Can a Ring Really Optimize Your Health? – Insights from Oura’s Dorothy Kilroy  

Dorothy Kilroy ist Chief Commercial Officer bei ŌURA und leitet Partnerschaften, Vertrieb und Wachstum. Sie treibt den Ausbau von ŌURA For Business und das Partnernetzwerk voran, mit Schwerpunkten wie Frauen- und Stoffwechselgesundheit. Unter ihrer Führung entstehen Initiativen wie „Be the Expert in You“ und neue Forschung zu Perimenopause, Schlaf und Erholung.

Website von Oura: https://ouraring.com/de?srsltid=AfmBOoow4cpNEU1mRdGgjtWMe5brsLOuN-bGztw4EvcYpYE5JN5ffyKV

116 Can a Ring Really Optimize Your Health With Dorothy Kilroy from Oura

[Dorothy Kilroy] (0:00 - 0:15)
And because we developed a ring that not only looks good, but it actually gets women, we were able to really focus on this. So some of the key features that were really defining for us in this is we can measure the cycle phases of a woman.

[Jason Raffington] (0:17 - 1:47)
Welcome to HEALTHWISE, the health and longevity podcast brought to you by Sunday Natural. My name is Jason Raffington. And in this podcast, we explore what it truly means to be healthy.

Together, we'll dive into topics like medicine, exercise, nutrition and emotional well-being. Always with a wise perspective on what genuinely benefits us. In our modern world, many of us have lost touch with what our bodies are really telling us.

We push through exhaustion with another coffee, medicate away symptoms and reach for foods that are more engineered for taste, rather than nourishment. We normalize stress and ignore the signals that our bodies are not in balance anymore until those signals become impossible to ignore. Wearables are tools to help us reconnect to our bodies.

They give us insights into how our physiology responds to sleep, stress, movement and daily habits. I'm really excited to dive deeper into this topic of wearable technology with my guest Dorothy Kilroy. Dorothy is Oura's chief commercial officer.

She leads Oura's business development partnerships and B2B strategy and plays a pivotal role in expanding the company's reach across health, technology and research sectors. With a focus on areas like women's health, metabolic health and longevity, she's helping shape how wearable technology delivers real-world impact. As a longtime Oura user herself, Dorothy brings both professional insight and personal conviction to the conversation around health tracking, behavior change and the future of digital technology.

Welcome Dorothy and thanks a lot for being here today.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (1:47 - 1:48)
Excited to be here.

[Jason Raffington] (1:49 - 1:57)
Great. So on this podcast, we like to start with a question related to the day Sunday. So I'm asking you, what does your perfect Sunday look like?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (1:59 - 3:04)
Sunday is definitely my favorite day of the week. I think it's the day where we get to slow down. For me personally, I like to start the day with a lemon water and being outside in the sun if I can.

I like to take daylight early in the day. I like to spend the day with my family taking long time to make meals together, not rushed, not on a schedule. I personally love to get outside and exercise in nature and with my family that often involves a hike on a Sunday.

And then I like to prepare for the week ahead. I like to think about the grocery shopping and the food lists that I need. I like to look at my calendar and make sure I schedule time for both workouts but also some downtime.

Really important for me is recovery time with my family. And then lastly, I like to go to bed at a really great hour on a Sunday so that I start my week feeling really good and ready to go.

[Jason Raffington] (3:05 - 3:23)
Awesome. That sounds a lot like my Sunday, to be honest. All right, let's dive in.

For the people who don't know Oura yet, maybe you can explain what Oura is and what its intention is, what the purpose is and maybe how it differs from other wearables out there.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (3:24 - 4:53)
Great. So first of all, Oura is the greatest smart ring wearable on the market. It is something that you wear 24-7.

It is comfortable. It looks good. But really, this is built for accuracy.

Where it is on your body, on the finger versus on the wrist gives us an incredible ability to collect over 50 biometrics that give you an accurate view of your overall health. And Jason, we were founded in sleep, but it is so much more than sleep now. Everybody sleeps, but everybody could also sleep better.

Sleep is just one pillar and Oura has grown to give you a full picture. We use AI to make the complex more simple. We give you a readiness score, an activity score.

We have predictive features like symptom radar, even labor insights to tell somebody who is pregnant whether they're going to go into labor. We also give longer term feedback on your resilience and your cardiovascular age. So there is a whole mix of different insights, both short term and long term that are constantly giving you this feedback on how your body is behaving.

What we like to say at Oura is that we give your body a voice. And I think that is a really powerful thing for everybody to have.

[Jason Raffington] (4:53 - 5:15)
Awesome. It sounds like a really great health companion, actually. I do want to dive deeper into some of those metrics that you mentioned, but before I want to ask you, reflecting on your own health journey, when did you first become aware that wearable technology can actually have such a big impact or actually help you improve or manage your health better?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (5:16 - 6:54)
So I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, Jason, and I've always loved technology. I was an early user of every type of wearable. Early days with wearables was counting steps, right?

The 10,000 step challenge, if you remember that. And then we saw wearables move into text messages, payments, phone calls, lots of other communication devices. But really, the next chapter for wearables is a true health companion.

