What you don’t know about the Oura Ring

Tracking all of your fitness needs originally stemmed from wearing a pedometer that counted your steps. You would hook it to your belt or put it in your pocket, and the tiny device would monitor your leg movements to track how well your fitness was doing. It changed as technology advanced and eventually switched to smartwatches. Smartwatches can track so many data points, and can also be used to get phone calls and text messages and play music. However, all those extra features can get pretty distracting.

The next logical step to turn the fitness tracking technology on its head was to use it in a smart ring. Smaller technology frequently seems to be the way that advancements go, and a smart ring is packed with so many features in such a small package that doesn’t constantly light up or buzz with notifications. The Oura Ring is widely regarded as the top option in the marketplace and is packed with the technology reminscent of early pedometers, but even better.

The Oura Ring, like other smart rings, is built for fitness tracking, but there are many features that you may not know about inside. Here are some of the potentially unknown features of the Oura Ring for you, so you can make an informed decision if you want to buy one.

1 It can take your temperature

This is crucial for recovery data

Many people know that the Oura Ring, and its latest iteration the Oura Ring Gen 3, use sensors that sit on the arteries of your finger to provide you with some of the latest readings and data. But did you know that it takes your temperature the entire time that you’re wearing it? You’re then able to read back and see temperature changes throughout the day.

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This is important because it can show you how well you recover after a workout. If your temperature rises, you can then see how long it takes for it to go back to normal. Plus, if you do have some kind of illness, it can tell you with an alert that you may have a fever. You don’t need to have a thermometer on hand when you have one on your hand.

2 It gets to know you and your lifestyle

Which makes goal-setting that much more fine-tuned

The longer you wear the Oura Ring, the more data it has to pull from. Because of that, it learns and averages out what your lifestyle looks like. It doesn’t just want you to hit a certain amount of steps per day — rather, it will tell you the best ways to improve your trek on your personal health journey. It will also give optimistic and gentle feedback to help you get there — whether it’s sleeping better, stress reduction, or optimizing your relaxation time.

Because of the more holistic approach to your physiological wellness, the app will let you know if you’re struggling to recover based off data it pulls from the ring and suggest an actionable item, such as going to sleep earlier than normal. It might instead you how much longer you might need from a workout in order to hit a goal that you’ve set for yourself. Working with your bodily data to provide the steps that you can take to balance out your life is its general goal.

3 It has FDA-approved natural family planning integrations

A partnership with the Natural Cycles app is a gamechanger

If you’re someone who menstruates, the fitness tracker could be a unique find. While the Oura Ring monitors a lot of your general numbers, it can also keep track of your menstrual cycle and let you know when your period may be approaching. In turn, this will also provide a window into when a woman is ovulating, for people who are trying to have a child. It reads your basal body temperature from the night before you stand up, which connects with a very important partner app: Natural Cycles.

Natural Cycles is an FDA-approved non-hormonal birth control method that uses your basal body temperature to determine whether or not you are in a fertility window that day. It also offers insights to what phase you are in your cycle as well as education tools and resources to get to know your body better.

Natural Cycles originally had its users take their temperature in the morning using a thermometer, but after partnering with Oura, the data it provides people with cycles is incredibly insightful to their health and sexual wellbeing. The Oura Ring not only provides updates and scores on how you’re recovering but also, by taking into account the place a woman is in her cycle, can understand why recovery may not be moving as swiftly as it could be when they aren’t menstruating. These types of partnerships and numbers keep it more advanced than some other smart rings.

4 It has partnerships with a lot of other apps, too

Want to pair it to recover?

Not only will it partner with Natural Cycles, but it also offers compatibility with a number of other health and wellness apps to provide you with a more complete picture of your health. If you have a Therabody massage gun, it pairs with the Therabody app, which the Oura ring can document and add your session to its data collection. Your Oura Ring will then register how you are recovering after a workout and, even more impressive, how much better your body is recovering after using a Therabody gun.

It also partners with Strava, the popular workout tracking app, that keeps track of hiking, running, and other workout metrics. You actually don’t even need to be wearing your ring to have data sync from the Strava app to the Oura Ring app after a workout you log there. The Oura Ring also pairs with plenty of smartwatches like Apple Watches or Samsung Galaxy Watch to provide you with a more complete analysis of your workouts and recovery.

5 It helps you compare your health with other people your age

Check how your progress is doing against the general population

Some of the newest features on the Oura Ring include cardiovascular age (CVA) and cardio capacity. These are big for runners and workout enthusiasts and the data can provide you with indications on more long-term health and wellness trends to keep you informed. These kick into effect after the ring has been worn for 14 days, and Oura will show you where your stats are tracking for people within five years of your age.

Some of this data should be taken with a grain of salt, as not everybody’s bodies are the same. But based on your chronological age, the data can show you where you’re trending. It uses CVA and cardio capacity to keep track of how your heart is doing during workouts. It sets a baseline for your VO2MAX, which takes a look at how well your heart, lungs, and muscles use oxygen while you’re working out. From there, it can show you any fluctuations to provide you with the most in-depth data about your heart.