Cardiovascular Age (CVA) is one of Oura's Heart Health measurements, designed with an eye toward your future health and longevity. The Cardiovascular Age feature is available on both Android and iOS to Oura members with active membership.
What is Cardiovascular Age?
How to Use Cardiovascular Age
How Oura Measures Cardiovascular Age
Things to Keep in Mind
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What is Cardiovascular Age?
Cardiovascular Age is an estimate of the health of your cardiovascular system in relation to your actual age. Your Cardiovascular Age is estimated by measuring your pulse wave velocity (PWV) and evaluating age-related changes in the shape of your heartbeat’s signal, which carry information about your arterial stiffness.
Younger arteries are more elastic, expanding and contracting in response to changes in our blood flow. As we age, arteries tend to stiffen and lose some of their elasticity, and with this stiffening, the energy of the heartbeat can become a strain on the internal organs.
CVA is affected by a number of factors, including diet, exercise, genetic predisposition, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and smoking. You can slow the aging of your cardiovascular system through regular exercise and changes to your lifestyle and habits.
How to Use Cardiovascular Age
Cardiovascular Age can be found in the Heart Health card, which is accessible either on the Home tab or through the sidebar menu.
Cardiovascular Age requires at least 14 nights of data from the past 30 days in order to calibrate the first baseline reading. This preliminary baseline can change as your nighttime data accumulates. Wear your ring consistently at night to ensure that you receive regular, accurate readings.
Once the calibration is complete, the app will display a chart of your CVA as compared to your actual age.
Cardiovascular Age is divided into three levels:
- Lower than actual age: -5 years and below
- Aligned with actual age: between -5 and +5 years
- Higher than actual age: +5 years and higher
Tap the CVA chart for an expanded view with more detail that includes your pulse wave velocity (PWV) in meters per second, along with recent tags and activities. You can scroll this graph back to view previous weeks' data. CVA is a slow-moving metric and lifestyle changes can take several weeks to show a noticeable effect in the app.
How Oura Measures Cardiovascular Age
Each heartbeat produces a wave through your arteries. The speed of this wave is called pulse wave velocity and is measured in meters per second (m/s). Cardiovascular Age utilizes the Oura Ring's photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors to calculate PWV, which indicates the stiffness and thickness of arterial walls, and then gets interpreted as an age estimate. Faster pulse waves are associated with less flexible arteries and a higher CVA.
PPG technology works by shining a light onto your blood vessels. The intensity of the light reflected back onto a photodetector indicates the amount of blood in your blood vessel via a waveform.
When combined with a person's sex, actual age, and height, Oura can tell what kind of waves correspond to certain levels of arterial stiffness. By measuring your wave shape during sleep, Oura then calculates an estimate of your arterial stiffness (which is expressed as age years).
Watch this video about how Cardiovascular Age works:
Things to Keep in Mind
- If your CVA is higher than your actual age, don't focus on the absolute number. Instead focus on the relative trend of your CVA over time. Regular exercise and changes to diet and other habits can help improve your Cardiovascular Age
- Although Cardio Capacity and Cardiovascular Age are both part of Oura's Heart Health feature, the two measurements do not have a direct impact on each other. Seeing an increase or decrease in one metric will not necessarily mean seeing an increase or decrease in the other
- Cardiovascular Age results may not be valid for users with certain medical conditions, including heart diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, or pacemakers
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If you do not see your CVA data after having worn your Oura Ring for at least 14 nights, go to My Profile in the
menu of the Oura App and check that the following personal data has been entered:
- Sex assigned at birth
- Height: between 3'6" - 8'2" (1.1-2.5m)
- Age: between 15-120
The Oura Ring is not a medical device and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, monitor, or prevent medical conditions or illnesses. Please do not make any changes to your medication, nutrition, or workouts without first consulting your doctor or another medical professional.
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