For me personally, when I discovered Oura, I was a burnt out executive, a very typical story. I had become a new mother of twins, and I had spent my 20s running marathons and thinking that that was the most healthy thing I could do for my body. What I had really misunderstood was the value of recovery.

I had this mantra that I will sleep when I die, which I realized was really not good for my health. And I needed to honor the season of where my body was at. Oura was the first wearable for me that did not end up in a drawer, first of all.

Many wearables, people have good intentions, but they end up in a drawer. And the reason that it didn't end up in a drawer was it was the first wearable that gave me permission to take care of myself. It wasn't shouting at me to get up and run every day.

It was giving me empathetic feedback on when to spend more time on recovery, and also when I was feeling good to then maybe push it on those days.

[Jason Raffington] (6:55 - 7:38)
Yeah, sounds good. And sounds very relatable. I feel like many people nowadays actually do struggle to accurately assess their own health.

I mean, many people say they're tired or they're stressed, and it sounds like they think it's normal because other people are tired and stressed as well. But only because something is common, it's not normal, right? And this normalization of disease, of fatigue, I think that is a big problem.

And I think a health wearable can be really helpful while shining light on what the health status actually is, what it actually looks like, right?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (7:39 - 9:29)
Yes, I think there's an overwhelming amount of information out there. There's new research all the time. It is actually quite hard to keep up with it and to know what is healthy, what is not.

I don't know about you, Jason, but I feel like I'm always getting conflicting information on what I should do. I think one of the best ways to make decisions on your health is to know your own body and how it reacts to different things. We track over 50 biometrics at Oura.

And one of the things that I love is the difference between perception and reality. So while you may not feel tired or where you might tell yourself, I need to push through, when you actually look at your data and you see it over time, you can start to see what your body is really trying to tell you. And then we distill it down into something that is not so complex, that's actually easy to make a decision on.

I think that is one of the values that we see from our members is being able to take action on their data, not just be confused by it. So to me, that is really where good behavior change and good habits come from. I'll give you some examples.

Going to bed consistently at the same time every day, having healthy snacks, reducing the alcohol intake you have and the time of day you have that alcohol. Starting to see those habits and the changes that they're making into your biometrics, it's actually a very good habit loop. It's like a carriage that keeps encouraging you to do it when you see those good behavior changes and you see it show up in your biometrics.

Your body really likes it.

[Jason Raffington] (9:30 - 10:00)
Yeah, definitely. And sometimes you're not even aware of what's happening in your body. Like I've had this experience where I'm also wearing an Oura ring and I've had this experience where I was at the office and it was just a normal work day and I think everything was pretty chill.

And then I looked at the Oura app and it said that I had stress for the last five hours and I didn't even feel stressed. It felt like I was having a really relaxed day. And this is really, really interesting because sometimes you don't even realize what's happening in your body.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (10:01 - 10:43)
Yeah, stress scores, we measure daytime stress, as you said, Jason. One of the things that I found surprising myself is I'm quite an extrovert person. I enjoy being around people.

I get energy from other people, but some social situations I find really stressful. And I often realize afterwards I need a lot of alone time after those big peak periods of a social engagement. I actually need that time alone to recharge.

And it's great not just to see what triggers your stress, but actually what can help you go into that restorative stage. Not all stress is bad. We know this.

What's actually to me more important is understanding what are the ways that relax.

[Jason Raffington] (10:45 - 10:59)
Yeah. I feel like sometimes people are a little worried that when they use a wearable, they disconnect even more from their bodies. So how do you see the role of Oura in supporting and not replacing our intuitive connection with our bodies?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (11:00 - 12:22)
Yeah, I think that is really key. I think as I said, Oura really focuses on giving your body a voice. So really giving you the difference between what you perceive and what actually is happening.

Our members tell us that Oura reinforces what they're feeling. But let me give you some examples. So we have some predictive features like symptom radar.

And symptom radar validates both your intuition and when you're feeling that you're becoming run down and you're about to get sick. It gives you permission to rest. For many members, I'll give you my own personal experience.

And prior to getting COVID about three days before I was symptomatic, my symptom radar started to go off, which lets me know that my body is under strain. And because of that, I was actually able to take much better care of myself. I canceled some social engagements.

I made sure I was going to bed on time. I was really dialed in on my diet. And I was able to make sure that I was honoring what my body needed.

It didn't ultimately stop me getting COVID because I had already contracted the virus. But at that point, I was able to at least make it more blunt, if you will.

[Jason Raffington] (12:23 - 13:24)
Yeah, I think the symptom radar is actually a really incredible feature because I had a situation where it said I had minor symptoms as well. And I was feeling great. I didn't notice anything.

And I thought, okay, maybe this is an error. And at first, I wasn't behaving any differently. I was going outside, I was exercising.

And then five days later, I got really sick. And I was like, wow, my body was fighting this for five days and I didn't notice it at all. So it's really, really interesting how early your body is actually working and how it's actually trying to fight something without you even noticing.

And since then, since this experience, I've started reacting differently every time the symptom radar tells me my body is fighting something. I'm calming down. I'm not exercising.

