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An atmosphere of building tension. Visible is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I must sort my device. So does the runner beside me.

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… yes! Signal acquired, away I go.

During the scramble, it's challenging to spot a wrist without a wearable on it. And it's not just us participants who rely on them.

This is a booming, massive industry. Names like Apple Watch lead the market, all offering an broad range of different versions to fit a range of needs. Based on how advanced the model you choose, costs can range from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I can't switch off."

"It reassures me… It's like a companion encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the responses I've had from other tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are disrupting my satellite signal.

Millions of us strap these little devices onto our arms and wear them constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them only to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Today, they can analyse our sleep quality, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

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

But do they do what they advertise? And are the data points we obsess over a accurate representation of the truth? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a quite obsessed with mine," an individual admits.

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

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a six-month old, I don't need to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the most use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert worries that as additional features are added, people may not be able 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 professor studying patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate went up again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."