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A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they perform the "starting line" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Wait a second. I need to start my device. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person waiting tuts. I won't start until… there! GPS ready, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us participants who rely on them.

This is a explosive, massive market. Brands like Apple Watch lead the market, each with an wide array of various versions to fit a spectrum of lifestyles. According to how high tech the watch you choose, prices can vary between a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to switch off."

"It comforts me… It's like a companion guiding me."

"Stop telling me I've had a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments I've received from fellow smartwatch wearers when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm running below are interfering with my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small devices onto our arms and keep them on 24/7, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're continuously recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a bodily function they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we obsess over a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of measurements and cheerleading alerts just add to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a bit preoccupied with mine," a wearer admits.

While she loves how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be active enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is possibly excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your vitals and processing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe capillary action, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a stroke in the future.

But how to understand these readings is complicated. The expert fears that as additional features are added, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher focusing on cardiology concurs. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."