Oura has been busy rolling out several new features over the past year, and those with the Gen 3 version of the smart ring will soon get two more. In late May, the company will launch cardiovascular age and cardiovascular fitness metrics to assess long-term heart health. Emphasis on long term.
“The thing about cardiovascular age and fitness is that these are metrics you can actually influence,” explains Shyamal Patel, chief science officer at Oura. Right now, Patel says, Oura’s current feature set is much more focused on short-term metrics. “With these features, we’re kind of introducing the concept of long-term health. What are the things you are doing today? How do they contribute to your long-term health, health and longevity?
Oura defines cardiovascular age as the age of the vascular system compared to chronological age. The smart ring is equipped with photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors – the green LEDs that many wearable devices use to measure heart rate – and from this sensor it can measure the speed of the pulse wave to determine the stiffness of the arteries.
The essence is that the stiffer the blood vessels are, the less efficient the vascular system is. Your heart has to work harder and your organs experience more wear and tear because stiffer blood vessels can’t adapt to changes in blood pressure as well as more flexible ones. After approximately 14 days of tracking, Oura Ring users will receive a reading indicating whether your chronological age is higher, lower, or compatible (plus or minus five years).
The app will also give you recommendations for improving your cardiovascular age or VO2 max. Photo: Ours
Oura’s cardio performance feature may be a bit more familiar to wearable users. Oura Ring owners will be able to take a six-minute test in which they will be asked to walk as fast as possible. Based on this test, the ring will provide an estimated VO2 Max value.
VO2 Max is an indicator that measures the health of the cardiorespiratory system. A higher VO2 Max generally means better performance in endurance sports. As it stands, this data is typically highlighted in devices aimed at athletes – such as Whoop 4.0, Garmins and Polars. However, Oura’s philosophy on VO2 Max intentionally moves away from a sports focus.
“Anything you can do to improve your cardiorespiratory fitness will also have long-term health benefits. So for us, the approach is more about showing what that might mean,” Patel says. For example, the app will tell you what climbing five flights of stairs will feel like 10 years from now on your current trajectory compared to if you improved your VO2 Max.
The timing of these features cannot be ignored. After years of being the dominant player in the space, the smart ring space is starting to heat up. Most importantly, Samsung announced that it will launch its first smart ring later this year. Given this, it makes sense that Oura would like to leverage its expertise and reputation by investing heavily in scientific research. (For example, studying cardiovascular age was a passion of one of the company’s biomedical engineers and required several years of testing and development). The company also recently launched a lab feature that allows users to take advantage of beta features such as early disease detection. Patel says the company has further plans in the works, with further updates scheduled for 2025.
Credit : www.theverge.com
