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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the frosty air exhaled by my fellow runners as they execute the "starting line" wiggle on the beginning point.

A swift movement of the hips.

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

Hold on. I must start my tracker. So does the runner beside me.

The person waiting tuts. I won't start until… done! Connection established, I'm off.

In the mele, it's difficult to spot a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them.

We're witnessing a thriving, massive industry. Companies like Apple Watch dominate, featuring an extensive selection of various versions to fit a range of budgets. Based on how advanced the watch you choose, costs can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, I can't switch off."

"It reassures me… It feels like a companion encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me about a poor sleep."

A small sample of the responses I've had from other device users when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm running below are disrupting my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these compact monitors onto our wrists and use them 24/7, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

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

But can they do what they say they do? And are the data points we scrutinise a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the multitude of measurements and motivational messages just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a bit fixated with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a six-month old, there's no point to be notified I'm tired," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the majority use detectors on the back of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. More advanced devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to make sense of these numbers is complicated. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are introduced, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse increased. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."