Daytime Stress – Oura Help

Daytime Stress enables you to track your individual physiological stress during waking hours so that you can understand, manage, and recover from it more effectively. Daytime Stress is available for:

Gen3 or later with active membership
iOS
Android

This feature is not available on Gen2 or older.

What Is Daytime Stress?
How Daytime Stress Works
Contextual Stress
Troubleshooting Gaps in Daytime Stress
Things to Keep in Mind
More Information

What Is Daytime Stress?

Stress is your body's natural response to both internal and external challenges and is neither inherently good nor bad. Everyone feels stress, but the causes — and how we respond — are highly personal. Physical activity, work, illness, jetlag, emotional stress, hormone fluctuations, social interactions, and stimulants like coffee can all be stressors on the body.

Daytime Stress analyzes changes in your biometrics to provide insights into your physiological stress levels. Your stress will be categorized into one of four zones:

Stressed: The highest level. Common and normal, but a sign to seek Restorative Time
Engaged: Some elevated signs of stress, but potentially good for productivity
Relaxed: Your body has moved from a state of stress into one of mild recovery
Restored: Your body is recharging in a pure state of calm

Your Daytime Stress score reflects your body’s physiological response, which may not always match how you feel. Stress is measured based on your biometrics, not your emotions. Even though you may feel fine, your body may still be experiencing stress.

For some tips on how to lower your stress levels, check out our blog post.

How Daytime Stress Works

Daytime Stress measures your physiological stress responses, which include both physical and mental responses and adaptation to different internal and external factors. Internal factors, for example, can include a lack of sleep or illness. External factors can include things like work-related stress, alcohol, or social activities.

Daytime Stress is calculated using:

Heart rate
Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
Motion
Average body temperature

You need at least five days of continuous wear (day and night) to begin seeing Daytime Stress results.

Your Daytime Stress information can be found on a home card each day, where you'll see a real-time stress graph. The stress graph is color-coded to help you easily visualize your latest detected state, and it updates every 15 minutes during periods when you're awake, wearing your ring, and relatively inactive.

Your metrics are compared against your personal baseline, which is recalibrated daily based on new data. Oura does not use fixed thresholds for stress. Your scores are relative to you.

For more information about HRV and stress, see HRV and Stress: What HRV Can Tell You About Your Mental Health.

Contextual Stress

You can find the Daytime Stress detail view by several ways:

Tap the insight card or the stress shortcut on the Today tab OR
Go to the My Health tab, select "Stress Management," and then tap "Daytime Stress" under "Related metrics

In the detail view, you can long press on the graph to see precise measurements from a specific timestamp. The detail view also includes two toggles: one for "Daily movement" and one for "Tags and activities."

Daily Movement: Overlays your movement graph to show how activity relates to stress changes. The daily movement graph is identical to the movement graph on the Activity screen
Tags and activities: Helps you connect logged events with physiological changes. Tap on a tag to highlight it on the graph. You can also add a tag directly from the Daytime Stress screen

Above the insight message are totals for your day's Stressed and Restored times. Tapping on either will take you to that metric's graph in Trends.

Stress is only measured during periods of low or no movement, so spikes or gaps may reflect physical activity — not stress changes. Common triggers of elevated physiological stress include caffeine, hormonal changes (e.g. PMS), intense workouts, emotional stress, poor sleep, dehydration, and prolonged cognitive load.

Troubleshooting Gaps in Your Daytime Stress Graph

Daytime Stress is only calculated during waking hours. You will see stress data on the Oura App's home screen after you wake up and enough data has been collected, along with various insights displayed throughout the day. In the evening you will see a daily summary, and you can also scroll back to see insights from the previous days.

If you see gaps in your Daytime Stress graph, these may be possible reasons:

Your stress isn't measured during movement, including workouts. When periods of movement are over, you'll see their impact on your stress graph
Your stress isn't measured while sleeping
You weren't wearing your ring for a period of time
Your ring wasn't able to measure your heart rate due to a poor or loose fit
You had cold hands, which can cause signal problems

Things to Keep in Mind

Not all stress is bad. Stress can help you perform and stay motivated. The goal is to understand how your body responds to stress — and when it needs time to recover.
The Daytime Stress feature can't be hidden or turned off
Our Daytime Stress results have been validated by conducting internal studies where we compared Oura results to other well-established industry solutions. We also conducted surveys to compare users' subjective estimation of stress against Oura results
Daytime Stress results may not be valid for users with heart diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, or pacemakers
If you are a new member, or a returning member who has not worn their ring for a prolonged amount of time, it may take 5-7 days of regular day and night use to establish your baselines and daytime stress data to show
Daytime Stress cannot differentiate different stress sources, as the body physiologically reacts the same way to different stressors, whether it's physical or mental. You can also add and view tags in your trends view to track your daily actions and behavior