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A sense of nervous excitement. Apparent is the chilled vapour emanating from my fellow runners as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I must sort my tracker. So does the person beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I won't start until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's challenging to spot a wrist without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who wear them.

It's a booming, multi-billion pound market. Names like Garmin lead the market, each with an broad array of various models to suit a range of lifestyles. Depending on how feature-packed the model you go for, prices can vary between £100 to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to relax."

"It reassures me… It's like a supporter guiding me."

"Please don't notify me about a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the comments people have shared from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? Currently, frustrating. It's telling me I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm running below are interfering with my GPS connection.

Millions of us strap these little gadgets onto our wrists and use them all day and night, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we used them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

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

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the multitude of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little obsessed with mine," an individual reveals.

While she loves how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a significant period.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a young baby, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that only too well."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I could, theoretically, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is maybe too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your health metrics and processing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project small, green LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, recording your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to interpret these figures is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are added, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor focusing on cardiology agrees. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."