Using my Oura ring to support my sepsis recovery in 2026

Photo by Jerry Kavan on Unsplash

This year, my partner and I have decided to gift each other the same thing; we have purchased Oura rings with a year’s subscription to their health app to devote some energy to the project of feeling as physically well as we possibly can in 2026.

2025 - Sepsis, PTSD and losing mobility

This is off the back of a very difficult end to 2024, where I was gravely ill and hospitalised with septic shock and the ongoing impact of sepsis. It has taken me all of 2025 to return to the point where I can do many of the things that I ended 2024 with. I was on intravenous antibiotics for some weeks, followed by an incredible cocktail of medicines upon discharge from the hospital, and unfortunately, I went on to develop PTSD and health anxiety as a result of my experience.

Last year, I was lucky to spend Christmas at home with my partner and baby, but I was severely weakened by my infection and had lost the ability to walk. I was in a wheelchair for some months and then on crutches for longer. I have only really regained the ability to “walk” in the last few months, and my energy levels have begun to return to normal (though what is normal with a toddler remains to be seen!).

I remain impaired physically and cannot walk for long periods without pain. I can’t participate in exercise or sport the way I used to, and driving long distances can be difficult. My life has been profoundly changed, and so have those of my partner and child. I mention all of this to contextualise my decision to go “all-in” on this innovative health tracking device and focus so much attention on my wellbeing in 2026.

What impact on mental health?

It wouldn’t be like me to only focus on physical health, for without my brain, I am lost, and with everything that it went through over the last year, I am keen to treat it kindly and do my best to support it. Working through the PTSD of post-sepsis syndrome was difficult, and the health anxiety that came with it has now, thankfully, been processed. But I’m really interested in how this health data impacts how I feel about myself. Will it marry with the scores that Oura gives me? Will I be able to tie good mental health to certain outputs and make feeling good feel more predictable? Will having so much data at my fingertips mean that I pore over the numbers and obsess over metrics? Time will tell.

Tracking my wellbeing

I’ve had my Oura ring for a week now and have been wearing it comfortably without noticing it in my everyday tasks - bar showering or bathing my son. For me, this element is important because for health monitoring to really become something that I integrate into my routine, I’m the kind of person who really needs to not notice it. As someone who doesn’t usually wear a watch, this is where the jewellery format of this tracker piqued my interest. If I can forget that I’m doing something good for myself (until I reap the benefits), so much the better.

I’ve already had some sleep readings and activity readings that make the act of living feel a little more gamified. As a former avid gamer, I really enjoy being scored and feeling challenged to improve my numbers - so for a person who is extremely competitive with themselves, this works well! However, I can see that if our personality has a tendency to focus on this kind of data with a negative lens (i.e. our inner critic takes hold and uses this data as a means of admonishing us for our shortcomings), then I can see that this level of information could potentially be problematic.

Interaction with health anxiety

One of the principal concerns with sepsis is that the infection that has become blood-borne will have travelled to major organs, including the heart, and have begun to damage the tissues there. As I have a family history of heart issues, this is something that concerned me greatly, so the combination of this pre-awareness, coupled with the vulnerability of the situation and the worry that swirled around me in the hospital, eventually manifested in some overdeveloped concerns in my brain once I was back home and convalescing.

Developing health anxiety - even for a relatively short period, such as I experienced - was exhausting and very consuming. Fuelled by the fact that I had not recognised the grave nature of my symptoms and the shock at my diagnosis and urgent hospitalisation, did some work to undermine my confidence in my body and in my ability to recognise when it was in danger. Essentially, this and living through a deeply traumatising hospitalisation and a great deal of physical pain made me the ideal candidate for this kind of suffering.

How Oura is helping me to push back on anxious thoughts

I’m very lucky to be able to say that I am no longer struggling with this. Over time, my confidence in myself returned, and as my health improved, my belief that I would be okay eclipsed the fears that I might not. One of the ways that I decided to put data to good use in support of this recovery is to have a device do the work of monitoring my well-being for me. At the time, I began to use my old Fitbit Charge to track my heart rate. I have experienced periods of having an irregular heartbeat several times in my life, and there has usually been a precipitating factor linked with it, so when I started to notice a few off-beats, I decided that I needed something less subjective to monitor my heart whilst I waited for an appointment with my doctor.

The act of giving the task of monitoring to an unemotional, unbiased machine, such as the Fitbit or Oura ring, means that I can delegate the task of paying attention to it, and for me, it is the burden of noticing, which can feel so weighty. I cannot - naturally - always trust myself to be an unemotional, unbiased reader of my own data. But I can trust these devices to do so (to a degree, I would always advocate that a medical professional would be the ideal data interpreter, but they can be difficult to come by), and they are available at any time to respond to my needs, truly what a brain with an anxious propensity can benefit from.

So does this mean guaranteed good mental health in 2026?

Here’s hoping for a better twelve months to come in terms of both physical and mental health in 2026. I’m going to be rounding off my year with some good intentions and plans in place for supporting myself the best I can. I’m going into the new year with more information, more confidence in my body’s ability to heal, and more awareness of how profound the mind-body link impacts us deeply. I’ll be checking in with my own mental health needs as the year progresses and being sure to maintain my journaling practice, which is the cornerstone of how I proactively take care of how I think and feel. I'm going to dive into my Oura data when it feels right to, and use it to encourage me to build positive physical habits, including significant periods of rest, which can be hard to come by as the parent of a toddler, to support my brain to be the most well it can be, whilst also being kind to myself.

What are you planning for yourself in 2026? Perhaps now is the time to note your intentions? Will you be investing in a device? Journalling? Going to therapy?

Let me know in the comments.
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• This is an unbiased and unsponsored article which has received no remuneration for the mention of the products of brands therein - all opinions are authentically my own.  I include my referral code here if you would like to try Oura 4 with a 10% discount.