before going to bed, resulting in better sleep 

• Better understanding of my body, especially when it is fighting something without having real symptoms and taking it easy to give my body a break till it recovers fully.

• Better understanding of my menstrual cycle and its different phases: how RHR (Resting Heart Rate) and HRV (Heart Rate Variability) are fluctuating, how to adapt my physical activity across the month and how it is impacting my physical stress

• Improvement of my HRV and cardiovascular age taking actions based on the data collected: I increased my HRV baseline by 7 points and my heart age by 2 years.

• All of this resulted in a higher resilience in general

One thing that I like a lot about Oura is their regular updates and new releases over the months like day time stress, cardiovascular age, advisor etc It’s great to have a product that keeps evolving. 

A few of the topics they have been focusing on those past months:

Women’s health

Oura has been quite active around women’s health:

• Integration with different companies:

  • Natural Cycles to pick up the temperature from the ring to determine fertility windows

  • Clue to have better insights on (peri)menopause.

• Publication of the Perimenopause report looking at physiological changes experienced by users during perimenopause.

• Improved cycle insights with accurate period prediction and comprehensive cycle tracking, providing insights and recommendations into follicular and luteal phases.

Period prediction

• They are also taking into account the phase of the cycle for the readiness score, considering higher temperatures and resting heart rate or lower HRV as normal during the 2nd phase of the cycle, without negatively affecting the score. 

  
  

Cardiovascular 

Oura is actively involved in cardiovascular health too. In addition to the biomarkers they were already tracking, they introduced the cardiovascular age to show users how it compares to their actual age and the impact physical activities have on one’s heart. You can also do a 6-min walking test to measure your cardio capacity. 

Advisor

One of the latest additions is the AI powered advisor that brings attention to changes in our vitals or scores or lets us ask a question to improve our health. Educational content was already an important part of the app, providing lots of information about the different data and biomarkers and what they mean in the different sections of the app. The advisor is an additional step, providing more targeted information to users using the power of GenAI.

The advisor is still recent, not really optimal just yet and still lacking personalization. It has been sending me notifications on changes in my vitals that were not relevant and could cause concerns to some users. I feel the advisor is not taking into account the menstrual cycle and its impact for instance. But as it says very well on the app, the advisor is not perfect and makes mistakes.

Metabolic Health

Last year, Oura acquired Veri, making a clear move into metabolic health. It has now been included into the app as a new feature that should be rolled out to all members soon - I don’t have access just yet in Spain- called Meals. It delivers key insights about meals' timing and nutritional content, supported by the Advisor. ‘All you have to do is take a picture of your meal, and Oura does the rest’. 

Nia's birthday cake

Another interesting partnership was signed with Dexcom’s Stelo glucose biosensor. When paired with the ring, it can track glucose level in real time helping to adjust meals even more.

Oura is really taking an holistic approach to health, adding more and more complementary features looking at the user as a whole. They recently announced the appointment of a Chief Medical Officer, a former Apple Health leader so we should see even more focus and improvement around those features and other ones.

Areas for improvement

Although I like my Oura a lot, there are a few things that are not perfect:

Battery life - When I got the ring, it was lasting for about 4 days and I was doing my best to not go below 30% charge (as recommended by Oura). Today, it lasts for 2,5-3 days maximum and I often charge it when it’s quite low. They recently added a notification about the number of hours of battery left but those notifications are not consistent, although very helpful and not very reliable.

One nice improvement regarding the battery is that even if your battery dies, you will still be able to see the data collected till it died, while before you couldn’t get a score at all if the ring had died in the early morning. The good news is that the Gen4 ring lasts longer, around 8 days!

Dependency - You can become quickly addicted to the scores and data collected from the ring and worry if they are not right when you feel perfectly fine. That's why taking into account periods of the menstrual cycles make sense for women since some data are normally lower during the 2nd phase of the cycle. I feel Oura is becoming more and more accurate and precise with those scores which is a good news.

I felt that dependency effect back in December when I forgot my ring charger at home for the holiday season. I didn't use the ring for 3 weeks and it actually felt very good. I consciously repeated and left my ring at home when I went on holiday in March to fully enjoy!

After using the ring so many months, I gained good insights about myself and can interpret those scores better. Nevertheless, I wish there was an option to hide some sections of the app (like cardiovascular age) so users could control which scores they want to see or not see as I know it is something that has stopped some friends from joining the Oura family.

 Steps - I've found big discrepancies between the steps/distance calculated by the Oura ring and my Apple Health: 1,5 times higher with Oura, which makes it confusing to know exactly how much distance you have walked for instance. When Oura tells you that you have done 10,000 steps, maybe you are only at 7,000 so you exercise less thinking that you have reached your goal.

Overall, the experience with Oura is very positive for me and the regular additions make it dynamic. It’s a great companion that helps me get better insights into my health bio-tracking. The more you use it, the better you know yourself and take the right actions for you! For now, I trust myself more than the Advisor.

For those asking, after a few weeks you don’t feel the ring anymore on your finger. It’s comfy, easy to wear and it looks nice!

*If you are considering joining the Oura family, send me a message to get a discount code!