Thanks for sharing this perspective, so different from my experience of it! I've had an Oura Ring for a year and absolutely love it. It’s helped me understand my cycle so much better, especially how my body temperature is tied to it.
It’s fascinating to see how your body literally runs hotter before your period. I never understood why I would sweat more during certain parts of the month.
Also, seeing how good sleep affects my day, or how a late meal impacts my sleep, has been super insightful. I’ve started valuing sleep a lot more because of it. Even naps! I never allowed myself to nap (hi, culture of hustle and performance), and thanks to Oura, I’m now like, wow, a nap really helps!
I have to admit that I’ve been able to view Oura’s data from a learning perspective rather than with anxiety. For me, the anxiety actually comes from Instagram and TikTok, the visual overload of “perfect,” fit young women and men, and less so from raw data.
I had no idea people were experiencing anxiety from this, but I can totally see it. Thanks for sharing!
I think it’s complicated - I wore for 6 months and am on a break now. It helped me understand my cycle a lot better & see bigger patterns over time. I secondhand heard of a young woman who had to confront the poor metrics that came from a binge/purge and helped her understand how much she was hurting herself. But I was feeling myself get too perfectionist and rigid with the numbers and am doing a pause.
You should try learning a fertility awareness method for your cycles - it’s so much more empowering, you track your temperature and other bio markers but you do the charting and interpretation, not an app or a machine :)
Loved this, especially the part about denying basic pleasure in favour of positive stats!
That said, I just started wearing my Garmin at night and am finding the stats are sparking my competitive spirit and helping me prioritize my sleep, which had been brutal for years.
this quote from the Intelligencer article you linked is absolutely me lol: "The glib, excuse-making front of my brain likes to believe that basically 11:30 p.m. — 11:50, even — is the same as 11. When the alarm goes off at quarter past six the next morning, though, the back of my brain and the Oura app both know seven hours haven’t gone by."
I've worn my Oura ring for ~1.5Y now and you really can get OUT of control with all the data they give you, it's overwhelming!! And also ethically makes me feel a little weird lol. I do like mine, but a lot of people ask me about it and I tell them that you have to accept 1) it's literally a data farm and 2) it should be a supplementary tool to how your body feels not the dictator of it. People get so crazy with these! Totally agree with your analysis as someone who likes her ring and continues to wear it
Tools are tools, we are the ones who define how to use them. It’s not the same to use something to support your journey and health as it is to become dependent on it and let it control you.
I believe the problem we’re facing today is that most people don’t realize that many brands are simply wearing a wellness mask in order to sell their products and keep you attached to them. When in reality, we don’t need anything more than our own capacity for self-awareness to know and understand what we truly need.
The wellness industry has turned personal growth into a circus of labels, popularity, and dependence. But what if we didn’t focus only on the physical aspects of our well-being and also nurtured the inner self? Maybe then we’d be able to tune in to our own inner wisdom that tells us exactly what we need (and we could also save 500 bucks).
Well-being isn’t about restriction, it’s about understanding and honoring our own flow, our own needs, our own intuition. Doing as we please! Nice article ✨
Thanks for sharing this, I bought an oura ring earlier this year and only used it for a month. It gave me the ick almost instantly. I will try to sell it, but overall it makes me feel very annoyed at myself for having spent the money and resources
I’m an oura ring user for about 6 years now. I’ve tracked sleep probably 99% of all the days there.
I will say, your brain always looks for the negatives in the scores. You even get a 90 readiness score then you wonder, “why don’t I feel amazing?!”
You have a 51 readiness score and it’s an excuse to not workout even though you haven’t worked out all week.
I stopped looking at my oura ring and only refresh it about once a week and only wear it to bed. My sleep is almost always in the 80-90 range. (Average 83 the last 4 years).
If I wasn’t grandfathered into not paying the subscription, I would probably have stopped using it when they switched to that model. It’s really not worth it.
I also occasionally wear my Garmin as a wrist alarm to bed (so I don’t wake my wife up) but it also serves as sleep tracker. It’s score is almost always in line with oura so I’m not even sure what’s need this for anymore other than being a device that’s more comfortable to sleep in.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about ditching all my wearables all together. I don’t need them. I want to get an analog watch and just let myself live without the need to have something digitally logged. There’s a certain freedom to that.
I can relate except with FitBit. My mother innocently gifted me one last May and by June I relapsed with my ED and exercise bulimia. It was so innocuous </3 Loved this perspective and the writing is beautiful.
Im mixed here! I've been wearing mine for about 4 months, and have often said when folks ask how I like it "we shouldn't have this much data about ourselves."
That being said I've been working on building more supportive exercise habits for myself and getting alerts like "your HRV is trending down!" has been a really nice way for me to focus on health versus weight.
Had mine for four years and thankfully haven’t experienced this. Initially purchased it as a fertility tracker because I was tired of entering my temp into Natural Cycles every morning.
Have found it somewhat useful as a sleep tracker but don’t engage with it much otherwise.
This was a wonderful read, thank you for sharing it. I work as a women’s reproductive health educator and doula, and many of the women I support use the Oura ring when trying to conceive. While it can be a helpful tool, I often see how it removes the personal connection and deeper understanding of the menstrual cycle. It tends to attract women who want to get pregnant right away, but who have never been given the chance to truly learn about their hormonal rhythms, ovulation, or the wisdom of their own bodies.
I wonder what it might look like if girls and women were taught from the beginning to trust and understand their cycles, not through apps or data points, but through embodied knowledge. There’s power in reclaiming that relationship and I think women are waking up to this.
Thanks for sharing this perspective, so different from my experience of it! I've had an Oura Ring for a year and absolutely love it. It’s helped me understand my cycle so much better, especially how my body temperature is tied to it.
