Ask HN: Does anyone use an Oura sleep ring?

I have one. I am not certain it has done much to improve my sleep exactly but I am aware of what my patterns are.

I like that I can see when and how long I was in "deep" sleep or at least what the rings thinks is deep sleep. I can usually correlate that when I do not get much deep sleep I am more tired the next day.

I like that I can get a resting heart rate at night. It also takes your temp (somehow). So each day once it syncs I look at resting heart rate and temp for last night.

I got one more than 2 years ago. It eventually died about 2 months ago. I was well passed their warranty so I insta-bought another without a thought.

So in short I think it is a good product. I cannot think of a way to improve it honestly.

I use my Oura ring to gauge how well I'm sleeping. It doesn't magically fix my sleep but I use it correlate which activities result in poor quality sleep. For example, sleeping late and waking up early will result in a low "Sleep" score because my "Timing" and "Total sleep" metrics would be low.

It does gamify sleep for me but I personally think sleep is very important so having any kind of metric and then incrementally working to improve it is useful.

I don't really pay attention to the "Readiness" or "Activity" metrics but maybe I should? At least for now, I want to focus on "Sleep".

Is basically the same thing as a Fitbit? I used one of those for six months and I tracked my sleep -- kind of interesting, but I didn't completely trust it. It seemed to think that if I was laying down and not moving then I was sleeping -- which wasn't always true.

Apparently if it's not measuring your brain waves, it's not actually measuring deep sleep.

Also this gives me the creeps:

https://get.ouraring.com/forbusiness

I’ve used one for a couple years, and it’s been fantastic. I only wear it at night as a sleep tracker.

After the first ~year and a half of use the battery would no longer hold a charge for more than one day, but I got in touch with their support team and they sent me a brand new ring for free, no questions asked. Now the battery lasts about a week.

In terms of its accuracy as a sleep tracker, obviously no consumer-grade wearable is going to be as good as a sleep study in a lab with full EEG, but I’ve seen anecdotal reports on Reddit of people comparing the Oura ring to the Dreem (an EEG headband), and saying that the two report surprisingly similar sleep phases and durations. It has seemed pretty accurate to me.

The real kicker for me was when I experienced an episode of De Quervain’s Thyroiditis earlier this year and it induced symptoms of hyperthyroidism. Over the course of a few weeks, I watched my resting heart rate overnight rise 60% above my baseline, I watched my HRV and sleep quality overnight plummet, I watched my body temperature increase - this correlated perfectly with frequent blood work that showed extremely elevated levels of thyroid hormones (free T3 and T4). My doctor started me on a beta blocker to control some of the worst symptoms. Gradually as my thyroid recovered, I could watch my overnight heart rate come down, and my HRV and body temperature return to baseline, and use the very accurate data from my ring to help taper off of the beta blocker (with my doctor’s approval).

That specific example aside, in normal daily use I find that the Oura helps me stay in better touch with my body - quantitatively measuring little differences in the status of my body in response to behaviors (food, exercise, alcohol, etc.) that I might otherwise not have even noticed. I highly recommend giving it a try.

I have a Whoop which I like a lot

Oura sleep ring is good at tracking your sleep and how your nighttime stats could influence your day. Being an insomniac, I became interested in this device when read about it. I'm currently trying terpenes https://finestlabs.com/buy-terpenes/ and it is helpful for me. But still, I'm going to buy an Oura ring in the hope it will help me to solve the issue.