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There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the cold breath emanating from my fellow runners as they do the "about to run" jiggle on the start line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Wait a second. I have to adjust my tracker. The same goes for the person beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to find a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us athletes who use them.

This is a thriving, massive sector. Names like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an wide selection of diverse models to suit a spectrum of needs. Depending on how high tech the watch you choose, price tags can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to switch off."

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

"Stop telling me I've had a poor sleep."

A handful of the reactions people have shared from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's reporting I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees along my route are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these compact gadgets onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can analyse our sleep quality, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the data points we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the multitude of metrics and constant notifications just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

While she appreciates how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was failing to be active enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

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

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I love it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

How Do They Work?

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", 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 flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to make sense of these numbers is complex. The expert fears that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

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

A health researcher focusing on patient behaviour concurs. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their anxiety went up again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."