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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they do the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I must adjust my tracker. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I refuse to go until… yes! GPS ready, I'm off.

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

This is a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Brands like Apple Watch are prevalent, each with an extensive range of different devices to suit a range of needs. According to how high tech the device you go for, price tags can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It feels like a friend encouraging me."

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

Just some of the reactions I've had from other smartwatch wearers when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, irritating. It's telling me I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the overhead branches along my route are blocking my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these compact devices onto our wrists and wear them all day and night, seemingly at ease with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them only to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Now, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they don't track.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a faithful picture of reality? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a quite fixated with mine," one user admits.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a young baby, there's no point to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"I could, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the majority use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They usually project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to understand these figures is complex. The expert fears that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so many things is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor specialising in cardiology concurs. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got more worried. They checked again, and their reading increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."