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There's a building tension. I can see the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they do the "starting line" jiggle on the starting line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. Three, two, one...

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

The person behind us sighs. I'm not moving until… there! Signal acquired, I'm off.

In the mele, it's difficult to find a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us runners who rely on them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion dollar sector. Brands like Garmin are prevalent, each with an broad range of various devices to suit a variety of budgets. Depending on how advanced the watch you choose, price tags can start from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

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

"Please don't notify me about a restless night."

A small sample of the responses I've received from other smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? Right now, annoying. It's telling me I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us fasten these compact monitors onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, seemingly at ease with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can analyse our sleep patterns, heart rate, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we obsess over a faithful picture of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the plethora of readings and motivational messages just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a bit fixated with mine," an individual reveals.

While she values how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be energetic enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a infant, there's no point to be informed I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I value it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly too much for me."

How Do They Work?

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

They usually shine small, green LED lights onto your skin which can monitor pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices measure changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to interpret these numbers is complex. The expert worries that as additional features are added, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A professor focusing on cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate rose further.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."