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There's a nervous excitement. I can see the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift twitch of the hips.

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

Wait a second. I must start my tracker. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person waiting tuts. I'm not moving until… there! Connection established, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's difficult to find a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us athletes who rely on them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar industry. Brands like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, featuring an broad array of diverse models to fit a range of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the watch you select, price tags can start from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to stop checking."

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a restless night."

A small sample of the comments people have shared from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these little gadgets onto our wrists and use them all day and night, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we obsess over a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a bit preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals.

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

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a infant, I don't need to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I could, perhaps, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its exercise data, 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 novel way of monitoring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the majority use sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your skin which can detect pulsation, detecting your BPM. More advanced devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

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

But how to understand these readings is complicated. The expert fears that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

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

A professor focusing on patient behaviour concurs. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM increased. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their heart rate increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."