I'm taking different supplements and just behaving differently. So this is a really valuable tool. And it's something that your intuition doesn't tell you.

You don't feel that you contracted a virus, but your body is actually talking to you already.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (13:25 - 14:49)
Yeah, I like to think about it like giving you a weather forecast. You wouldn't leave home without checking the weather forecast or looking outside the window to see how the weather is to know how to dress. It's amazing when you can have that forecast days in advance.

I have a story that I'll share with you. There's an amazing man who's a Paralympic hero, Hunter Woodwall. And he is quoted saying that the Oura ring saved his life after it alerted to him that there was abnormal health signals.

He had severe stomach pain. It was due to a dairy intolerance that he believed. But when the pain kept persisting for him, he checked the Oura app and he had received the major signs alert from the symptom radar so that his heart rate was elevated, his body temperature was elevated.

And realizing those symptoms, he was actually able to go to the doctor and he had appendicitis. And so he sought medical care and underwent emergency surgery to remove an inflamed appendix. But again, it was being able to look at that and realize that it wasn't in his head.

Something really was a strain on his body. And he took that, which was great to alert and get medical attention.

[Jason Raffington] (14:50 - 15:48)
Well, yeah, I mean, it's great to have this live feedback from your body. Like you said, your body is talking and it's communicating with you. And I guess what gets measured gets managed, right?

And if you have these metrics that tell you, okay, you have symptoms or you didn't sleep well, then you can take action. And I think that's really, really valuable. And you already mentioned that Oura puts a lot of value in sleep and I do too.

And I think it's just the foundation, right? If we sleep well, then our health benefits tremendously. So I wonder how accurate the measurement or the sleep score is because when I was younger, I actually participated in a sleep study and I went to this lab and they hooked me up with all the electrodes and there were cameras and I wasn't allowed to move much.

So it was a very intricate setup. And now I wonder how accurate is this tiny ring on my finger compared to this sleep lab?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (15:49 - 17:27)
Yes, the Oura sleep staging algorithm has been found to be 79% in agreement with the gold standard for polysynagraphy, which is the four stage sleep classification of waking, light, deep sleep, and then the REM sleep too. And so we take our research very carefully. We don't measure ourselves against other wearables.

We measure against what the gold standard is on that. And sleep is always an interesting topic. As I said, I was someone who believed you'll sleep when you die mantra, which is not really a good mantra to have.

I think you know this, Jason, but we were founded in Finland and Finland experiences a lot of different daylight versus darkness depending on the time of the year. And that's a real circadian challenge. And so what we were able to find with that was the ability to start with sleep where your body is at rest, right?

It's one of the best times to get your biometrics is when your body is completely at rest. Our sleep score is between zero to a hundred and reflecting how you slept the previous night based on seven sort of personalized factors like total sleep efficiency, restfulness, alignment to your natural circadian rhythm. We look at the sleep efficiency, the REM sleep, the deep sleep, the different stages that you have.

And we provide personalized insights every day to help you make changes to that to improve it.

[Jason Raffington] (17:28 - 17:37)
Yeah. What was your personal learning like ever since you started using Oura, what you may be underestimated previously when it comes to sleep?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (17:38 - 18:18)
Yeah, I underestimated how just even one poor night's sleep can be a domino effect, a chain reaction into being tired, less motivated, changes to my metabolic health, right? You know, leading to sort of poor decisions on, you know, not such healthy snacks, and then kind of in a downward spiral of lots of sugar on top of bad sleep. It's just a really it's a bad thing that makes it me struggle for my mood, for my hormone balance.

So I realized pretty quickly that once I started to see the data, just that really keeping good sleep hygiene was foundation to my overall health.

[Jason Raffington] (18:20 - 19:27)
Yeah, it's really interesting. And I know a lot of people, for instance, like to say, well, they can drink a coffee late in the day, and they can still sleep. But I feel like if they would see the data and see what it actually does to their sleep architecture, like how they transition from one sleep stage to the next, they would realize that actually, yeah, maybe they can fall asleep, but the sleep quality actually suffers.

And there are many things that affect our sleep quality. And using a wearable like that can actually teach you about what works for you. Like for me, for instance, I noticed that I do need an hour of wind down time before I go to bed.

Well, I can go to bed right after watching Netflix, but my sleep is going to suffer, like it takes me longer to fall asleep. And then the whole sleep quality is worse. So now I start going to work like turning off devices an hour before I go to bed, I actually have a like my internet turns itself off at 10:15pm.

So I'm not tempted to watch anything past that. So it was really helpful for me, like this is what works for me. But maybe people have other, like other little hacks that they implemented after noticing what works for them.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (19:27 - 20:13)
Yeah. One of the major discoveries many people have when they wear an Oura ring is how significant alcohol wrecks have on their sleep. So we saw over 70% of our members see some negative effect to their HRV.

And, you know, deep sleep, which is a really important metric to track the average deep sleep decreased by almost 7% on nights where members are tagging alcohol. So I think of deep sleep as such a precious thing, you don't want to lose any of it. So it's interesting when you start to see what alcohol does to your body.

