What I've Learned From Wearing an Oura Ring for the Last Quarter.
I have been wearing an Oura Ring for the past quarter year and here's what I've learned:
Newborn babies cause havoc on sleep.
I know... who would have thought?
...Okay, I knew it was going to happen.
For those of you who are not familiar with the Oura Ring , it is a sleep and fitness tracker that is worn as a ring - It is arguably the best commercially available sleep tracker.
I know what you're thinking: "Why start using a sleep tracker during the most sleepless time of your life?"
Well, here’s my excuse:
I had been thinking about getting an Oura Ring for a long time, and finally decided to follow through a few months before my first baby was due. My thinking was I would have a month or more for baseline data to get a really good idea of how I was sleeping.
However, I did not get this baseline measure:
The Oura Ring took a while to come in - about 1 month.
My baby girl decided to come early.
With all of those factors, I ended up getting my ring in the first week Baby was home. Not the best way to get an accurate baseline.
My story is not without some helpful insights:
It convinced me that the Oura Ring is quite accurate in regards to time in bed - I knew when I was woken up in the night from a feeding or diaper change
I found some things that were effecting my sleep
One of the biggest knocks on the Oura Ring (and most sleep trackers) is accuracy. There is no research available that says it is in any way comparable to a traditional sleep study - which tracks brain waves. The Oura Ring does know when I am in bed, when I am awake, and when I get back to sleep. Which has been helpful with a new baby.
The issues with accuracy are evident with sleep stages. I am not convinced the ring is accurate in telling me how many hours I spend in each sleep stage, which is one of the parameters that people are concerned about. Sleep stages are determined by measuring brain waves; different brain waves can be detected when you’re in the different sleep stages. Any sleep tracker that does not measure brain waves (like the Oura Ring) uses an algorithm that uses heart rate, and a few more variables to guess at what sleep cycle you are in. For this reason I don’t trust the results 100%.
With that being said, the Oura Ring seems to be consistent. By that I mean it's good at tracking changes in my sleep habits, without putting too much emphasis on the actual time spent in each sleep stage.
For example, if the Oura app reports an average deep sleep time of two hours over the past month, and I get a result of just one hour, I know something I did that night caused my sleep to be impaired. I am not convinced that I was in deep sleep for the times specified, but I know something I did effected my sleep.
This is the best utility for the Oura Ring.
What I’ve noticed:
The days where I have a fairly hard workout, I tend to sleep worse than normal: My heart rate dips later, heart rate variability is lower, and I spend less time in deep sleep. I do admittedly feel less well-rested the following day. This is fine and I will never use it as an excuse to avoid exercise. I’ll use it to tell me if my recovery needs work, if I should take an extra rest day, or if the hard workouts are causing too much stress.
Large meals over the holidays caused some detrimental sleep changes, with all of the changes above. Especially those meals that go late. This just reiterates one of the most important aspects of sleep hygiene: no food for 2-3 hours before bed.
So this is what I’ve learned wearing the Oura Ring for over 3 months and over-analyzing myself.
Happy sleeping,
Dr. Oake
Full disclosure: this is my first ever purchase and use of wearable technology. I have never found the utility of an activity tracker necessary to tell me if I was hitting my fitness goals. Sleep, on the other hand, has always been an area where I wanted to improve.