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A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the chilled vapour exhaled by my fellow runners as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I must start my tracker. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person waiting tuts. I'm not moving until… yes! Connection established, away I go.

During the scramble, it's hard to find a arm without a wearable on it. And it's not just us runners who wear them.

This is a explosive, massive sector. Companies like Apple Watch dominate, all offering an extensive array of different models to suit a range of budgets. According to how advanced the watch you select, prices can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

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

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the reactions people have shared from fellow device users when I question what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, annoying. It's reporting my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are disrupting my satellite signal.

A vast number of us strap these small devices onto our wrists and keep them on all day and night, seemingly at ease with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them only to give us an idea of our step count. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

It's difficult to find a bodily function they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a bit preoccupied with mine," one user reveals.

While she loves how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be energetic enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your vitals and interpreting your data, but the majority use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly shine small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, identifying your heartbeat. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to assess your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically prevent illness, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic signals 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 blood clot in the future.

But how to make sense of these numbers is complicated. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

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

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."