Track Sleep Quality and Boost Your Health with the Oura Ring
Written by 
Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC on
November 21, 2022
How tracking your sleep patterns, body temperature, and heart rate can help improve your overall health with Shyamal Patel
From the start, Oura—a Finnish health technology company—has capitalized on the latest technological advances, designing the Oura Ring that helps people measure, understand, and improve their sleep habits.
Now, Shyamal Patel—Head of Science at Oura—speaks about how this wearable technology now has the ability to predict periods, track fitness performance, detect sleep breathing disturbances, and measure heart rate throughout the day and during workouts.
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Dr. Michael Ruscio is a DC, natural health provider, researcher, and clinician. He serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bridgeport and has published numerous papers in scientific journals as well as the book Healthy Gut, Healthy You. He also founded the Ruscio Institute of Functional Health, where he helps patients with a wide range of GI conditions and serves as the Head of Research.
➕ Dr. Ruscio’s, DC Notes
Oura Ring’s Research To Make A Sleep Tracking Device For All Populations
- In process: A large study is being conducted at the University of Michigan. It will collect 1,000 nights of data on people who have sleep disorders, primarily sleep apnea.
- Completed: A sleep staging algorithm was created from a study that aimed to understand sleep in different populations. It included 1,500 nights of data from people across the U.S, Asia, and Europe.
What Oura Ring’s Sleep Score Tells You About Your Health
- All sleep scores are personalized to your baseline.
- The baseline is built up over a course of the first few weeks of use.
- Any score above 80 is good.
- Any score in the low 70s or below is a sign sleep needs to be improved.
Oura Ring’s Tag Feature Spots Critical Trends With COVID-19
- Users can add tags to provide more details about factors that may be interfering with sleep (illness, eating right before bed, etc).
- When the Oura Ring team looked at 65,000 users who tagged COVID-19, they found that:
- The ring could detect early signs of illness, at least 2 to 2 ½ days prior to sickness.
- Younger people had a 40% larger physiological response to the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to older populations.
- The second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine led to a stronger physiological impact.
- Those who tested positive for COVID-19 and were vaccinated had reactions 80% smaller compared to those who had it and were unvaccinated.
- When looking at how the COVID-19 lockdown impacted the 100,000 users across 20 countries, they found:
- People went to bed later, but the sleep was more consistent.
- Resting heart rate lowered but was highest in countries with the strictest lockdowns.
Key Metrics To Look At To Understand The Link Between Sleep And Overall Health
- Heart rate
- Heart rate variability (HRV)
- Respiration
- Temperature
- Daily and long-term patterns
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