This Ring Is Changing How I Track My Period

“Temperature is an amazing tool,” says Caroline Kryder, Oura’s Science Communications Lead. “It reveals clues about how your hormones are changing in each phase of your cycle because estrogen cools you down and progesterone warms you up. This makes it easy to spot which phase of your cycle you’re in.” During the first half of the cycle your temperature is cooler, but it starts to heat up once ovulation starts and progesterone, the hormone responsible for preparing your body for pregnancy by thickening the uterus lining, is high. Once your period starts, your temperature begins to cool back down.

For those who face irregular cycles, a tool like Period Prediction can assist in taking back control without relying on tediously penciled-in notes “While many tracking tools exist, they base their predictions on numerical values like cycle length or your calendar, rather than reading signals directly from your body as they change,” says Kryder. And because the human body is ever-prone to change, this feature enables the ring to provide a three-day window for the start of your next period—a prediction that only becomes more accurate over time. 

As someone who has logged the start and end date of every period for the last several years, I’ve become fairly used to tracking flow levels, cramping, irregular spotting. But that data can only be so predictive, and sometimes it can feel like the potential of my period is hovering over me. I still worry I might be caught unprepared. Knowing that I now have a tracker that can keep up with my body’s hormonal changes quicker than I can offers some solace. All I have to do is confirm the start of my period and let my body continue doing its thing.

But it’s not just about getting ahead of renegade spotting. Period Prediction about offering another window into your health, says Kryder. “Knowing how your cycle changes over time can help you understand if something is impacting your system in the short term, like stress or travel, or there may be a larger issue affecting your body. For those looking to conceive, there’s an added bonus as a recent UCSD study found that the Period Prediction was able to detect pregnancies on average nine days before receiving a positive at-home pregnancy test.”