Recovery Index
Recovery Index measures how quickly resting heart rate stabilizes to its lowest point during the night. The metric captures the time or pattern of heart rate decline after sleep onset, reflecting how efficiently the cardiovascular system transitions into deep rest. A faster stabilization to low resting heart rate indicates efficient cardiovascular recovery; slower stabilization suggests the body required more time to reach its resting state.
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Key Takeaways
Represents how quickly heart rate reaches its overnight minimum.
Faster stabilization indicates efficient cardiovascular settling.
Influenced by late eating, alcohol, exercise timing, and stress.
Pattern analysis across similar nights is most informative.
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How It's Measured
Oura calculates Recovery Index by analyzing the heart rate trajectory during early sleep.
Common Influences
Late eating: Digestion requires elevated metabolism and blood flow, delaying heart rate decline.
Deep Dive
Recovery Index represents the efficiency of the cardiovascular transition into rest during sleep. It indicates how quickly the heart rate descends to its overnight minimum after the body enters the sleep state.
A useful framing is that recovery index reflects cardiovascular settling. When the body is well-recovered and not processing significant physiological stressors (recent exercise, alcohol, illness), heart rate drops quickly to its nightly minimum. When the body is managing stressors, the descent is slower or delayed, indicating ongoing cardiovascular work during early sleep.
Upon falling asleep, heart rate normally decreases as parasympathetic activity increases and metabolic demand drops. The rate of this decline reflects autonomic balance and the absence of factors requiring elevated cardiac output.
Factors that slow heart rate recovery include: metabolic processing (digesting a late meal, metabolizing alcohol), exercise recovery (elevated metabolism from recent intense activity), sympathetic activation (stress, illness), and circadian misalignment. The recovery index captures whether early sleep showed efficient cardiovascular settling or prolonged elevation.