Obviously, it's very individual. But that is just one of the major discoveries that people have when they start wearing an Oura ring.

[Jason Raffington] (20:14 - 20:23)
Yeah, I believe that. Besides the sleep score, there's also the readiness score and the activity score. Could you explain what they are and how they're useful to us?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (20:24 - 23:00)
Yes. So readiness, it ranges from zero to 100. And it tells you if you are ready to face greater challenges, or if your body needs more time for rest and recovery.

So with the readiness score, we include the heart rate variability, your resting heart rate, your body temperature, your sleep quality and recent activity levels. It actually really gives you that permission to either take it easy or to push yourself. It gives you insights into what's impacting your score and helps you adapt daily.

So it's a really useful metric. The other one you mentioned is activity. Again, that ranges from zero to 100.

managing your stress and your overall health So a really simple scoring system. And it tells you about your activity and your rest balance. So it's not all about the HIIT workout or how intense your activity is.

It's also about the rest. We measure your step count, your training frequency, your training volume among other metrics. But we're also measuring all of the movement you do.

We have a belief at Oura that all movement counts. And some of the activities that we detect, so we automatically detect activities that you do and Oura gets trained on your body so it can detect them. But some of my favorite ones are it detects when I'm gardening.

It can tell the difference between if I'm doing cross-country skiing or downhill skiing. But even, you know, simple walks during the day. These things are really important for not just and well-being, but your metabolic health too.

This has been one of the most surprising things to me. In the last couple of months, Jason, we launched an integration with our continuous glucose monitor that you can now connect to an Oura Ring. And what's been fascinating about that is looking at your blood glucose during the day.

But what I have found is instead of just one workout a day, you know, you know, great, I made it to the gym, I did my workout. It's about movement all day long. And when you start to see the impact on your blood glucose on that, it's really fascinating.

What I've tried to personally do with that is I have set a little reminder for myself every hour to get up walk for two minutes. If I'm, you know, in work, even just 10 bodyweight squats can really make an impact on your blood glucose. And it's quite fascinating when you see the data loop of that.

It really reinforces the good behavior because if you read about it and you know it's good for you, that's one thing. But when you start to see your own data change from just those little small habits, it's really powerful.

[Jason Raffington] (23:01 - 23:10)
Yeah, I completely agree. I used CGMs or continuous glucose monitors in the past. And I also started doing air squats like after meals or going for walks.

Yeah.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (23:10 - 23:11)
It's a great hack.

[Jason Raffington] (23:11 - 23:40)
The weird guy who does air squats in restOurants and at work. But it's really helpful. And seeing how it actually changes your blood glucose level, like you said, it reinforces good behaviors.

So it's a really powerful tool. And you mentioned earlier that users can tag certain behaviors, like they can, I don't know, say that they read before going to bed or that they exercise. So how does this tagging system work?

And why are we doing this as users?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (23:41 - 25:01)
Yes. So we have a tagging system at Oura. Your tags help you see trends in your data and help you understand what's triggering either a stress response to that or not.

We often talk at Oura about how stress is not all bad. So there's good stress that helps you grow. Things like exercise, saunas, cold exposure, if you do that, even brain games, right?

These are stresses to the body, but these are good, good stressors. And then there's sort of bad stressors that sort of wear you down. And often those wreak havoc or they have health consequences to heart disease and obesity, depression, anxiety, and a whole range of comorbidities linked to stress.

What we find is members being able to tag their activities or the things they are doing that might be causing that. So I mentioned alcohol earlier. That is obviously one of those that people tag.

But there's a whole host of different things that people tag, whether it's taking a medication, whether it's doing certain sort of activities or work-related things that are causing that stress. And what it allows them to be able to do is see what those trends are over time and start to understand what is causing that stress for them.

[Jason Raffington] (25:02 - 25:33)
I think you're mentioning something really important, and that is that trends are really important and not like daily, like things that you do one day that may not be that healthy, they may not be that important. Like everybody has a day where they don't sleep well or they don't eat the best food, and that's not that big of a deal. But what's more important is how the trend is over a longer period of time.

And I think Oura does a great job showing these trends and actually teaching you how you can actually improve certain metrics.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (25:34 - 25:35)
Yes, exactly.

[Jason Raffington] (25:36 - 25:52)
And I think it's also very useful that you have this advisor tool where you can actually communicate with the app and ask what certain metrics mean, or you can ask for advice on how to improve certain behaviors. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (25:53 - 27:16)
So for many of us, it is overwhelming trying to understand our information and trying to decode it ourselves. So Oura lodged an AI advisor that is like having a health coach or a doctor with you 24-7 that you can ask questions to on your own information. We actually found that more than half of our members, about 60% of our members who tested advisor, they found that it helped them understand better what their health was and their metrics, what they were.

They didn't fully grasp it before. And this has been really a good unlock for people. We also find that they are able to ask that in a confidential, personal space where they're not being gaslit on whether they feel something.

They're not being rushed to get out of an appointment because they need to get to the next person. They can ask that information wherever and whenever they need to. So that's been really helpful for people.

