The Oura Ring can be a helpful tool for spotting changes in your entire body during your menstrual cycle by delivering accurate, personalized resting heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), respiratory rate, sleep, and body temperature trends. In addition to Oura’s Period Prediction feature, you can find insights of your own by using Oura’s temperature trend tools for cycle tracking. Read how below.

What Patterns Can You See?

Your body temperature naturally shifts as different hormones drive different phases of your cycle:

Your temperature is cooler during the first half of your cycle (your follicular phase, the phase where the follicles on your ovaries grow) when your estrogen levels are high.
Your temperature is warmer during the second half of your cycle (your luteal phase, the phase which begins with ovulation and the follicle turning into a corpus luteum) when your progesterone levels are high.
Your temperature decreases at the start of your period when your hormone levels drop off.

Using Your Oura App

To spot these patterns in your own data, you can use the temperature “Trend” View, which was designed to help spot long-term patterns like menstrual cycles.

1. In the Oura App, your daily body temperature trend appears on your “Readiness” tab and answers the question: “How much higher/lower was my temperature last night compared to my baseline?”

2. To see patterns in your temperature trends over time, tap on “Body temperature.”

3. You can toggle between long and short-term views of your temperature trends by alternating between the Daily and Trend views of your temperature.

The Daily view focuses on short-term temperature variations and is optimal for tracking acute reactions in the body like emerging illness and physical, mental, or emotional strain.
The Trend view focuses on longer-term changes and is optimized for looking at monthly trends in your data, like menstrual cycles. Each date displays a weighted average of how your body temperature varies from your baseline based on a three-day window — making it easier to spot inflection points (moments of change) at the start of each cycle phase. Those changes occur over multiple days rather than a single night.

4. In your Trend view, keep an eye out for these patterns:

5. If you’re looking for those same patterns in your Daily view, they may be harder to spot:

6. Keep in mind that the temperature trends generally rise slightly, not acutely, during certain phases of the menstrual cycle.

Example Menstrual Cycles

Keep in mind that cycles vary from person to person, and cycle to cycle. Your body is unique, and you may not see these exact patterns. You can read more about why menstrual cycles vary, or discover what patterns other members of the Oura Community have seen with the examples below. All patterns are unique, but these community members shared their findings hoping to help others get started.

Example 1: “I had no idea how long my cycle was until I started tracking….Some of them were shorter and some were much longer.” – Ramya

Example 2: “I’m actually on hormonal birth control and I continuously dose so I don’t have a period. It was fascinating to discover that my patterns are totally different, I don’t have phases.” – Casey

Example 3: “My temperature increase is what first made me think I might be pregnant! It went up and stayed up.” – Laura

Example 4: “You can really clearly see when I started birth control and my body became warmer. It took some time for my new baseline to adjust.” – Hannah

How to Use Oura Temperature Trends to Track Your Cycle

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