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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. I can see the cold breath coming from my rivals as they perform the "starting line" jiggle on the starting line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I must sort my watch. As does the runner next to me.

The person behind us tuts. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us participants who wear them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, featuring an wide range of various devices to fit a spectrum of needs. According to how advanced the watch you go for, prices can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to relax."

"It comforts me… It's like a supporter encouraging me."

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

A handful of the reactions people have shared from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Right now, irritating. It's telling me I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are interfering with my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us strap these little gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on all day and night, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them only to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Today, they can track our nightly rest, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of the truth? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

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

While she appreciates how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I could, perhaps, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and processing your data, but the most use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially save lives, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

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

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

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many things is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor studying cardiology agrees. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their anxiety rose further.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."