Interestingly, we find that women predominantly are using that feature too, which we find interesting given we know that so many women feel gaslit about their health overall because it's so misunderstood. So it's always encouraging to see some overlooked areas of health that we're starting to close the gap maybe.

[Jason Raffington] (27:17 - 27:31)
Speaking about women, I know that Oura is really dedicated to improve women's health and to help women understand their bodies better. And I know that you're also really dedicated in that field. So maybe you can tell us about that.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (27:32 - 29:19)
I'm very passionate about this space. We lack so much research in it. I believe it's less than 2.5% of all research is focused on women's health. But we've been able to make some strides at Oura that I'm really proud of. Women are our fastest growing base, particularly women in their 20s, which is amazing. And because we developed a ring that not only looks good, but it actually gets women, we were able to really focus on this.

So some of the key features that were really defining for us in this is we can measure the cycle phases of a woman. So we track her period, we track the cycle length, the cycle variability. We also have incredible features around fertile window, which detects when a woman is ovulating.

And so if they are trying to conceive, they can use that feature with a great degree of accuracy. We also have a great partnership with Natural Cycles. Natural Cycles is a non-hormonal birth control that is FDA cleared.

For most women, if they want to use that method, they have to wake up every day at the same time, use a thermometer to track that. It's actually incredibly full of friction to have to do that every morning at the exact same time and to never get it wrong. Whereas with an Oura Ring, we have a temperature tracking permanently with you continuous, and that data feeds directly into Natural Cycles, which then gives you that indication.

For many women, birth control has side effects that they, traditional birth control methods have side effects that are, that don't resonate with them. And so this is a much better alternative for many women who'd like to use that.

[Jason Raffington] (29:20 - 30:14)
Yeah, it does sound a lot more convenient. It also sounds like it teaches body literacy, because it teaches you about what your symptoms are and how to deal with them better. And that it's also not just in your head and that what you're feeling is actually also visible in the data.

I think that's really important. I think some people find that constantly seeing scores or these health metrics can also be stressful in a way, because I know it's for myself. I see that my sleep was poor, then this stresses me out and I want to sleep better the next night.

And maybe that the stress leads me to then sleep poor again, or I haven't done enough workouts or enough steps during the day and that stresses me out. So what do you say to those people or how can Oura help people not get stressed out by the data, but rather that the data supports them?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (30:15 - 32:09)
Yeah. So at Oura, the lack of a screen is a very purposeful design. It doesn't ping you or notify you to move.

Instead, it's there when you want to interact with it. We're also very empathetic and considerate with our messaging. So instead of scolding you messages for your poor sleep or not enough activity or what you ate, we focus on progress.

We focus on that over perfection. Good should be your new optimal. No one needs to get three crowns every day.

We give crowns for certain scores. It's not about being perfect. And we really try to focus on the educational framing.

We explain that sleep variability, it's normal, you know, life happens and different bodies have different needs and circumstances change. So when we present the data, we do it as comprehensive, so it's not overwhelming. Data is information, not as goals.

That's a really distinct difference with Oura. And when members have health anxiety, which they do, we give them the opportunity to reconnect with the reasons that you embarked on that health journey. So small changes can make big differences here.

You don't have to take up running or have zero minutes of stress. Instead, it's just small steps that you can take that you start to see that difference. There's also the ability for some that want to actually opt out of calorie tracking, for example.

We've many members who choose to actually not see this data in their Oura experience because it's too stressful for them, as you said, so they can start to customize the experience for what they need.

[Jason Raffington] (32:10 - 33:10)
Yeah, that's really, that's really, really nice. I personally noticed what really helped me was that Oura reminded me to actually do less because I was I was always exercising a lot and trying to do more. And Oura is actually teaching me to prioritize or to recover better.

And that really helped me feel better and not be sore all the time, not be too tired during the day. So this was really helpful for me because I feel like a lot of people are actually doing too much. And like I said earlier, even at work you can be stressed, even if you don't feel stressed.

And then maybe after work you go to the gym and then you go home and then you start watching TV and that stresses your body as well because that's what I noticed as well. When I watch a show and I'm just on the couch, that's actually stressful for my body. So we need to take time to actually recover.

And that's not just lying there and watching something. It's actually active recovery. That's something that I noticed and that I'm doing more of now.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (33:11 - 33:34)
Good for you. I think what's really interesting to me in that recovery is how personalized it is, right? Where each of us are quite unique in what actually makes us get into that restorative state.

For me personally, it's walking in nature, no devices, not multitasking, but really just trying to be present.

[Jason Raffington] (33:35 - 33:47)
Yeah, same here. And we often talk a lot about supplements here on this podcast. And I'm wondering whether you have experimented with the use of supplements and how they affect different metrics.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (33:48 - 34:34)
Yeah, I have. What's really nice is having a feedback loop with my Oura data to know what's working for me or not. One of the supplements that I've had good success with is taking glycine at night.

That really helps my deep sleep. So I've been pretty consistent with that one. But maybe one of my more favorite supplements is waking up in the morning and getting natural sunlight within an hour of waking.

I have found that one to be consistently valuable, that it sort of sets my circadian rhythm for the day. And I can see it in my data. I can see how that helps my deep sleep.

