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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the starting line.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to start my tracker. As does the person beside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… yes! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's difficult to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us participants who wear them.

We're witnessing a booming, multi-billion pound sector. Brands like Garmin lead the market, featuring an extensive array of diverse models to suit a variety of needs. Depending on how advanced the watch you select, price tags can start from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to switch off."

"It comforts me… It's like a supporter encouraging me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments people have shared from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's reporting I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us strap these little devices onto our wrists and use them all day and night, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an idea of our daily steps. Currently, they can track 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 can they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we analyse a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our overall health, or do the plethora of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a bit obsessed with mine," one user confesses.

While she loves how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your vitals and analysing your data, but the majority use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly emit small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe blood flow, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic impulses 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 early warning they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is complicated. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

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

A professor studying wearable tech agrees. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse increased. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate went up again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."