After six weeks of patiently waiting, I recently got my new Oura ring in the mail!
I’ve also realized that I am totally spoiled by Amazon Prime and the ability to get almost everything else that I want in two days. Ordering and then waiting forever for the Oura ring to arrive was almost painful – but perhaps the anticipation made it a more joyful experience 🙂
Lack of patience aside, let me explain a little bit about the Oura ring. It is a sleep and activity tracker that is built into a fairly attractive ring. I decided to get it instead of an Apple watch or Fitbit type tracker because I really don’t like sleeping with anything on my wrist. The Oura ring connects via Bluetooth to a phone app that gives you a “Readiness” score and “Sleep Score” each morning based on the quality of sleep and your activity level from the previous day.
With all that I’ve learned about the importance of both good sleep and circadian rhythms, I was hoping that the Oura ring would help me quantify my sleep as well as giving me a way of measuring different interventions.
About a year and a half ago I started wearing blue blocking glasses every evening for a couple of hours before bed. For me, it was eye-opening how much this seemed to affect my sleep quality. I wake up easily and early in the morning, and I feel refreshed. The blue-blocking glasses also really cut down on the 3:30 am wakings.
I’ve had the Oura ring for about a week now. It is fascinating to see how much my deep sleep varies over the course of a week – from a low of 37 minutes to a high of 1 hr 38 min. My amount of time asleep is actually pretty consistent – usually around 7 hours and 50 minutes.
I’m planning on a few week-long experiments over the next month or two to see how much my sleep is affected by activity and food (timing, type). Can’t wait to see what actually improves – or worsens – my sleep quality!