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A sense of nervous excitement. I can see the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Wait a second. I have to sort my device. The same goes for the guy beside me.

The person in the line tuts. I won't start until… there! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's hard to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who use them.

It's a booming, massive industry. Names like Garmin lead the market, featuring an broad range of various devices to cater to a spectrum of needs. According to how high tech the watch you select, costs can range from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't switch off."

"It comforts me… It feels like a supporter supporting me."

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

Just some of the reactions I've had from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Currently, irritating. It's indicating I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these small monitors onto our arms and use them constantly, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an idea of our step count. Currently, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the numbers we obsess over a true reflection of reality? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of metrics and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a quite obsessed with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she values how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be productive enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a young baby, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I love it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is maybe too much for me."

How Do They Work?

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

They usually shine minute LED lights onto your skin which can detect blood flow, detecting your heartbeat. More advanced devices detect changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

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

But how to understand these readings is complicated. The expert concerns that as more functions are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their anxiety went up again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."