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There's a nervous excitement. Apparent is the cold breath coming from my fellow runners as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Wait a second. I need to start my device. As does the person beside me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… yes! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's difficult to see a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us runners who wear them.

This is a booming, massive industry. Brands like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, featuring an extensive array of diverse versions to suit a spectrum of budgets. According to how feature-packed the device you select, price tags can vary between an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, I can't switch off."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the responses people have shared from other smartwatch wearers when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on mine? At this moment, annoying. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us attach these little devices onto our arms and use them all day and night, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a true reflection of the truth? Do they boost our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she values how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that only too well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to assess your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to understand these numbers is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as more functions are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I have some doubts that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying patient behaviour concurs. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM increased. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate went up again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."