How to Read & Use Oura Ring Data | Biohack your Recovery

Imagine this: technology could help you lead a healthier life. Contradictory to how we’re all doomscrooling on TikTok, if used properly, the Oura app’s data can help you transform your daily habits.

First things first, I always take any measurements from my fitness and wellness trackers with a grain of salt. Call it wisdom gained with age, but I feel like listening to your body is better than listening to technology. Getting the numbers right is not the end goal here. It’s using those numbers to gain a better health.

Oura has a wealth of information to implement such changes, some more reliable than others. But if you’re new to the Oura Ring or getting confused with the myriad of graphs and numbers, don’t worry; I’ve got you covered.

My Go-To Indicators for a Better Health

• Resting Heart Rate (RHR) – Since metrics are deeply affected by movement, sleep or rest is the time when the body is the least active; therefore, the most accurate data, according to me on my Oura app, is the Resting Heart Rate.

• Overall Activity – Since the Oura ring is so tiny and almost goes unnoticed throughout the day, out of all of my activity trackers, barring a few circumstances, this is the one you’ll find me wearing almost all day. Therefore, in order to understand my movement and activity on the whole, this is the metric I rely on.

• Trends – Although not all metrics recorded by the Oura app are to the T, the trends show a graph of each metric (more on that later), which gives a good idea of how your body has been behaving lately. Using the trends to get an overview of your health, in combination with tags, helps you understand which metric gets affected by various external factors.

• HRV – A study by the National Library of Medicine states that the Oura Ring is accurate in terms of measuring HRV based on time-domain parameters. Since the frequency-domain parameters of HRV calculated are not medically accurate, the study suggests to use this parameter for tracking sleep and general health monitoring.

The Forgettable Few: Metrics I Leave in the Dust

• HR – Rings, being such a small, non-medical grade device, are affected by the smallest of things, such as movement and environmental light. Also, since a smart ring is worn on the finger and the hands make the most movement during the day, it’s the least reliable metric even when you’re sitting and working.

• Stress – When Oura launched its Daytime Stress feature, I was excited to log my stress, but I felt that movement affected my stress graph. Since stress is estimated by Oura based on HR, HRV, motion, and body temperature, even when I was working, it showed a spike in my stress because of the movement, but I wasn’t even “stressed.”

Our body also perceives stress in the same way. After I’ve had a great workout, the stress graph spikes. If someone’s body is adapted to keto, their HR might be perpetually higher. I’ve also noticed a spike in my stress graph when I’m on a detox or intermittent fasting.

• REM sleep – Cody Rall, MD, explains in a video how some stages of sleep are more difficult to detect than others. One such stage is right when you’re about to fall into Light NREM (non-REM) and when you’re falling out of REM. This is because the biosignals Oura sensors use have not changed much, but the brain waves have. These stages are only accurately calculated by an EEG device (through brain waves).

• Sleep Latency – Since the Light non-REM is not medically accurate, this means that the time taken to fall asleep, Sleep Latency is also not 100% accurate.

For day-to-day life and general health tracking, we don’t need our devices to be 100% accurate all the time, so these estimations can also be used to check the trends of these parameters and help you decide which area of your health needs more work.

Given the fact that these are not medically accurate, I suggest you not to rely on these metrics completely, and in case you feel something is wrong, please consult your doctor for the same.

How I Use the Oura Data to My Benefit?

Sleep

Although the sleep latency and REM stages aren’t medically accurate, for a general overview of my sleep, Oura is pretty great. As long as I don’t need medical attention, working on the basis of what the Oura Ring calculates, my sleeping habits are much better, and it has turned me into a much more productive person.

But how is sleep related to productivity? Let me explain.

Ideally, a total sleep of 7-8 hours and a REM sleep of 1.5 hours is required by an adult. Since Oura doesn’t calculate REM accurately, a personal analysis of how much total sleep you need in order to be your most energetic and rejuvenated self the next day is crucial while working with a fitness tracker.

Personally, I don’t pay attention to the sleep stages, but a total, undisturbed sleep of at least 7 hours helps me be my most productive self. The way I see it- the more sleep, the more REM stage.

Additionally, sleep time matters highly. My ideal time of sleep has shifted from sleeping at 12-1 am before getting the Oura to now having a bedtime of 11:30 pm.

Not to say that I never go to bed late or don’t indulge in binge-watching my favorite Netflix series, but the Oura data has made me consciously aware of my bedtime and optimal amount of sleep to feel my best.