I can see how that helps, you know, my stress levels as I sort of embark on the day. So if whenever I can take that time in the morning, that's one of my favorite supplements.

[Jason Raffington] (34:35 - 35:37)
Yeah, that's also what I do. First thing I do in the morning is take a walk around the block. And I feel I feel a lot better.

It wakes me up like I'm not the kind of person who needs a coffee right away, but I just rather take a walk and I feel great. And I've also experimented with a couple of supplements like glycine, like you mentioned, magnesium, rhodiola. And for me, what I noticed in my data was that glycine actually helps a lot.

For the others, I haven't seen that much of a difference. But I think it's really interesting to actually get that feedback and see how it actually changes. But I mean, if subjectively you think a supplement helps you and you don't see it in the data, that's still fine, right?

I mean, you don't need to completely rely on the data. So I wonder, are there situations where your data says, for instance, you need to rest, but you still feel like you have energy and you kind of want to do something and then you just ignore the data and do it anyways? Or do you always rely on what your data tells you?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (35:38 - 36:37)
No, I mean, I think we're humans and life gets in the way. I'll give you a good example. I'm recording this podcast right now from London.

So I've just come on a long haul flight and jet lag is just part of travel. And what we've seen in the data is how long the impact of jet lag impacts you. It can be up to 15 days for people where they still see sleep irregularities after that.

And so for me, if I was to only honor the data of that, I'd probably be sleeping the entire day after I travel. But when you arrive somewhere and you get excited, you want to go out and see the place and experience the thrills of the new city or wherever you are. And so I don't think it should be a rule to live by, but a guide.

And again, life gets in the way and you have to make the right choices for yourself.

[Jason Raffington] (36:37 - 37:13)
Yeah, I think if you make an informed decision that you know maybe this glass of alcohol is going to disrupt your sleep, that's fine. You're an adult and you can decide that. But I think it's good to know what the effects are and how it impacts your body.

And I also feel like wearable technology has come a long way in recent years. But in any evolving field, there are still challenges. And from your perspective, what are key areas where there's room for growth?

Where do you see potential? Where do you see the journey is going, so to say?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (37:14 - 39:13)
Yes, metabolic health, I believe, is still an area that we could value so much more personalized insights on this. This is a struggle for so many people at different moments in their health journey. Take, for example, women in perimenopause.

This is where they see a big shift in their metabolic health and the things that they were able to do before, whether that was a certain diet or certain activities just are no longer working. And trying to understand that is a real challenge. So I believe continuous glucose monitors are amazing here to give a full view and a picture.

They can give you that kind of actionable insight. If you're tracking your meals, you can see what that effect it's having. You can see the effect of sleep on that, the effect of stress on that.

And so they are an incredible tool. I think secondly, the other area that we've invested a lot at Oura, and I am so excited about the future of it, is harnessing AI. AI has been integral to how we do our algorithms at Oura, our sleep staging algorithms, other algorithms.

But I think the future is that AI will be able to analyze, predict and advise you. It's like having a doctor or a coach with you 24-7, you know, in your pocket with you. That is so exciting to me.

I don't think we think about health span and not just lifespan. I don't believe health starts in a doctor's office or in a hospital. Health happens when you're at home and you open your fridge.

Health happens when you, you know, lace up your running shoes and go out for that evening walk. Health happens in those micro decisions, not in the sick care. And so to me, when you can use AI that's giving you more analysis of that every day, I think that's going to be very powerful for all of us.

[Jason Raffington] (39:14 - 39:36)
Yeah. And talking about metabolic health and AI, Oura recently launched this feature where you can just take a picture of your meal and then the advisor kind of assesses the meal and gives you advice on whether to, like how to improve it or tells you that it's great and it's very nourishing. And I think that's really helpful for people, right?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (39:36 - 40:13)
Yeah. For many of us, you know, again, we still, we still are in the dark about what is actually good for us and what is not. The other thing that I really like about our meal tracking is linking it to your circadian rhythm too.

So knowing when is the right time to eat for you. For me eating late at night wrecks havoc on my sleep. So I've had to learn that.

I time my meals better so that I'm not snacking late at night, as tempting as it is sometimes if I'm watching TV, but trying to create those good habits too is amazing.

[Jason Raffington] (40:14 - 40:46)
Yeah. Same here. I also stopped eating late in the evening because I noticed that it's not good for me.

I wonder how can we use the data from the Oura ring to talk to other healthcare professionals? When I'm going to my GP and I want to show him all the data that I collected because it's really, really useful data, right? Really impactful data.

Do you think healthcare practitioners are open for that or how would they react if we go into the office and show them the app and tell them, Hey, look at this.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (40:48 - 43:11)
Yes. We're seeing a real shift in this change. So many members today discover Oura ring because it was recommended by their doctor or their health professional.

And we think there's a number of things that are driving this. The first is this proactive healthcare. You know, 50% of our health outcomes are actually linked to our behavior.

And so we believe clinicians believe that the value of empowering the actual patient with their own health information, you know, wearables are an amazing tool here that help you recognize where you might be at risk and how to make those changes yourself. Second is the area of preventative healthcare, you know, like the symptom radar feature that we talked about that alerts you when your metrics have deviated from the baseline, kind of gives you that early warning signal. We also have reports and PDFs that you can download and share with your clinician.

