Ever since being diagnosed with Narcolepsy and having the symptoms and causes of my sleepiness really explained in depth I’ve been curious about ways of tracking my symptoms. Although that is one thing I’ve wished was implemented, that’s for another day. I’m here to discuss the positives of the Oura ring that I’ve experienced.

Narcolepsy is deeply tied to the autonomic system through the orexin system and direct involvement by the hypothalamus. This can include things such as the sleep/wake cycle (Hypersomnia, insomnia, sleep fragmentation), the hunger signals in your body, the communication system between your brain and muscle (Cataplexy), and thermoregulation. The orexin system and its involvement with the hypothalamus goes much deeper than that, but these are the focus. 

Seeing as Oura offers you the option to share that you have a sleep disorder with the app, it would be interesting to see if, in the future, you could specify your disorder and that would affect how the algorithms within the app calculate your health. 

Although the Oura ring’s pattern sensing algorithms aren’t well adjusted to those of us with Narcolepsy, it does still provide some insight into other symptoms. I have had notifications from my ring about an increase in body temperature when I’m sitting inactive. I have come to find that I will have heat flashes (an issue with thermoregulation) about 30 minutes before I have a sleep attack. Oura has been able to accurately “predict” these sleep attacks on a handful of occasions. In addition, although it can notice a change in heart rate or respiratory rate, the ring cannot make that connection to associate those changes with a sleep attack unless you nap for long enough. Speaking of sleeping, what the ring has done a fabulous job of is tracking my sleep fragmentation. 

I have never had respiratory issues (my lungs are very thankful that I have been runner for half my life) and had almost no events at all across my two diagnostic sleep studies. Despite that, if you were to put my graph of sleep stages next to that of someone with untreated sleep apnea you may not notice a difference. And I never knew how little restorative sleep I got before I had my Oura ring. Although I “wake” several times a night, it’s so foggy that those occurrences never stay in my mind. 

I hope the developers at Oura listen to their consumers and work to make the app more user friendly, but also that they pursue the ability for users with these rarer conditions to be able to track the symptoms of their disorders. 

TLDR: Oura good at showing sleep fragmentation, and monitoring changes in body temp. Oura not good at noticing micro sleeps or short naps from narcolepsy

Narcolepsy Symptoms and the Oura Ring