Everyone knows when they get stressed. However, not many know how to deal with it and what to do exactly after it. This is where Oura stepped up. Oura’s stress tracking capabilities are changing how people resolve and recover from everyday stress.
There have been numerous studies about how long-term stress affects not just your body’s natural ability to heal but can also lead to severe disorders.
In this article, I will be decoding what stress means, how Oura’s stress tracking works, what goes behind the picture, and what are the contributors that tell Oura my body is stressed.
Understanding Stress
Stress is a natural reaction generated by your body when you come face to face with something that challenges you mentally or physically. In most cases, stress can make you feel out of balance in your day-to-day life; your energy levels start to fluctuate, and you might not feel motivated enough.
What are the Types of Stress?
- Psychological Stress – This stress is born from the situations and events in your personal life that affect your mental well-being. This stress can shake you up emotionally, giving birth to feelings of anxiety, worry, fear, frustration, depression, etc.
- Physiological Stress – This stress is initiated by any variations in physical activities that affect your body. It can be caused by not having proper sleep cycles, excessive workouts, being excited about something, etc. This might result in headaches, body aches, high blood pressure, increased heart rate, muscle fatigue, drowsiness, etc.
- Good Stress – Not all stress is bad stress; some stress also impacts our lives positively, helping us chase our daily goals with enthusiasm. Such stress boosts our motivation levels, helping us take inspired actions to achieve our goals.
For e.g., Adrenaline is released by the adrenal glands, and its job is to boost energy levels and increase the heart rate.
Measuring Stress Levels With Oura
Oura only measures physiological stress, which implies that it does not measure psychological stress. I don’t think it is possible for any gadget to measure mental stress even in the future but never say no. Although some physiological stress can imply psychological stress Oura doesn’t talk about it as of now.
Daytime Stress
Daytime Stress is the physiological stress measured by Oura. Oura ring’s Daytime Stress tracking feature constantly tracks your temperature, motion, heart rate, and heart rate variability (HRV) throughout the day to provide you with personalized insights about your daytime stress levels.
Although Oura rings’ sensors gather data in real-time, the Daytime Stress chart updates every 15 minutes.
Note: Oura needs a minimum of 5 days of data in order to show you your Daytime Stress levels.
Daytime Stress Tab
So, the first thing I noticed was a stress graph with four zones: Stressed, Engaged, Relaxed, and Restored. As you can see in the image above, your stress level will fall in any of these four zones. Lets discuss them in more detail.
- Stressed – This is the highest level in the graph, which signals it is time to take a rest and restore.
- Engaged – This level shows some stress, but this stress is a good stress to boost productivity.
- Relaxed – This level is a recovery level, which means your body is now in the process of recovery.
- Restored – This level tells you that your body is in a positive state of calm and peace. This phase generally signifies that your body is rejuvenating.
Note: You can see a small gap in the center of the graph; that was the time when I was taking a nap. Oura stops tracking any stress when you are asleep, be it a nap or a proper sleep. The Daytime Stress feature is exclusively for durations when you are awake.
The graph shows that on July 21st, 2024, I was having a stressful day, which is also shown in the “Stressed” section. The two sections below the graph basically show your stressed or restored hours/minutes.
Parameters like heart rate, HRV, body temperature, and motion show how much time you were stressed and how much time you were feeling restored. Along with that, just below that section, you will see another section, which says Stressful Day, I like to call it “Daily Insights.”
It gives me a summary of my entire day, which helps me gain a deeper understanding of how my day went, as well as analyze what would have made my stress go higher and reflect upon those patterns.
I think this might have happened because the night before, I didn’t get proper sleep, which would have impacted my nighttime recovery and added to my psychological stress.
Also, I had a pretty hectic day on the 21st of July, which led to a rise in my stress levels. Well, not all days are the same, and not all stress is bad stress, so Hakuna Matata!
Now, let us see what are the key biometric data points collected by the sensors of Oura ring that help in estimating your daytime stress levels.
1. Heart Rate (HR): Oura Ring tracks your heart rate 24/7 to detect your daytime stress. A higher heart rate or sudden rise in heart rate signals an increase in your daytime stress levels.
2. Heart Rate Variability (HRV): Oura ring tracks and monitors your daytime heart rate variability to identify any fluctuations in your physiological stress levels.
A higher variability rate implies Resilience to stress, which means that when there are greater variations in the time interval between your heartbeats, it indicates that your body has got proper rest and has recovered. A low HRV, on the other hand, indicates that the person is stressed.