It’s fascinating to see how your body literally runs hotter before your period. I never understood why I would sweat more during certain parts of the month.
Also, seeing how good sleep affects my day, or how a late meal impacts my sleep, has been super insightful. I’ve started valuing sleep a lot more because of it. Even naps! I never allowed myself to nap (hi, culture of hustle and performance), and thanks to Oura, I’m now like, wow, a nap really helps!
I have to admit that I’ve been able to view Oura’s data from a learning perspective rather than with anxiety. For me, the anxiety actually comes from Instagram and TikTok, the visual overload of “perfect,” fit young women and men, and less so from raw data.
I had no idea people were experiencing anxiety from this, but I can totally see it. Thanks for sharing!
We are so estranged from ourselves that we depend on machinery to give us a read on our bodies. This is so sad. Great article.
I think it’s complicated - I wore for 6 months and am on a break now. It helped me understand my cycle a lot better & see bigger patterns over time. I secondhand heard of a young woman who had to confront the poor metrics that came from a binge/purge and helped her understand how much she was hurting herself. But I was feeling myself get too perfectionist and rigid with the numbers and am doing a pause.
You should try learning a fertility awareness method for your cycles - it’s so much more empowering, you track your temperature and other bio markers but you do the charting and interpretation, not an app or a machine :)
Loved this, especially the part about denying basic pleasure in favour of positive stats!
That said, I just started wearing my Garmin at night and am finding the stats are sparking my competitive spirit and helping me prioritize my sleep, which had been brutal for years.
this quote from the Intelligencer article you linked is absolutely me lol: "The glib, excuse-making front of my brain likes to believe that basically 11:30 p.m. — 11:50, even — is the same as 11. When the alarm goes off at quarter past six the next morning, though, the back of my brain and the Oura app both know seven hours haven’t gone by."
This was spot on Erica!!!
I've worn my Oura ring for ~1.5Y now and you really can get OUT of control with all the data they give you, it's overwhelming!! And also ethically makes me feel a little weird lol. I do like mine, but a lot of people ask me about it and I tell them that you have to accept 1) it's literally a data farm and 2) it should be a supplementary tool to how your body feels not the dictator of it. People get so crazy with these! Totally agree with your analysis as someone who likes her ring and continues to wear it
Tools are tools, we are the ones who define how to use them. It’s not the same to use something to support your journey and health as it is to become dependent on it and let it control you.
I believe the problem we’re facing today is that most people don’t realize that many brands are simply wearing a wellness mask in order to sell their products and keep you attached to them. When in reality, we don’t need anything more than our own capacity for self-awareness to know and understand what we truly need.
The wellness industry has turned personal growth into a circus of labels, popularity, and dependence. But what if we didn’t focus only on the physical aspects of our well-being and also nurtured the inner self? Maybe then we’d be able to tune in to our own inner wisdom that tells us exactly what we need (and we could also save 500 bucks).
Well-being isn’t about restriction, it’s about understanding and honoring our own flow, our own needs, our own intuition. Doing as we please! Nice article ✨
Thanks for sharing this, I bought an oura ring earlier this year and only used it for a month. It gave me the ick almost instantly. I will try to sell it, but overall it makes me feel very annoyed at myself for having spent the money and resources
I’m an oura ring user for about 6 years now. I’ve tracked sleep probably 99% of all the days there.
I will say, your brain always looks for the negatives in the scores. You even get a 90 readiness score then you wonder, “why don’t I feel amazing?!”
You have a 51 readiness score and it’s an excuse to not workout even though you haven’t worked out all week.
I stopped looking at my oura ring and only refresh it about once a week and only wear it to bed. My sleep is almost always in the 80-90 range. (Average 83 the last 4 years).
If I wasn’t grandfathered into not paying the subscription, I would probably have stopped using it when they switched to that model. It’s really not worth it.
I also occasionally wear my Garmin as a wrist alarm to bed (so I don’t wake my wife up) but it also serves as sleep tracker. It’s score is almost always in line with oura so I’m not even sure what’s need this for anymore other than being a device that’s more comfortable to sleep in.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about ditching all my wearables all together. I don’t need them. I want to get an analog watch and just let myself live without the need to have something digitally logged. There’s a certain freedom to that.
I can relate except with FitBit. My mother innocently gifted me one last May and by June I relapsed with my ED and exercise bulimia. It was so innocuous </3 Loved this perspective and the writing is beautiful.
Im mixed here! I've been wearing mine for about 4 months, and have often said when folks ask how I like it "we shouldn't have this much data about ourselves."
That being said I've been working on building more supportive exercise habits for myself and getting alerts like "your HRV is trending down!" has been a really nice way for me to focus on health versus weight.
i appreciate your use of toni cade bambara here. one of my favorite quotes. first time i heard it, it shocked me back in time.
Had mine for four years and thankfully haven’t experienced this. Initially purchased it as a fertility tracker because I was tired of entering my temp into Natural Cycles every morning.
Have found it somewhat useful as a sleep tracker but don’t engage with it much otherwise.
Hard agree! Also I think about that Jemima quote often.
I have long been skeptical of Oura ring content
This was a wonderful read, thank you for sharing it. I work as a women’s reproductive health educator and doula, and many of the women I support use the Oura ring when trying to conceive. While it can be a helpful tool, I often see how it removes the personal connection and deeper understanding of the menstrual cycle. It tends to attract women who want to get pregnant right away, but who have never been given the chance to truly learn about their hormonal rhythms, ovulation, or the wisdom of their own bodies.
I wonder what it might look like if girls and women were taught from the beginning to trust and understand their cycles, not through apps or data points, but through embodied knowledge. There’s power in reclaiming that relationship and I think women are waking up to this.
Totally agree with you - this is why I love old fashion manual cycle tracking with fertility awareness