You know, we talked about women's health earlier, but women in perimenopause when they are experiencing changes in their cycle length and variability, but also seeing that over time related to changes in their sleep and changes in their HRV, they can actually download those reports and share them with their physician. You know, long term where I see the advantage here is that wearables and clinical settings will work hand in hand in the future. We've already started to work with some of the largest health and scientific institutions where we actually pipe the data through an API directly into the clinician's office.

But I think we'll have the picture in the future where, you know, when you go to a doctor's office right now, they're typically just getting a snapshot, taking your biometrics once a year, if you're lucky, of this just one moment in time, and they don't know what's been happening over time for you. I think the ideal is that you will be alerted before you go in. So your physician will have a full picture of your health.

They will be proactively reaching out to you when they see deviations from it, then alerting you to come in to talk about what is causing those deviations and to help you sort of assess what next steps to take. I don't think we're very far away from that future. And I think there's some clinicians that are really forward thinking that are already using OuraData to do that today.

[Jason Raffington] (43:12 - 43:44)
Yeah, I think it's really a great opportunity for our healthcare system to become more efficient, because doctors have so little time. And if we can provide some of this foundational data that drives or determines much of our health, we can be more efficient in tackling the underlying causes of disease. And we do talk a lot about longevity on this podcast.

And since heart disease is the number one killer worldwide, still, or the number one cause of premature death, I'm curious how the OuraRing can help improve our heart health.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (43:45 - 44:48)
Yeah, you know what you said, Jason, is so true that it is the number one cause. The issue is for most people that they don't realize it until it's too late. It's like a silent killer.

And so we have a number of heart health features at Oura that are trying to give people a better understanding of that. One is called cardiovascular age, which is a measure of your overall heart. We base this on a pulse wave velocity technology that measures the elasticity of your arteries.

And that elasticity changes as you age. It's really powerful, not only as an indicator of your long term health, but actually something that you can improve with lifestyle. I'll tell you personally where I started with this.

But when we first launched this feature, I thought I was going to be so healthy and on the right side of this. And my cardiovascular age was plus seven years. So my cardiovascular age was seven years older than my biological age.

That did not feel good.

[Jason Raffington] (44:48 - 44:49)
Yeah, I can imagine.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (44:50 - 45:45)
But what was amazing was that I was actually able to move it. And that felt really empowering. So today it's at four and a minus four and a half years.

And I was able to move that in a matter of months just by focusing on increasing my cardiovascular training. For me personally, that meant doing some sprint interval training, which has really been short bursts of training. But that's been really good for me.

We also at measure the VO two max, which was why sprint interval training was something that I wanted to focus on. And that's something that you can really change with lifestyle habits. And I think longer term health metrics like this are really powerful because you can see your behaviors every day and how they can then translate into these longer term health metrics.

[Jason Raffington] (45:45 - 46:17)
Yeah, totally. I'm actually also currently trying to reduce my cardiovascular age. And I also introduced more sprints and more high intensity interval trainings like this protocol called Norwegian 4x4.

And it's crazy exhausting, but I noticed that it can improve my cardiovascular age. And that's really empowering to see this metric change. And like you said, it's a long term measurement.

But this keeps me going. Like it's motivating. And it's fun to see that it actually works.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (46:18 - 46:21)
Did yours improve by much? Or maybe you didn't have much to improve?

[Jason Raffington] (46:21 - 46:46)
No, I was actually, I think I was at minus three. And then I got sick. And I stopped exercising for a while.

And then I dropped down to minus one. And that was really frustrating for me. And then I started getting back into it.

And I think I checked yesterday and now I'm at minus four again, which is great. But I'm still trying to improve. I can still lose some more years, actually.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (46:48 - 46:51)
Feels good to be able to take some years off, right?

[Jason Raffington] (46:51 - 47:00)
Yeah, for sure. I'm wondering, are you also planning on introducing blood pressure measurements? Because I think that's also a really useful metric to keep an eye on.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (47:01 - 47:20)
Yes, absolutely. We continue to look for all sorts of metrics that we think are going to give a better picture of your overall health. Blood pressure is obviously a key one of those.

And we have a whole host of other metrics around heart health that will give people a better understanding of their health.

[Jason Raffington] (47:20 - 47:45)
And you mentioned VO2 max, which is a great marker for longevity and fitness. And I'm wondering how accurate that one is as well. Because like when I think about VO2 max measurements, I'm imagining these spikes or these treadmills and people are hooked up with all kinds of electrodes.

And I wonder again, how accurate the Oura measurement is here.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (47:45 - 48:25)
Yeah. So in order to use the VO2 test at Oura, you have to take a walking test. It's set up for you to walk and it then measures that for you.

I think like a lot of our metrics, Jason, the real key is looking at the trend over time, right? So being able to retake that. So knowing if you have faced an illness or if you've faced an injury and seeing how that changes, but also being able to see the impact of really great exercise habits, whether it's that Norwegian 4x4 that you mentioned and seeing how that impacts your VO2 max.