3. Movement: A lot of physical activity, like prolonged sitting, increased fidgeting, or restlessness, can also add to your Daytime Stress.
This happens because, during any such activity, your heart rate goes up, which requires more oxygen supply, resulting in your body working harder to do the needful. When you are relaxed, the same doesn’t happen, and Oura assumes you are in a restorative phase.
4. Body Temperature: A fall in your skin temperature can signal a rise in your physiological stress levels.
With Oura’s Stress Monitoring feature, one can now track any long-term stress trends in one’s life. This helps identify patterns, triggers, habits, nature, etc., thereby helping one improve one’s life holistically.
Resilience
Oura comes with a Resilience feature, which basically judges your ability to deal with physiological stress. This feature can only be unlocked with a Gen3 ring and an active membership. This feature helps you strike a balance between your stress levels and recovery by letting you know how well you are coping with your stress levels.
For new Oura users, it will take a minimum of 14 days for Oura to establish a personal stress and recovery baseline as per your data.
Resilience is estimated by looking into the average results of your last 14 days for the following parameters-
- Nighttime Recovery
Nighttime recovery is basically how well your body is resting during the night when you are sleeping. Oura takes into account your Sleep Score, RHR, and HRV balance to analyze your body’s recovery during the night.
- Daytime Recovery
Metrics like HRV are looked into to track one’s Daytime recovery. HRV is a great indicator of overall health and recovery, and upon the right analysis can tell you a lot about yourself.
- Daytime Stress Load
Daytime stress load is estimated by taking into account daytime HRV and HR. Both of these metrics provide an idea of how much physiological stress your body was in during the day when you were awake and active.
Each contributor is shown in three different levels. Daytime stress load, for example, has three levels namely – low, moderate, or high. The other Resilience contributors, Nighttime recovery, Daytime recovery, are further categorized into Pay attention, Fair, Good, and Optimal.
Resilence Tab
The Resilence tab features a graph divided into five zones: Exceptional, Strong, Solid, Adequate, and Limited. Your Resilience will fall into any of these zones depending on how well you are coping with your physiological stress during the day.
- Exceptional – When your Resilience level is Exceptional, it means you have nailed the art of recovering your body, both in the day and in the night. Plus, you are also treating your high-stress levels by recovering equally well. Good job!
- Strong – Strong Resilience level means that even though you are facing moderate to high stress, your body is well prepared for it and will recover back very quickly.
- Solid – Solid Resilience level means dealing with stress well and your body’s recovery is also fine. You only have to make sure that if you put your body into more stress then you’d have to take more rest to balance your recovery properly.
- Adequate – Barely surviving equates to barely recovering. While you are under stress and also rest, your Adequate Resilience level says your body isn’t prepared for heavy stress, or any upheavals.
- Limited – Your body needs rest and is not recovering well. When your Resilience level is Limited, you are exhausting your body more and resting it way less.
In the resilience feature section, I also noticed two things: Trend and Map.
The Trend graph shows you your Resilience level across Days. And Map graph is similar to a cartesian plane, where the X-axis moves from low to high stress, and Y-axis goes from low high recovery as you can see in the images above.
In My Opinion
There are numerous subreddits where people are talking about how looking at Oura’s stress made people more stressed. And to be honest, I also kept opening the app numerous times in the day, just to see how well I am doing. I shouldn’t open an app made by a human that has data (not 100% accurate) to tell me how my body is feeling.
A lot of times, I was genuinely stressed, and the Oura ring definitely told me my stress levels were high. However, there also have been times when I was simply working on my laptop, and the app showed me that I was super stressed, it was at this time I started questioning its accuracy.
While I completely believe in Oura’s nighttime data, its Daytime data tracking is pretty questionable to me. When my hand is moving all day, how can the ring track absolutely accurate HR and HRV? The margin of error is simply too much to ignore.
That’s why I only partially believe Oura’s Resilience feature. Since it takes into account night time and daytime recovery, I take a look at what it has to say about my recovery and then see for myself what I think my body feels.
Frequently Asked Questions
Wrap Up
I think Oura’s introduction of the stress management feature in Gen3 is a very thoughtful yet smart move. Stress plays a major part in everyone’s day-to-day lives in some way. I personally feel this feature is not gimmicky but helpful.
Although it doesn’t track your psychological health, this tool can make us more aware of our patterns. It will lead us toward a better life by significantly helping our physiological health while also enhancing our mental well-being. It will improve our sleep quality, physical health, and productivity in our daily lives.
