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A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air exhaled by my fellow runners as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I need to adjust my tracker. As does the person beside me.

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

During the scramble, it's challenging to spot a person without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us participants who rely on them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion dollar sector. Names like Garmin are prevalent, featuring an extensive selection of different models to fit a range of budgets. Depending on how feature-packed the watch you choose, price tags can start from £100 to thousands of pounds.

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

"It provides solace… It's like a supporter supporting me."

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

A small sample of the responses I've received 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, irritating. It's indicating I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees I'm passing under are interfering with my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these compact devices onto our arms and use them constantly, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Now, they can measure our sleep quality, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and constant notifications just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a quite fixated with mine," an individual admits.

While she loves how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a significant period.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a infant, there's no point to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the majority use sensors on the back of the watch.

They typically project minute LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, identifying your BPM. Higher-end devices measure changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is not straightforward. The expert fears that as further capabilities are added, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM increased. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."