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There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "starting line" wiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I need to adjust my watch. As does the runner next to me.

The person behind us tuts. I won't start until… there! Connection established, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us athletes who wear them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar sector. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, featuring an wide array of different devices to fit a spectrum of lifestyles. According to how high tech the watch you go for, prices can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me about a restless night."

A handful of the comments I've received from like-minded device users when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Right now, irritating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the foliage along my route are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us fasten these small gadgets onto our arms and keep them on 24/7, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a true reflection of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the plethora of metrics and constant notifications just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a bit preoccupied with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she loves how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently productive enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a infant, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I could, theoretically, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is maybe too much for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your vitals and processing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly emit small, green LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, identifying your BPM. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to interpret these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A professor focusing on patient behaviour agrees. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."