Oura Ring: Track My Health
Tracking and knowing your health and activity levels will make you a healthier person.
The Oura Ring has measures heart rate, sleep patterns, and more.
After COVID, more and more people are concerned about their health and well-being. With symptoms from COVID lasting long after the virus, people are finding ways to take control of their health.
Having constant headaches keeps you from working. Loss of taste or smell holds you back from conversations at a restaurant with friends. These feelings are lonely and suffocating. Fight these feelings by tracking your health with Oura ring.
Track Your Health
Improve your health by tracking your habits, watching your activity levels, and checking for signs of health conditions. Northwest Primary Care says that the use of smartwatches encourages active lifestyles, allows for medication reminders and personalized healthcare, potentially lowers health care costs, and tracking diet and calories.
Tracking your health means keeping track of various aspects of your life. For example, keeping track of your sleep habits will show you what is helping and hurting your sleep. Maybe on the nights you sleep with the fan on, you notice you sleep better. Tracking your sleep habits lets you see patterns like this.
Keeping tabs on your health also tells you more about yourself. If you track water intake you may realize you don't drink as much as you think. If you track steps or activity, you could discover you're less physical than you believe.
Tracking your health keeps you on a schedule. Consistently tracking your information daily, such as recording medication, keeps you on a schedule. Realizing that increasing your water intake will improve your energy.
It's interesting to see parts of yourself that you otherwise wouldn't know. Measuring your heart rate through times in the day shows you when it was high or low. Knowing your health patterns lets you see when something is different or wrong. Noticing that your heart rate is higher or lower than normal indicates an underlying condition.
Knowing your health trends allows you to have a more in-depth conversation with your doctor. Some patients fall victim to medical gaslighting. Medical gaslighting is when doctors dismiss your concerns or symptoms (Jacoby & Powell, 2022). Having data and "proof" of your condition and symptoms detours some medical gaslighting.
The benefits of tracking your health are endless. Tracking your health can be done manually with a journal. However, as technology expands (and your schedule) using technology to track health is an easy and great way to stay healthy. You can track your health through a number of items. The newest and most exciting way to track your health is the Oura ring.
Oura Ring
Oura ring is a censor-filled smart ring that rests around your finger like a regular ring. This ring, however, is anything but regular. This accurate, stylish ring tracks sleep, activity, recovery, and more. 86% of Oura member users reported an improvement in the quality of their sleep and 88% saw an overall improvement in health.
Sleep
The Oura membership can be paired with the ring to deliver personalized and guided results to better learn your body and make improvements over time. Oura uses a sleep score between 1 - 100 to grade your shut eye. The score is determine using overall time spent sleeping, time spent in each stage of sleep, body temperature, blood oxygen, and heart rate.
Use this score to find out what helped and what hurt. Possibly a late night soda decreased the quality of your sleep. Taking a walk before bed could let you stay asleep longer. Knowing your sleep habits lets you improve them. Oura rings use an accurate system to deliver the knowledge you need to make improvements.
Activity
Oura ring smart ring health tracker has the ability to pick up over 30 physical movements and record them all for you. This automatic activity detection is beneficial for tracking movement you may not think to track. It also gives you a better overall idea of your activity. You'd be surprised what taking the stairs instead of the elevator will do.
The Oura ring also tracks heart rate throughout the day, night, and while working out. This tells you a lot about your heart health and fitness ability. The Readiness ability of the Oura ring uses over 20 various body signals to deliver a readiness score on how prepared you are for the upcoming day.
Menstrual Cycle
Women have a lot to worry about and adding their cycle to that makes it tougher. The Oura ring membership allows you to track your menstrual cycle and symptoms. This keeps you ready for your next period.
Taking your temperature is an important part of cycle tracking. Using the Oura ring takes the hassle out of grabbing a thermometer everyday. Oura rings will record the temperatures automatically and show you the pattern of changes through your period and ovulation cycle.
Technology
Oura ring is filled with censors, on the inside part of the ring, that rest against your skin. These censors pick up changes in your body through your skin, such as temperature changes, heart rate, movement, and more. This is similar to the technology used in pulse ox monitors and Apple watches.
Price of Oura Ring Generation 3
Oura ring cost varies on the finish and style. The finishes available are silver, black, stealth, gold, and rose gold. The styles are offered as horizon and heritage. The Horizon has a sleek, smooth design. The heritage has a plateaued, edged design.
Finish / Style | Horizon | Heritage |
Silver | $349 | $299 |
Black | $349 | $299 |
Stealth | $449 | $399 |
Gold | $499 | $449 |
Rose Gold | $549 | - |
Gucci Oura Ring
Oura partnered with Gucci to offer a limited-time Gucci designed ring. You get the typical, smart Oura technology with the sleek and stylish Gucci accents. It's growing in popularity, especially because it is a limited run. Gucci Oura rings are available in-store only and cost $950.
