THE SCIENCE BEHIND ONVY

The Scientific Foundation of our Zones Concept

Recovery influences the Zones of Stress and Activity

Low recovery negatively impacts our ability to cope with stress. Therefore a lower Recovery Score will decrease the recommended amount of Stress (Stress Zone).

Low recovery also negatively influences various aspects of athletic performance. Therefore a lower Recovery Score decreases the recommended amount of activity (Activity Zone).

  • Sleep deprivation impedes regeneration and decreases performance in athletes (Vitale et al. 2019)

 
 

Activity influences the Zones of Recovery and Stress

High activity is always accompanied by a certain amount of damage the body needs to repair. This repair is primarily done during rest (e.g., sleep). Therefore a higher Activity Score increases the amount of recommended recovery  (Recovery Zone).

  • Periodization of activity with adequate rest for optimal, continual improvements (Cunanan et al. 2018)

Physical activity can improve the ability to cope with stress. Therefore a higher Activity Score increases the amount of recommended stress (Stress Zone).

Mindfulness influences the Zone of Stress

Mindfulness can increase the ability to cope with stress. Therefore a higher Mindfulness Score increases the amount of recommended stress (Stress Zone).

 
 

Why is there an optimal Zone for Stress

For most people stress is something that should be reduced, period. We don't agree, because humans actually need and seek a certain amount of stress. 

Our Research Process concerning Zones and Metrics

Getting reliable and valid data from wearables is a challenge due to the heterogeneity of the market, frequent updates concerning hardware and software, and the inconsistency of measurements because they happen in non-standardized environments (Mühlen et al. 2021). When possible, we prefer data from wearables where a higher validity and reliability have been proven. E.g OURA for sleep measurements (Altini and Kinnunen 2021).

To reduce the probability of errors, we keep as close as possible to the scientific method while being aware that we are in an extremely dynamic environment where we need to provide pragmatic solutions.

  1. We accumulate data through third-party apps and devices like Apple Health or Oura.

  2. We conduct research concerning their scientific validity and reliability. With more consistency concerning study design, in the future, we might be able to use checklists from e.g. the INTERLIVE network (Mühlen et al. 2021)

  3. We formulate our hypothesis

  4. We validate the hypothesis internally and develop and improve our algorithms based on our findings.

  5. The algorithms get integrated into our application and we continuously validate and improve from hereon.

  6. For more vague and subjective concepts like Recovery (“How recovered do I feel?”) and stress (“How stressed do I feel?”), we conduct automatic user assessments to further validate our algorithms.

 Improving Oneself is a Scientific Endeavor

We help people to understand themselves better. To give our users the possibility to run experiments themselves, we based our ONVY process on the scientific method.

 

Option 1: Let the user go through the process himself

1) Observe - Check the ONVY Scores: “My recovery is suboptimal. Also I feel tired during the day.”

2) Research - Dig deeper into the Subscores: “Why is this the case?”

3) Create a Hypothesis - Derive understanding from Subscores: “It seems like I am not sleeping enough. If I sleep longer this might increase my recovery and I will feel less tired during the day.”

4) Test - Do an intervention: “I try to sleep 30 minutes longer”

5) Analyze - Check the ONVY Score: “Does my recovery (objectively and subjectively) improve when I sleep longer?”

6) Report - See if this had led to improvements: “Do I need to do anything else to improve my recovery?”

Option 2: Get AI-based feedback on the scores and receive guidance from ONVY with our Health Programs. In this case, we observe, research, create a hypothesis and recommend an intervention. The intervention is automatically tracked, analyzed, and provided as a comprehensive report to the user.

 
 
 

What is Mental Fitness?

Mental Fitness is the flexible capacity to utilize resources and skills to psychologically adapt to internal and external challenges or advantages to enable optimal functioning (Robinson, Oades, and Caputi 2015). Similar descriptions can be found for the concept of flow (Šimleša et al. 2018). In addition, mental Fitness includes stress management, decision-making, fatigue countermeasures, emotional stability, and emotional awareness (Aidman 2020). Also, physical ability, recovery, and relaxation techniques play an essential role in improving Mental Fitness (Reardon et al., 2019).

How our Metrics are connected to Mental Fitness

Sleep (recovery) deprivation decreases cognitive performance (Csipo et al. 2021), flow experience, and mood (Kaida and Niki 2013).

Higher activity correlates with well-being and flow state experiences (Wiese, Kuykendall, and Tay 2018). Exercise improves cognitive performance (Mandolesi et al. 2018).

The right amount of stress is necessary to achieve peak performance and to feel satisfied (Matthews et al. 2014). 

Higher mindfulness is correlated with life satisfaction (Liang et al. 2022), mental wellbeing (van Agteren et al. 2021), peak performance (Chen et al. 2018), and the propensity to get into a flow state (Moore 2013).

 
 

References

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Aidman, Eugene. 2020. “Cognitive Fitness Framework: Towards Assessing, Training and Augmenting Individual-Difference Factors Underpinning High-Performance Cognition.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 13. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00466.

Altini, Marco, and Hannu Kinnunen. 2021. “The Promise of Sleep: A Multi-Sensor Approach for Accurate Sleep Stage Detection Using the Oura Ring.” Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) 21 (13): 4302. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21134302.

Chen, Jian-Hong, Po-Hsin Tsai, Yin-Chou Lin, Chih-Ken Chen, and Ching-Yen Chen. 2018. “Mindfulness Training Enhances Flow State and Mental Health among Baseball Players in Taiwan.” Psychology Research and Behavior Management 12 (December): 15–21. https://doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S188734.

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Csipo, Tamas, Agnes Lipecz, Cameron Owens, Peter Mukli, Jonathan W. Perry, Stefano Tarantini, Priya Balasubramanian, et al. 2021. “Sleep Deprivation Impairs Cognitive Performance, Alters Task-Associated Cerebral Blood Flow and Decreases Cortical Neurovascular Coupling-Related Hemodynamic Responses.” Scientific Reports 11 (1): 20994. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00188-8.

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