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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. I can see the chilled vapour exhaled by my fellow runners as they execute the "about to run" jiggle on the start line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I need to start my tracker. So does the runner alongside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… there! Signal acquired, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.

This is a booming, multi-billion dollar market. Names like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an broad range of different devices to cater to a variety of lifestyles. According to how feature-packed the device you go for, price tags can range from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I can't relax."

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion guiding me."

"Stop telling me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the comments I've had from other device users when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's reporting I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are disrupting my GPS connection.

A vast number of us strap these small monitors onto our arms and keep them on all day and night, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the data points we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of readings and constant notifications just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a quite preoccupied with mine," one user admits.

While she appreciates how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being active enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a six-month old, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect capillary action, identifying your BPM. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to assess your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate increased. They got more worried. They checked again, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."