Hi all. I’ve made the plunge and invested in an Oura Ring 4. Reason was, I lacked confidence in the HRV readings taken by my Visible App and armband each morning - I wanted to see in more detail what is going on overnight. It’s early days, but I’ve seen some very revealing trends (that I expect you all to tell be are entirely predicable, as you did when I started with Visible. So am reaching out to see if I can find others to share observations with. If not, I’ll probably share them with you anyway if there’s any interest. I can tell you now that Oura takes continuous or HRV readings through the night and excludes outliers (from what I can see). So you get an average HRV rather than a single roll of the dice. Just me so far or can I anticipate being merged into an existing thread?
I have an Oura 3. The battery life has recently degraded, which is a known issue after 2+ years. I have read that they might replace it for free. Interested to see your HRV data.
I keep toying with additional wearables to supplement the stuff I get from my Apple Watch and morning finger reading on Visible (the arm band thing was too annoying needing charging daily - I know they have a new one now). I like the idea of an unobtrusive thing like a ring rather than arm band. Be interesting to hear how your trends start to look.
So firstly, I spent a few days preparing myself for a visit to a UK store on a Saturday to make sure I was comfortable with it before purchasing. I tried to call in advance to confirm that I could make sure of this in the store and they confirmed that after checking size, I would be able to try the ring on for fit. Once I arrived and completed the sizing aspect, I was promptly told by the assistant that the information I was given was incorrect, that I couldn't try it on until I had purchased it. The conversation with managers etc. went on for about three quarters of an hour which is way past my normal limit. So I left with nothing. But realised on the way home that I could have simply ordered one from Amazon anyway, because they generally have no problem with returns. The Ring 4 sizing kit arrived on Prime the very next day (Sunday) and after confirmation the ring itself arrived on Monday afternoon. Good work Amazon! However I've practically been in PEM ever since, with my HRV flatlining at around 14ms, about as low as it has ever been. I'm now about 8 days into the experience and had a social event in that timescale too, so haven't been able to return to baseline yet. But at least the Ring 4 is 100% confirming that! It's also confirming that breakfast and evening meal are taking me into the "stress" zone without me even doing anything else. Life with ME, hey? Anyway, below shows the level of detail in the overnight HRV measurement. I'm impressed with the number of measurement points it uses overnight, and can also see how taking a single reading near to waking up might give a somewhat random result:
This is also the case for me. I'm not exactly sure what it's sensing — increased heart rate or perhaps something else.
I think it's probably daytime HRV dropping, as it isn't simply aligned with Heart Rate or movement. As if to demonstrate how messed up I am, I did a breathing exercise today. My Heart Rate predictably dropped, but so did my HRV from 10ms to 9ms then 8ms. Possibly because I was focussed on the words of exercise.
