Oura rings have a lot of cool fitness tracking features, from tracking your steps, to monitoring your heart rate and so much more, but it’s also being marketed as a form of birth control, which is causing some concern.
"I just feel like one of the reasons that I don't love it is that it was marketed towards women for menstrual tracking, and it is completely inaccurate in that sense," said Aly Forry, who wears an Oura ring.
Forry said she was excited to test out all the fitness tracking features but quickly saw some flaws with how this technology is being branded as birth control.
"It does a great job of tracking sleep. It's very detailed. It has a really good step counter, it's pretty accurate. When it comes to menstrual cycle, it is all over the place. For something that's marketed as a product for women, for menstrual tracking, they make you get another app," Forry said.
Nurse Practitioner and Associate Professor at Florida Gulf Coast University’s nursing program, Christina Dzioba, told us using an Oura ring to track your cycle isn’t a good idea.
"It is a well-known fact that you do have a change in temperature, just, you know, around your fertile time," Dzioba said.
Dzioba said a lot of things can cause a slight temperature change.
"We don't know how accurate some of these are. We do know that there's going to be variation based on your stress level, the type of skin that you have, the color of your skin, the thickness of your skin, the room that you're in. If you're stressed out, you know, if you didn't sleep, your temperature is going to be different," Dzioba said.
Dzioba agreed that you shouldn't put all your faith in the features promising to help with birth control.
"Is it the best method to prevent pregnancy? Probably not," Dzioba said.
It also requires you to pay for another subscription on top of the hundreds of dollars for the ring itself.
"No one tells you that you have to pay a subscription in to Oura for a monthly subscription just for your ring, and then you have to get another app called Natural Cycles. And there's a charge for that, too," Forry said.
If you’re looking for birth control, Dzioba said it's best to stick to the basics.
"IUDs, pills, many different types of rings that can be used. So there's many different types of methods," Dzioba said.
DOWNLOAD the free Gulf Coast News app for your latest news and alerts on breaking news, weather, sports, entertainment, and more.