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A sense of building tension. Apparent is the chilled vapour emanating from my competitors as they execute the "starting line" wiggle on the start line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I have to adjust my watch. As does the person beside me.

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Signal acquired, I'm off.

In the mele, it's challenging to see a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who use them.

This is a explosive, massive sector. Brands like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, each with an broad selection of diverse models to fit a range of lifestyles. According to how high tech the device you choose, costs can vary between a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

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

"It provides solace… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a poor sleep."

A small sample of the reactions I've had from other device users when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on mine? Right now, annoying. It's indicating my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the trees I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us fasten these little gadgets onto our arms and wear them 24/7, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them only to give us an idea of our step count. Today, they can analyse our nightly rest, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But do they do what they say they do? And are the data points we analyse a faithful picture of reality? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a bit preoccupied with mine," one user confesses.

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a significant period.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I could, I suppose, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I value it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly shine small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor blood flow, recording your BPM. More advanced devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal electrical activity 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 at risk of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is complex. The expert worries that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech agrees. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their anxiety went up again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."