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A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air exhaled by my competitors as they perform the "pre-race" wiggle on the starting line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I have to sort my tracker. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person waiting sighs. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to spot a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who use them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Companies like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an wide range of diverse versions to fit a range of lifestyles. Depending on how high tech the watch you select, prices can start from £100 to a significant investment.

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

"It reassures me… It's like a friend encouraging me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a restless night."

A handful of the comments I've received from other device users when I inquire what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, irritating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are disrupting my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us strap these little gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them only to give us an idea of our daily steps. Today, they can analyse our sleep quality, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we analyse a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

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

Prior to discovering she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently active enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be notified I've not slept," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I could, perhaps, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the most use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They usually emit small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe capillary action, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the future.

But how to understand these readings is complex. The expert concerns 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 metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A professor studying patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate increased again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."