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There's a feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the cold breath coming from my fellow runners as they execute the "about to run" jiggle on the starting line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to start my device. As does the runner alongside me.

The person in the line tuts. I won't start until… there! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's difficult to find a person without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us runners who wear them.

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar sector. Names like Apple Watch lead the market, featuring an wide array of various models to cater to a spectrum of budgets. Based on how feature-packed the device you go for, costs can range from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't stop checking."

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion guiding me."

"Stop telling me about a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the comments I've had from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are blocking my GPS connection.

Millions of us strap these compact monitors onto our wrists and wear them constantly, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're continuously recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can measure our nightly rest, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they don't track.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a bit obsessed with mine," a wearer admits.

While she loves how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, I don't need 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?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your vitals and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can detect capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to assess your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to interpret these numbers is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are introduced, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A professor studying cardiology agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their anxiety went up again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."