What caught my attention about the Oura Ring

If you follow me on snapchat (heathergf2), you know that I will occasionally report my sleep patterns, HRV, steps taken, activity levels and readiness score for the day. I love getting this data as it gives me some hard numbers on my health that motivate me to improve upon them.

The issue with many fitness trackers is that the accuracy is less than stellar which has kept me on the wayside of the fitness tracking super highway… until three months ago.

I first saw the Oura ring in action when I attended the Paleo Fx Conference May of 2016 on several fabulous bio-hacking guru’s and it seemed like an interesting concept.  But I didn’t go much past that as I am not a big jewelry wearing fit chick.  I tend to take rings off all day, set them down and lose them half the time. And the idea of a wrist band jangling around on my wrist 24-7 wasn’t going to fly.

But the more I thought about it, the more I saw these rings in action, the more I warmed up to the idea of jumping on the fit tracking wagon.

My first step was to head to the website ouraring.com and research.

What got my attention was their touting of “unparalleled accuracy” from a ring versus a wrist band. This ring is able to take more accurate data from the arteries in your fingers than the veins in your wrists. (ref 1)

The second feature of this ring that gets my attention is the fact that it stays in airplane mode until you connect the app on your phone and download info from your ring. Bonus. Other fitness trackers are constantly emitting cell damaging EMF radiation much like your cell phone and other electronics do. This is something I find very important to minimize my exposure to. Other lengths I take to minimize EMF is to turn my phone on airplane mode when I am in the car, have it in my pocket, and before bed. I also turn off all the wifi at night before bed.

I also wanted this ring to help give me data on my sleep patterns and heart rate variability so I bought it.

Buying the ring

When you purchase the ring, you are given the option to have a sizing kit sent to you to get the correct fit for your ring and see how it feels to wear all day.

 

 

Once I received my sizing kit, I tried on various sized replicas of the real thing and settled on wearing the ring on my middle finger which I do switch from hand to hand throughout the day.

I mean, what ring can go from evening look to farm girl…..

ugh, love my ducks! 😀

Back to the ring. So far I love the ring. I have been using it for 3 months now and only take it off to charge it every three days for an hour.

I bought the mirror black for $299. I am complimented on it all the time and people are surprised to find that its my fitness tracker.

Psst, If you want to buy one of these revolutionary, super accurate fitness tracking Oura Rings, use the discount code that Oura has so graciously given me to pass on to my readers!....Enter "Heathergf2" for 10% off!

Data

Every morning I sync my ring to the app on my phone and check out my data which includes:

Sleep data:

• resting heart rate
• sleep efficiency
• sleep latency
• sleep disturbances,
• time spent in deep, light & REM sleep

 

Activity:

• steps taken
• calories burned
• times at rest
• activity compared to equivalent miles
• duration and time of day you were at low, high or intense activity
• activity score contributing data: duration of staying active, are you moving every hour, meeting daily targets, training frequency, training volume, recovery time

 

Daily readiness score data:

• heart rate variability
• resting heart rate
• sleep score
• sleep balance
• previous days activity
• activity balance
• body temperature (great for tracking phases of menstrual cycle)
• resting heart rate
• recovery index

What this ring has pushed me to do is to prioritize my sleep. Of course, I am always preaching to friends and clients but many times find there is not enough time in the day to run a business, be a Mom and occasionally have a social life. And, there is always something to do as a business owner.  I could work 168 hours a week if I wanted to (don’t want to) but I have to set boundaries and that is exactly what this ring helped me do.

HRV

In tracking my health data, I found my sleep quality and duration lacked and my heart rate variability was low low low. Usually hovering in the 30’s… out of 100!! very very yuck.

If you don’t know what heart rate variability (HRV) is, it’s the variation in the time interval between heartbeats, measured by the variation  from beat to beat. You want the variability in time duration between beats to differ.

When your heart beat gets to be more steady, this can indicate signs of  mental or physical stress. Stress isn’t always the negative kind you may be thinking about, you know; life, kids, work, a million errands, you catch my drift. HRV can indicate that you trained hard and need a good recovery day. If you have a super hard workout the day before which stressed your body and you find your HRV to be low the next morning, that simply means you need a recovery day of lighter training or rest.

Things that have been helping me increase my HRV include meditation (I like to use Neurominer and the Emwave) and training based on how I feel that day. If I feel tired and crummy, then it’s a lighter training day. If I feel AWESOME, I am a BEAST! I love training this way. It gives me far less anxiety to know that I don’t have to push it to the max when I feel like crap or run down. I still work hard but we are not talking heavy push to absolute failure kind of days.

Strength training and wearing a big ‘ol ring

My biggest concern I had before buying this ring was lifting heavy. If I can’t wear this ring when I am partaking in activity, it won’t be tracked or considered into my data. Boo. But, there are a few ways around this.

1. You an actually add in activity that you may have taken your ring off for.

This ring is water proof and you can wear it swimming but, there are some instances where I am not taking the chance at losing a $300 ring in a lake while I am enjoying drinks on a floaty.  Although, I would also be afraid of swimming laps and losing that bad boy down the pool filtration system.

2.  Where strength training is concerned, this is what I do. I have these awesome weight lifting gloves by Emerge  that have loops for each of your fingers. I keep my middle finger out of one loop and then place the Oura Ring on that finger.

 

It works like a charm! It’s super comfortable and my ring doesn’t interfere with my lifting nor does my ring get damaged.

If you want to buy one of these revolutionary, super accurate fitness tracking Oura Rings, use the discount code that Oura has so graciously given me to pass on to my readers!

Enter “Heathergf2” for 10% off!