Cycle Insights highlights which phase of your cycle you're in so that you can learn more about how your body changes within each phase.
What is Cycle Insights?
How Cycle Insights Works
How to Use Cycle Insights
How to Remove Your Women's Health Data from the Oura App
How to Turn Off Cycle Insights
Things to Keep in Mind
More Information
What Is Cycle Insights?
Cycle Insights allows members to better understand their full cycle by tracking the two main phases, follicular and luteal. Cycle Insights allows members to predict their period and also provides information about how the full cycle impacts the entire body. The feature is only available to active Gen3 members.
How Cycle Insights Works
Different hormone levels in each phase contribute to natural temperature fluctuations in the menstrual cycle. Cycle Insights uses these temperature deviations to accurately track, predict, and visualize your monthly cycle.
The feature is designed for individuals who have a menstrual cycle and a natural hormonal cycle. You'll need at least 60 nights of data recorded to establish your personal body temperature baseline in order to see your cycle phases.
Read more about How Your Menstrual Cycle Impacts Your Entire Body.
Cycle Phases
The menstrual cycle has two main phases, the follicular phase and the luteal phase. During the follicular phase, which is from the first day of menstruation to ovulation, rising estrogen levels may cause your body temperature to decrease. During the luteal phase, from ovulation until the next menstruation, rising progesterone levels usually elevate your body temperature.
Period Prediction
Oura uses your nightly body temperature, along with other biosignals like HRV, to make your multi-day period prediction window. Your period prediction windows are created from comprehensive data that builds over time, not single intakes. Historically, most period tracking solutions rely on the calendar method, which uses your last period start date and a user-inputted cycle length to predict the start of your next cycle. However, periods can change from cycle to cycle and be impacted by various factors like stress, diet, and illness.
Cycle Stats
Cycle stats show your typical cycle length, cycle variability, and period length. These are each based on the medians of the cycles you've logged over the past six months.
- Cycle length is defined as the time between the first day of your period and the day before your next period begins. Cycles that last between 21 and 35 days are considered regular.
- Cycle variability refers to the differences in the length of your cycles over time. Cycle variability of +/- three days or less is considered regular.
- Period length is defined as the time between your first and last day of menstrual bleeding. Periods that last between two and eight days are considered regular.
Your cycle stats rely on your period tags for the last six months, so it's important to log your period start date and each day of your period to get the most accurate data.
Many factors can contribute to changes in cycle variability, and a single instance of an irregular cycle variability is typically fine. However, if you're experiencing consistent irregularity in your cycle length, or have questions about your cycle in general, consult with your doctor.
How to Use Cycle Insights
Members new to Cycle Insights will see a home card about the feature and be guided through an onboarding flow, which includes a few questions on your cycle, including when your last period started, how long your cycle typically is, and whether you use hormonal contraceptives or other hormones.
If you use hormonal contraceptives or hormones, your natural temperature deviation may be impacted. You can still use Cycle Insights, but you will only see period predictions and not cycle phases or related insights. You can update your answer to the hormone question at any time in the Settings menu.
In order to see cycle phases, you must confirm the start date of your period each month by using the "Log period" button via the Cycle Insights home card or detailed view, or the + button on the bottom right of the app. If you change the date of your period start, or log it retroactively, your cycle phases will update.
As you continue to accumulate more temperature data by wearing your Oura Ring 24/7, and confirming or logging the exact start date of your period each month, your predictions will become more accurate.
Using any tags (for example, "Positive LH test") will not indicate when new cycles begin and, therefore, not display cycle phases.
You will see Cycle Insights directly on the home screen. You can tap into the Cycle Insights home card to find additional information about your temperature and your cycle history. In the detailed view, you'll be able to see the below data:
- Body temperature metric from last night
- What phase you're currently in (blue for follicular phase and purple for luteal phase)
- What day of your cycle you're on
- Educational information related to your current phase
- Estimated next period start
- The ability to log every day of your period, as well as your flow levels
- An option to click to the calendar view
- Cycle stats such as typical cycle length, cycle variability, and period length
- Additional resources about the menstrual cycle
- A shareable report of your last six months of data for cycle length, period length, temperature variation, cycle phases, and symptom tags
To delete a period entry:
- Tap on the Cycle Insights home card to see the detailed view
- Under the temperature graph, you can log or edit your period
- You can use the Calendar view to edit or delete (logged period dates will be highlighted by a red circle on the calendar)
How to Remove Your Women's Health Data from the Oura App
Women's Health data may include information about your cycles, such as your latest period start date and cycle length, women's health-related tags (such as positive pregnancy test, ovulation, positive LH test, etc.), period prediction settings, reproductive hormone answers, and pregnancy information. Your data is collected, used, and protected in compliance with Oura's Privacy Policy.
You can remove your data from the app at any time in the Settings menu under Women’s Health. Removing your data will disable all Women's Health features in the Oura App. If you would like to delete from Oura’s servers completely, you can choose Delete account and all data in the Settings menu or through Oura on the Web. See How Oura Protects Your Data.
How to Turn Off Cycle Insights
You can choose to turn on or off the Cycle Insights feature at any point in time. Tap the menu icon in the upper-left-hand corner of your home screen > Select Settings > Cycle Insights
You can use the toggle to turn off the entire Cycle Insights feature. Turning off Cycle Insights will pause period predictions and hide all cycle-related data.
Things to Keep in Mind
- Wear your ring on a consistent, 24/7 basis, and sync it to the app regularly, to help build a robust temperature data profile
- You need 60 nights of temperature data to display cycle phases. Without 60 days of data, you will only see your period prediction based on the calendar method
- The calendar view in the Oura App will only show logged period dates and period prediction windows. It currently will not show cycle phase data
- If you're currently taking a hormonal contraceptive or are pregnant, because your body's natural temperature variation is impacted as a result, Cycle Insights may not be able to accurately assess the timing of your period (if you still menstruate under these circumstances) or show your cycle phases. This is because regardless of the hormonal contraceptive being used, your cyclical variations, overall cycle length, and bleeding tendencies are all likely to deviate from your body's natural patterns
- Using the tag "positive pregnancy test" will automatically disable both Cycle Insights and period predictions. You can go into your Settings at any time and reenable the feature
- Medical factors such as infertility and fertility treatments, endometriosis, pregnancy, breastfeeding, overtraining, weight loss, stress, etc. can also have an impact on the key biosignals. If any of these apply to you, this may impact Oura's ability to accurately and consistently predict your period and cycle phases each month
- Only one period can be logged per calendar month, and data integrations from other period-tracking apps such as Apple Health or Clue are not currently available