I think we continue to understand that this is just a much better predictor of longevity overall too.

[Jason Raffington] (48:26 - 48:39)
Yeah. And when you think about the future of Oura or health tech in general, I mean, you kind of alluded to it already. You're excited about metabolic health and new markers in terms of heart health, but is there anything else you're looking forward to?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (48:40 - 49:13)
Yeah. I mentioned AI. I think that that's going to give us greater ability to build predictions.

The Oura ring is highly accurate already when compared to medical devices. And I'm really excited about the opportunities in clinical care. So being able to have early warnings for faster intervention sooner, remote clinical care, more accurate scientific data.

So measuring people outside of labs too. I'm just excited about what wearables can do in that space too.

[Jason Raffington] (49:13 - 49:19)
Yeah. Do you think it's going to be more like a diagnostic tool rather than a focus on prevention?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (49:20 - 49:46)
Yeah. I think that we're very close to that and there's a lot of value in early diagnostics. We know this between a lot of different comorbidities that people face and the earlier you could do that, the better.

I don't think that's that far away. And I think that will give us all much more value in knowing that we're getting that early detection. I sort of think it like a check engine light that's permanently on so that you're getting that warning early on.

[Jason Raffington] (49:46 - 49:57)
Yeah. Yeah. For our listeners who do not use an Oura yet, is there anything you can leave them with some advice that you can give them to improve their health without having a wearable?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (49:58 - 52:07)
Okay. I'll keep it simple. A lot of us either drink tea or coffee every day, but late caffeine can really impact your deep sleep.

Caffeine is a half-life of about five to seven hours. So for example, if you have a cup of coffee at 3pm by 8pm, you've only metabolized about half of it and the other half is still in your system. So this is obviously personal.

Half the population have a gene that leads to that slower processing of caffeine, meaning the half-life is actually even longer than that. So I think it's a great experiment to see how drinking caffeine close to bedtime affects your sleep. I think we'd all like to think it doesn't affect us, but I think it's great to go and see if it does.

Second thing you and I talked about is late night eating. It makes it harder to fall asleep. Our digestive systems, they're still working really hard to kind of facilitate all that nutrient absorption.

And research has shown that, you know, late night eating, it increases your sleep latency and the amount of REM sleep and deep sleep you're getting. So for me, avoid heavy meals around bedtime and pick nutrient dense snacks for the evening. And then lastly, because maybe I'm feeling it today is preparing for jet lag.

You know, we've done some work with the University of Singapore and that I mentioned that really understanding after flying how sleep timing remained misaligned for about 15 days. It was really long. And I think so for me, the sleep disruption that you're going to feel, how do you prepare for that?

And even the small changes by just dropping between like 30 minutes to sort of 60 minutes the night before you travel, just that gradual adjustment of your bedtime ever so slightly, even 15 minutes earlier, that can start to prepare your circadian rhythm for that change. And then take advantage of that natural light that you and I talked about in the morning. So getting that early morning light is great to, you know, help you wake up, set your circadian rhythm, have that natural melatonin production.

And then in the evening, getting that evening light to encourage your body to wind down and it really helps.

[Jason Raffington] (52:08 - 52:27)
Right. Those are some great tips. And I think some really powerful ones too.

Like we said before, sleep is such a huge lever. And when we can optimize our sleep, we already won a lot. It helps a lot.

So where can our listeners find more about Oura and yourself?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (52:28 - 52:54)
So you can find more information on OuraRing.com. We're excited that we're expanding globally into, I know, a lot of the markets where your listeners are today. And yeah, find us there.

And we have an incredible blog that a lot of the PhDs and the researchers at Oura provide information on and we look at the information and the data there. So you'll find a lot of great nuggets on how to improve your health overall.

[Jason Raffington] (52:55 - 53:23)
I do like the blog and actually just as a little tip for our German listeners and German Oura users. When I came across the blog and I saw that you posted about new features, I couldn't find the features in the app. And then a colleague of mine told me that if I switch the language settings from German to English, I can have access to these features.

So if anyone wants to try these features, I hope it's okay that I'm sharing this, but for me, it was really useful.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (53:24 - 53:40)
It's a great hack for right now. I'm pleased to say that we will be solving that for German language too very soon. But yes, if you want it today, yes, maybe switch over to the English language, but very soon you will see that it actually will be a parody in both languages.

[Jason Raffington] (53:41 - 53:55)
Great. Because I felt a little left behind and I saw these blog posts and I thought, oh, this sounds amazing. Now you can take pictures of your food and it tells you if it's healthy or not.

And I couldn't find this feature. So now I can use it. So that's great.

Well, thanks so much for your time, Dorothy. It was great.

[Dorothy Kilroy] (53:56 - 53:58)
Likewise. It was great to be on. Thanks for having me, Jason.

[Jason Raffington] (54:03 - 54:04)
What is your favorite supplement?

[Dorothy Kilroy] (54:06 - 54:16)
Well, I mentioned mine earlier, which was glycine. That is still the supplement that I take, really helps my deep sleep. And it's one that I've consistently taken for years now.