The Oura ring reigns supreme among fitness trackers. That's why it's the only fitness tracker I'm affiliated with - thank you in advance for your purchases through my affiliate links. They help to support my writing habit.
I think the Oura ring could save your life. No kidding.
We recently took on a VERY interesting case in which the Oura ring proved invaluable.
Fatigue is the number one complaint we deal with in our practice. Brain fog is in the top five, and might be number two. I look at brain fog as simply being fatigue of the brain. Find me a person with one, and I will find you a person with the other.
Most of our patients complain of fatigue and brain fog, to one degree or another.
The challenge is often sorting out what is actually causing these symptoms.
I used to rely upon labs for guidance, but I had a number of cases that didn't respond as I would have liked based upon labs alone.
A young lady came to us with fatigue and brain fog as two of her top complaints. I ran the usual labs and found a whole list of biochemical problems, and recommended a supplement protocol to her along with some dietary changes.
She started to feel better, but progress was slow. So I introduced her to Jim Laird, my strength and conditioning coach.
Go give him a follow on his Instagram account.
He recommended that she get an Oura ring, and sure enough the data from the ring helped us to help her.
What information did the Oura ring give us that the labs couldn't?
The Oura ring provides us with:
Oxygen saturation
Heart rate variability
Heart rate
Respiratory rate
Sleep stages and duration
And from that data, it provide us with:
Readiness scores
Sleep scores
Activity calculations
What did we find in the Oura ring data?
Low HRV
High respiratory rate
High heart rate
Poor sleep
I wasn't surprised by this based on the labs, but the problem with labs is that they are a reflection of nutrition over days, weeks, months, and even years.
That's not the same as real-time data on vital signs and activity, such as we get from the Oura ring.
Her data was indicative of someone who was under enormous stress. What's funny about stress is that it is hard to predict. For example, a housewife who has help around the house from maids, cooks, and nannies may have worse levels of stress than a CEO. I've seen it before.
How is this possible? It's all about your psychological outlook. It's all about how you relate to yourself and others.
The Oura ring gives us insight into this.
What many of you may not realize is that you truly have something called "alexithymia." Alexithymia is an inability to put words to emotions. As in, you don't know how to describe what you're feeling. People who suffer from alexithymia are often described by others as detached, cold, emotionally unavailable, indifferent, cool, laid-back, or uncaring. The truth is that they often feel numb, unloved, alone, unheard, impossibly broken, depressed, and often anxious.
What makes people feel this way? Your parents are the ones who are supposed to help you express your emotions. If you have alexithymia, they may never have taught you, and in all likelihood, they never learned themselves. People who have alexithymia tend to gravitate towards people who continue to avoid emotions, or who use emotions to manipulate people. People who don't understand or know how to express their emotions are extremely vulnerable to emotional manipulation, because they don't understand how they are being manipulated.
There are two key categories of people who manipulate you emotionally - narcissists and psychopaths. I know both of these personality types intimately, because the medical community is chock-full of both. They make great technical professionals - engineers, inventors, scientists, and surgeons - and terrible people. Psychopaths, because they are so stress-resistant, make excellent surgeons, spies, and assassins.
Don't ask me how I know that.
The books I recommend people read on this topic are:
What does all of this have to do with the Oura ring?
We often use it to knock people out of their delusions of well-being. People will come to us thinking that their lifestyles are healthy and they have ordinary levels of stress.
The problem is that if a high-stress life is all you've ever known, then of course you tell us your stress levels are "normal."
Jim explained to this young lady that she needed to put less on her plate, spend more time in the bathtub listening to classical music, meditating, enjoying her sauna, and doing breathwork.
Weeks later, she is feeling much, much better. Her HRV has come up from the single-digits to a healthy range.
I put it to you that in a scenario like this, we may well have saved this person's life. This is the kind of case where I used to chase my tail for months. Why aren't the labs getting better? Why aren't they responding to all these supplements and biohacks? What more do we need to do to get them better? These are the kinds of questions I used to ask myself. Now, I have clarity based on data from the Oura ring.
Many of you are chasing your wellness with labs, doctor's visits, procedures, supplements, and medications.
Yet the answer may be in data you can easily correct with the Oura ring.
Now, why do I consider it superior to other fitness trackers?
1. Reliability. Jim and I have yet to find someone who's data doesn't match their actual clinical picture, and who doesn't respond to interventions we recommend based on their Oura ring data.
2. Low-profile design. It's the smallest fitness tracker around.
3. Low-EMF emissions. The ring can be used in airplane mode for up to a week.
4. Low-light emissions. Most fitness trackers use visible light to monitor your physiology. Some of us are concerned this is going to create problems with circadian rhythms, as the visible light wavelengths are in the green and blue spectrum.
5. Quality and quantity of data. Find me a fitness tracker that provides more data than the Oura ring. Post it in the comments when you do!
That's why one of the best pieces of advice I have for people is to buy an Oura ring. What do you do with the data? Get into a training program with Jim Laird and me and we will teach you to interpret the data, to optimize your health. Apply for consultation here.
Until next time, be well,
Dr. Stillman
Dear Dr Stillman, what are your thoughts on the UltraHuman Air Ring? This and your Youtube video pushed me over the edge on vitals tracking, as someone who hates EMF and being tracked. I see the value now, but new Oura Rings can’t get Data without paying Oura a subscription fee to see it. The UH Ring says they’ll never charge extra for your data, and it seems from reviewers the hardware is about as good as the Oura's. I found out the UH does not have an Airplane Mode but they claim they have solved that problem.
"It establishes a connection with the smartphone only when you open the Ultrahuman App or at regular time intervals... It's important to note that Bluetooth activity for the Ultrahuman Ring AIR remains below 1% throughout the day, resulting in significantly lower EMF radiation compared to other Bluetooth wearables."
Do you have any thoughts on this Ring for those of us who did not get grandfathered into the original Oura pricing model?
Is your health information that Oura tracks kept private? How does that part work?