by Andrea Thrush
Part of the Pagoda Pacers’ mission states that the club will “educate the public on physical fitness and wellness.” According to the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC), there are eight areas of wellness: social, physical, intellectual, occupational, financial, emotional, environmental, and spiritual (meaning purpose, peace, etc.). As such, I thought it might be nice to have a small article that relates to wellness included in the club’s newsletter that could be useful to many club members.
Stress falls under the emotional category. I started working at my current job over three years ago, and I am unable to wear my fitness watch due to regulations. I never liked wearing my Garmin while sleeping. For over a year, I have been meaning to purchase an Oura ring, and I finally bought one a little over two months ago. This ring measures sleep, heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate, body temperature, activity levels, and blood oxygen. After using it for awhile, it will tell you your chronotype. You can track your meals by typing or taking a picture of what you eat, and it will take into account timing of meals and such. Oura also syncs with Strava, Apple Health Kit, Google Health Connect, Headspace, myfitnesspal, Chronometer, and others.
I wore the ring for about a month to gather baseline data without changing any lifestyle habits, though I was not surprised by the results. Sleep was ok, and heart health is on point, but stress is at the high end. Part of this is the fact that I am on my feet all day at work, and it might be that the ring is reading a higher heart rate and not linking it to being active. Part of it is not giving myself enough time to relax and unwind after being active at work all day. It also showed that my stress levels were not recovering after my workouts.
The great thing about this ring is that you can tag various things that might affect your sleep and stress. There are premade tags, but you can create your own tags too. This allows you to see what affects your sleep and stress. For example, I spent almost an entire vacation day at home doing arts and crafts, and that significantly lowered my stress levels. Even one evening when doing about 40 minutes had positive effects on stress and sleep. The great thing is that with the ability to create your own tags, you can find what works for you. Being out in nature, mediation, breathing exercises, cuddling with your child or pet, journaling, and so much more.
Granted, you can often tell what works for you just by how you feel after certain activities. But there can be surprises. I thought that breathing exercises were helping me, but the data showed they were not. I have made a few changes over the last two weeks. I cut out harder workouts (for now). I want to try easier bike rides and see how my body’s stress levels respond to those, as opposed to runs. Arts and crafts have had a huge impact on lowering stress levels. Sitting in front of the TV “relaxing” does not. Journaling has also helped with stress levels. The experimenting is not over, by far!
If you are looking for an alternative method to a smart watch for measuring and managing stress and sleep, an Oura ring may work for you.
Pagoda Pacers News 