What affects my Sleep?

How did I figure out what to change in my routine in order to shift my bedtime? Tags.

Adding various tags every day would let me log my behaviors and environmental factors, which, while scrolling through the graphs of my recorded sleep data, I could easily get back to.

Using tags allows me to differentiate between what behaviors and factors trigger “bad sleep” and which ones let me sleep peacefully. After collecting enough of this data, I was able to do a factor analysis to understand what works for my body and what doesn’t. Even down to which drink affects my sleep (and no, just coffee isn’t the answer).

Activity and Steps

In my nth attempt to reduce my screen time, I don’t carry my phone or my smartwatch everywhere. But I almost always have the Oura ring on my finger. This gives me a good idea of my activity and steps during the day.

While the science backing up the 10K steps a day might be debatable, it’s a good goal that I strive to work towards. Earlier, I used to hit the gym for an hour and call it a day. With the Oura ring giving me a good analysis of my step and activity count for the entire day, it has helped me up my activity level throughout.

Readiness

Based on various factors, readiness measures how well rested and prepared I am to take on the day. With a good understanding of listening to my body and using these health trackers as a guideline, I alter my day according to my readiness score.

If my readiness score –

• Is more than 80: I push myself to get more steps/ workout in.
• Falls between 70-80: I go about my day as planned.
• Is below 70: I take it slow and maybe push a few strenuous tasks to the next day. This is usually because I am not feeling too well.

From Curious to Captivated – the HRV Graph

Before I saw the HRV readings on my Oura app, I had no idea or interest in learning what it was and how important it was. To be honest, for the first few months of getting my Oura Ring, I barely paid attention to this metric.

It was when I got a good grasp of the few metrics I was initially focused on I moved on to learning about others. What caught my eye the most was HRV.

Essentially, HRV tells you the response of your body to various stimuli like training, traveling and stress. The higher the HRV graph overtime, the better.

Certain factors that result in an out-of-order HRV graph for me usually mean –

• Late night snacking
• Not enough water intake
• Feeling under the weather
• Stress
• Travelling and jet lag
• Overtraining or strenuous workouts

These factors will tell me what puts a strain on my body and what factors to avoid. Now, that doesn’t mean I will never travel on long flights or always be on top of having a certain amount of water every day, but it just tells me that consistently having a lower HRV pertaining to whatever habits will cause my body to go in a downward spiral.

Navigating Trend – Consistency Matters

While individual numbers will change every single day, it is important to note that for a healthier lifestyle, the trend graphs should be consistent. 

If you head to the menu section from the home page and go to ‘trends’, there will be a number of trend graphs you can look into for data accumulated over time.

I strive to keep my graphs consistent (in a good way), like a stable bedtime, a higher HRV, keeping a decent step and activity score, etc. 

Sharing your Oura Data

Oura on the Web

For when you want a deeper dive or just a bigger screen to look at, Oura on the web will give you just that. Just sign in with your Oura account, and you will see all the data stored in your Oura cloud.

If you are an Excel sheet person and want to export that data to do a deeper self-analysis, head to ‘My Account’ and scroll down to ‘Export data.’ You will be able to download CSV files of all your data.

HRV4 Training

For athletes and people who are interested in training, Oura has integrated with HRV4 Training, the first and only validated app that measures HRV for training using the camera on your phone.

It is recommended to either use HRV data points from the Oura app or the HRV4 training, not both. It is also suggested that HRV be synced between the apps at one particular time, either in the morning or at night.

Combining Oura and HRV4 Training’s data also helps contextualize data and makes better sense of it when it comes to understanding a person’s physiological stress and recovery.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrap Up

The Oura app packs a wealth of data to biohack your recovery and lead a healthier life. These graphs and numbers can be overwhelming at first, but understanding which metrics to look for is essential to understand what works for you and what doesn’t.

If you’re a beginner in your fitness journey and a new user of the Oura Ring, the top piece under the graphs of the three tabs- readiness, sleep, and activity, is a good place to understand your health in a quick glance.

With any health tracking device, it’s best to listen to your body and not follow the trackers blindly. If you’ve been using the basic metrics by Oura for some time now, I urge you to dive deeper into HRV to gain a deeper understanding of your health.

Along with these metrics, Oura packs more information, such as respiratory rate, but it’s not a metric I actively look for. Are there any other metrics you track? Shoot me a comment, and I’ll look into it as well. Who knows, I might be missing out on something.