This Oura 'Resilience' Feature Can Measure How Well You Handle Stress

In an era when smartwatches dominate the tech-based accessory game, Oura decided to take another route, developing a smart ring that helps you stay on top of your health. It may sound ridiculous, but using wearables to track your health and fitness helps, and Oura Rings are much more subtle than your standard smartwatch.

The Oura ring launched as a sleep tracker, monitoring how much sleep you were getting each night and the quality of it. However, over time, the team has further developed the mind-blowing ring, and its latest model, the Oura Ring Generation 3, comes equipped with technology geared toward heart health, fitness, and recovery, as well as the company's patented sleep monitoring. It can even detect when you might be getting sick — monitoring shifts in your body temperature so you can get a jump on your cold.

And just when you thought the already impressive technology couldn't get better, Oura added a feature to read your stress levels, detecting when your anxiety is triggered, which can help you to determine the cause. However, the company didn't stop there. No, Oura Rings won't eliminate your stress, but the ring's new Resilience feature will tell you — and hopefully improve — how you handle life's toughest tasks.

Stress is everywhere, and while it'd be nice to live stress-free, a study in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology suggests there are some benefits from going through certain kinds of challenging, stressful experiences, including building resilience to the kind of stress that causes frustration and interferes with your goals. Resilience is your body's ability to adapt to stress, and Oura Rings wants to help you understand and improve yours.

Oura's stress monitoring features are already second to none, and with the Resilience feature, the product becomes a must-have for anyone wanting to get a grip on their stress. Resilience combines Oura Rings' Daytime Stress feature (which tracks the intensity and frequency of your physiological stress through metrics such as heart rate, heart rate variability, motion, and temperature) and your recovery levels, monitored through daytime and nighttime recovery. Using that data, Resilience assesses your ability to withstand, balance, and recover from stress, giving users periodic monthly updates to see if their resilience levels have increased. Through the Oura app, users can see a graph depicting trends in their Resilience and determine the factors contributing to their current level. This makes it easier for users to know if they're getting enough sleep, and allows them to make any necessary changes in their daily routine.

Resilience isn't specific to a particular day. It's an ongoing balance that can improve as you learn how to manage your stress levels. Because of that, you need to use an Oura Ring for an extended period before the Resilience feature kicks in. For new members, it will take at least ten days for Oura to establish your stress levels, allowing the ring to determine your Resilience. To use Oura's new Resilience feature, simply open the Oura app and tap the "Resilience" tab in the bottom right corner.