Managing sleep, stress and fitness with new technology

by Carolyn Ray

Three years ago, my friend Sarah and I were talking about sleep and menopause. She was waking up with hot flashes. With my travel schedule, I was having trouble getting quality sleep. We brainstormed rituals and ideas, and she suggested I get an Oura Ring to start tracking my health. What’s an Oura ring? I asked her, not even knowing how to spell it.

An Oura ring uses advanced technology to track over 30 biometrics to help you accurately monitor and enhance your wellness. My Oura ring has become part of my health regime, helping me understand the rhythms of my body better, and make adjustments, especially with the disruptions that come from frequent travel. I’ve been able to set up goals, manage my sleep better and identify what’s affecting my resilience and anxiety levels. It’s more than a ring, it’s a sophisticated smart technology device that integrates with other health platforms including Apple and Google Health, Renpho scales and Headspace. It also works with period and pregnancy apps like Natural Cycles.

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How an Oura Ring works

The Oura smart ring is made of aerospace-grade titanium in six different colours, including silver, gold, bronze, rose gold, etc. My ring is an Oura Model 3, which starts at US$269/CAD$365. The newest model is a sleeker Oura 4 starting at US$469/CAD$638. While expensive, this is still less than an Apple Watch which is well over US$1,000. Fitbits are less, but I don’t like the style and the monthly subscription is higher, at US$9.99 a month. Once you’ve purchased the ring, which connects through bluetooth with an app on your phone, there is a monthly subscription for US$5.99/CAD $7.99.

 On the surface, the Oura ring may appear to be an expensive piece of technology, but I’ve found the benefits help me manage a rather hectic lifestyle. I also prefer a ring to wearing a watch or bracelet. The ring measures over 20 biometrics – our fingers have more blood vessels in them than our wrists, making for better detection of high blood pressure, heart rate, anxiety and sleep.

The Oura ring measures readiness, sleep, activity and stress, each with its own set of metrics underneath, and provides a ranking score up to 100. You can set goals for each of these, such as steps per day. It allows you to add tags to understand connections between your habits and health over time, mapping your score for days, months, weeks or a full year. It’s water-resistant up to 100 metres/330 feet, so you can wear it while showering or swimming. I even wore it snorkelling in Antarctica.

What I’ve learned from my Oura Ring

1. How to get better sleep

I’ve never been disciplined about my sleep habits. But as I’ve aged, I pay more attention to setting a bedtime and prioritizing my sleep. Oura analyzes three months of data, including your natural circadian rhythm, to determine your sleep chronotype, which defines your optimal sleep schedule. Sleep is important for proper digestion, alertness and hormone release, among other benefits that affect our energy levels and overall well-being.

I’ve learned that I’m an ‘early evening’ chronotype, which means I perform better by going to bed around 10:30 pm and waking up around 7:30 am. Overnight flights disrupt this, so I’m more careful now about how I travel. If I have an overnight flight, I intentionally plan for sleep on the plane and create my own ‘sleep cave’, or upgrade to ensure I can sleep well on a long flight. When I arrive, I correct my sleep patterns as quickly as I can, knowing it will affect the rest of my travel. There is also an alert you can set to remind you to start winding down.

2. The importance of resilience and recovery time

As we age, our bodies need more time to rest and recover. Readiness includes things like body temperature, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, resting heart rate and sleep regularity. When we travel, we put more stress on our bodies, so my Oura ring helps me understand and value downtime. Sleep is a contributor to readiness, along with resting heart rate, body temperature, and the previous day’s activity.

When my readiness is low, I now know how to recover by prioritizing sleep, reducing alcohol, eating smaller meals before bedtime and avoiding exercise later in the day. It’s also given me permission NOT to work out every day; rather, to give myself time off.

I’ve noticed that other frequent travellers also use an Oura ring. In her role leading North American sales at Hurtigruten, Carly Biggart is always on the move, travelling from her home in Toronto to Norway on a regular basis. Like me, she uses an Oura ring to help her find balance.

“With my Oura ring, I monitor my resilience more closely and find I need to manage my daytime stress some days more than others,” she says. “It helps keep me balanced while travelling and reminds me to focus on what’s important, which can be different from day to day.”

3. How to manage anxiety and stress better

One benefit of the Oura ring is that it’s so sensitive it can pick up anxiety when I don’t even recognize that my body is stressed. The ring looks at four dimensions: stressed, engaged, relaxed and restored. One of the biggest ‘a-ha’s’ for me was learning that watching stressful movies in the evening disrupted my sleep. After watching movies like “The End of Us” at night, it would take me hours to fall asleep. I’m now more careful about what I watch before bedtime, knowing that high-stress movies will keep me awake.

If I’ve had a particularly stressful day, I invoke my nighttime rituals to relax my body before sleep. These can be things like having a hot bath, reading a book, and definitely staying off social media. Over time, I’ve noticed a positive change in my sleep patterns. 

4. The importance of activity every day  

The benefits of walking are well documented, especially for older women. I’ve set an activity goal of 10,000 steps a day, which is the equivalent of five miles or 8 kilometres.  

When I travel, I find I exceed this goal easily by walking, hiking, etc. However, when I’m at home it’s more challenging. As a travel writer, I often spend hours at my desk researching and writing articles. If I am not reaching it the ring will prompt me to get up for a walk. I’ve also joined a gym that is a 3-km round trip walk, so that helps me meet my goal easily.  

“Just taking a break from my computer and doing a small round of breathing exercises or a quick walk makes a big difference,” Biggart says. “Alternatively, on days I want to push my activity levels, the ring reminds me that I actually need to rest.” 

The app also prompts you to record your specific activities, including cardiovascular activity, walking, even housework, and logs inactive time, sleep and calories burned.   

Other things to know  

An Oura ring provides a fascinating way to start looking at all the things that can affect your overall health. It provides a new way understand my health and wellbeing while living a rather hectic and unpredictable life.  

There are new features being introduced, including meditation programs, ‘circles’ to connect you with friends and family, and food tracking, which helps establish meal regularity (versus calorie intake).  

You can purchase an Oura ring directly on the Oura website, and it will arrive within a few days. According to the Oura website, the Oura Ring and Membership are covered and reimbursable in the U.S . via Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA).   

Disclaimer: While this article does include affiliate links (please use them!) this is not an advertorial or sponsored article, it’s simply first-hand advice on how to better manage your well-being as frequent travellers. After all, we all want to stay healthy for more travel!  Let us know about your experience in the comments.  

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