Using plan B shouldn’t always be your plan A. As concerns about the adverse effects of long-term hormonal birth control rise, women are sweating bullets. When a sleek wearable like the Oura Ring adds period and fertility tracking to its already impressive features, it offers women a powerful alternative to take their fertility into their own hands.
Welcome to the new era of fertility tracking. You can now track your fertility with the help of Oura Ring in two ways: Cycle Insights given by the ring itself and its integration with Natural Cycles app.
Better days are coming!
How Does Oura Ring Track Fertility?
Oura, with its powerful period prediction, first takes data from the user. When I log in my period days for at least three months consistently, it helps me predict my next cycle and understand which cycle phase I am in. Beyond that, it also suggests me how ready my body is for work load.
With Natural Cycles, you can altogether skip birth control, and this has been proven with many testimonials on TikTok and Reddit.
1. Cycle Insights
The Oura Ring tracks data metrics throughout the day and night. During sleep, it records the body temperature, an average of which is displayed on the app in the morning.
Oura takes 60 nights to develop a personal baseline temperature, post which the trends in these deviations are used to determine the menstrual phase I’m in. These deviations are so small that we normally don’t even notice, approximately 0.3°C to 0.7°C (or 0.4°F to 1°F).
Menstrual and Follicular Phase: A day or two before the onset of your period, there is a drop in the estrogen and progesterone levels. This causes a drop in the body temperature. During the follicular phase, the estrogen levels tend to rise slowly while the progesterone remains comparatively low; therefore, the temperature remains stable through these two phases.
Ovulation and Luteal Phase: As the progesterone levels begin to rise during fertile days (ovulation phase), the body temperature also rises. Several days post ovulation (luteal phase), the progesterone levels remain elevated. As and when these levels drop, the body temperature also drops, indicating the beginning of your next phase.
In your Readiness tab, tap on ‘Body Temperature’ to see the trends in your body temperature. Here, variations in body temperature daily can be viewed to see how the body responds to external factors such as physical and mental stress and detect the onset of an illness.
The Trend view is ideal for analyzing monthly patterns in your data, such as menstrual phases. Post setting my temperature baseline, Oura displays the cycle phase I’m in on the home screen, as well as under Cycle Insights.
2. Natural Cycles
An app cleared by the FDA that has a 93% rate of effectiveness when it comes to birth control, all by analyzing BBT (basal body temperature) each morning. Imagine never having to worry about taking the morning-after pill or losing your hair or sanity because of hormonal birth control. Natural Cycles has made that possible.
To make things even easier, integrating the Natural Cycles app with the Oura Ring eradicates the need to manually take your temperature with Natural Cycle’s thermometer and records the same from Oura Ring at the same time each morning.
Deviations in your temperature are then utilized by the algorithm to determine ovulation date, fertility status, and menstrual phases. These assumptions are pretty accurate in terms of both– planning and preventing conception.
However, for my girls who have fertility issues such as PCOD/ PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, etc., these assumptions may not always be accurate and may affect its effectiveness.
It is also noteworthy that a subscription is required for both– Natural Cycles and Oura app.
The Natural Cycles displays the fertility on a calendar with red and green dots. The red days are when you are fertile with chances of getting pregnant; therefore, advises to use protection. The green days are when you are not fertile and doesn’t require additional protection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Wrap Up
Oura ring has been such a valuable companion in my fertility journey, especially since it allows me to take control of my fertility without taking a toll on my mental health. Beyond providing actionable insights into my sleep patterns, activity and movement throughout the day, and recovery, it comes full circle by offering a holistic approach to my overall health.
When used in conjunction with its partner apps, like the Natural Cycles app, it truly empowers women to take charge of their fertility, providing tools to make informed decisions about women’s reproductive health without the use of hormonal methods.