Oura Ring Amazon
Amazon is one of the most trusted retail stores in the world. In fact, after COVID, the pandemic solidified Amazon's lead as the largest retailer in the world (Debter, 2022). Because of this, the reviews on Amazon pretty much determines the effectiveness and value of a product. Despite customers searching Amazon for reviews, Oura ring is only available through their website.
Oura Ring Reviews
Before you buy anything, it's nice to know that it will achieve what you need and be worth your time and money. One reviewer, sleep coach Logan Foley, enjoyed the Oura ring saying, "I found the device highly useful for tracking my personal data". Jenifer Calle from Self improved her sleep with the Oura ring and rated it as an 8/10.
Oura ring is also used by a number of celebrities, including Will Smith, Shaquille O'Neal, Prince Harry, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian, and Jack Dorsey.
Tom's Guide mentioned pros such as the sleek design, accurate sleep tracking, rest mode, and length battery life. The cons were that the fitting process was difficult and there was not real-time fitness-tracking abilities.
Live Science mentioned pros including the innovative wearable design, sleep tracking abilities, and attractive battery life. Cons were the bulky look and not very useful as a workout tracker.
Chris from the Unconventional Route mentioned the inability to wear the ring during certain activities, such as working out with the hands. It isn't able to track workout data and didn't seem to improve sleep. However, it delivered eye-opening data, is low maintenance, and is durable.
Joe from Thing Testing states that the Oura ring is nice and effective, but not meant for thoroughly tracking fitness. Laura P. would recommend to a friend but isn't sure if she'd buy the membership since the ring alone is expensive. Alexandra, Andrea, and Sarah like the many features of the ring, such as the look and feel, value, quality, and comfort.
Angela Moscaritolo with PC Mag tested the Oura ring generation 3 and rated it as a 4/5. She reports pros such as the companion app, daily personalized guidance, connection ability with Google Fit and Apple Health, and more sensors than models from the past. Cons were the price, membership fee, and little ability to track a workout.
Can Oura rings be worn in the shower?
Oura rings are resistant to water at up to about 330 feet. The temperature of water can range between 14 and 129 degrees before being damaged. You can wear your ring while washing your hands, showering, cleaning, or swimming. The ring shouldn't be used for deep diving or being submerged for more than 12 hours.
What is the best finger for Oura ring?
The best place to put your Oura ring is on your pointer finger with the censors on the palm side of the finger. This allows the ring to get a better reading of your body signals and movements. However, it can be worn and fitted for any finger.
What size Oura ring should I get?
If you know your ring size, order true to size. You could find your size by comparing your fingers to the sizes of other rings. If you have a size 8 ring, compare the finger where you will wear the finger with the ring. Oura also offers a free ring sizing kit so you get the best size.
Affordable Oura Ring Replacements
Having a ring that measures your body may not be the best option for everyone to track their health. Check out some other ways to track your data.
Jakcom R5 Smart Ring has been used by some. This ring operates with wireless USB flash disk, triggers some Smart Devices, and uses social sharing,
Fitbit Charge 5 is a popular, cheaper option that offers what the Oura ring does, plus fitness tracking abilities. This watch uses a Daily Readiness Score, mindfulness techniques, date, pace, distance, GPS, and more.
Amazfit Band 5 is an Alexa built-in activity and fitness tracker. It comes in various colors and measures blood oxygen, heart rate, sleep, activity, and more. The screen is 1.1 inches and it has a 15 day battery life.
Well O2Ring is an interesting ring that measures blood oxygen. It is rechargeable and can be used while sleeping to create free sleep reports.
Zururu Fitness Tracker sits as a watch and measures blood pressure, sleep, heart rate, activity, steps, calories, and more.
Conclusion
Tracking your health is a great way to stay healthy. Find symptoms from conditions you may not know you have. Monitor your health to stop certain health situations from getting worse.
Overall, if you're looking to track your sleep with a fashionable device, Oura is the ring for you. However, health can be tracked through a number of ways. Creating goals for yourself and your health are the first step in the process of buying a product to wear.
Would you try the Oura ring? Drop a comment below!
Sources
Debter, L. (12 May 2022). The world's largest retailers 2022: Pandemic helps amazon cement its lead. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2022/05/12/worlds-largest-retailers-2022-amazon-walmart-alibaba/?sh=16f1f66259e3
Jacoby, S., & Powell, R. (14 March 2022). How to navigate 'medical gaslighting' when doctors dismiss your symptoms. Today. Retrieved from https://www.today.com/health/health/medical-gaslighting-doctors-dont-listen-rcna19649