The Health Diaries: How the Samsung Galaxy Ring helps with stress management

As a sound healer and wellness entrepreneur, Audrey O’Connor knows just how important a holistic approach to health is. That's why she's the perfect fit for our new Health Diaries series, where she'll be testing the Samsung Galaxy Ring for six weeks to see how it can support her overall wellness. Next up, is stress management – here’s how the ring has helped her identify which habits are helping, and which are hindering, her quest for better balance.

Stress has always shown up in my body before it shows up anywhere else. If I don’t sleep, I’m irritable, unfocused and not myself. So when I started using the Samsung Galaxy Ring, I was curious to see if it would confirm what I already sensed or show me something I’d been missing. It ended up doing both.

My stress levels sit in the moderate range most days, not high, not low, just consistently in the middle. And honestly, that tracks. I’m someone who can hold a lot, but I need my rituals to stay regulated. Moderate stress isn’t a bad thing either; most of us sit there naturally. I work well with a little bit of pressure. It’s just when life gets busy, and I’m moving quickly, that the early cues get quieter, and that’s when it can tip into something I need to pay attention to. The ring made that clearer than ever. On days when my sleep dipped, my stress score followed. On days where I kept my routines tight, everything held together. It wasn’t dramatic, just steady and predictable in a way that felt reassuring. Consistency, it turns out, is the thing that keeps me regulated.

I loved the Energy Score because it made me more intentional about my daily activities. My 5km walk is non-negotiable, and I strength train three days a week. My daily 5km in the park is for my head more than my body, and the one day I skipped it, my scores dropped.

Seeing that reflected back wasn’t discouraging; it was validating. I need that walk, it’s how I reset, clear my mind and come back into myself. It reminded me that the things I treat as ‘small’ are the things that simply hold everything together.

My baseline markers are solid, an average heart rate of 58 bpm and blood oxygen around 92%, but stress isn’t always about the obvious things. On April 17, the ring picked up a spike in internal stress, the kind you can’t see from the outside. I’d been carrying a lot mentally that day, and the data mirrored it back. I had completely bypassed the internal stress in the moment. A reminder that stress doesn’t have to look dramatic to be real, and that your body often knows before you do.

This is where the ring surprised me most; it showed me how often I override myself. I’m someone who moves through things steadily and gets things done. When life is busy, I don’t always register stress as stress; it can feel like momentum or just being in my flow. The cycle tracker made that even clearer; the days leading up to my period always showed a rise in stress, even when nothing felt off. The ring picked up those small changes and made them easier to catch in the moment.

There were days when I thought I was fine, but my stress score told a different story, not dramatically, just enough to make things clearer. Instead of pushing through like I usually do, I could respond to my body. Slow down. Drink water. Take ten minutes. Go outside. It wasn’t about fixing anything; it was about noticing.

It also made me look at stress differently. I often linked it with overwhelm – the obvious kind of stress. The ring kept catching the quieter things, the background tension, the mental load you tune out, the days when your body is working harder than you think. When you’re busy, it’s easy to miss that. The data just made it harder to ignore.

The small changes in my day helped. Breaking up admin with short pauses took the edge off. Getting outside, having a little stretch between tasks did the same. Too much screen time pushed it up again, so I avoided scrolling during my break time. None of this was new to me, but having it reflected made it clear enough that I could adjust instead of just pushing through. It reminded me that regulation isn’t always about big interventions; it’s the small adjustments that keep everything steady.

Stress management, for me, isn’t about eliminating stress. It’s about knowing my patterns well enough to stay ahead of myself, to respond rather than react. The Samsung Galaxy Ring made those patterns, and the consistency behind them, so much easier to recognise. It didn’t change who I am; it just helped me see what my body had been trying to tell me all along.

With the Samsung Galaxy Ring, your everyday movements go much further. Using the power of Galaxy AI, you can improve by analysing your wellness habits, sleep quality and heart rate to build a comprehensive picture of your wellness. As part of our Health Diaries series, Audrey will be trialling the Samsung Galaxy Ring over the coming months and sharing her wellness journey on IMAGE.ie.