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There's a nervous excitement. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my rivals as they perform the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I need to start my tracker. The same goes for the runner alongside me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… yes! Connection established, away I go.

During the scramble, it's hard to spot a wrist without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us runners who use them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar industry. Names like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an extensive array of various versions to suit a spectrum of lifestyles. Based on how high tech the watch you choose, price tags can start from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

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

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

"Stop telling me about a poor sleep."

A small sample of the reactions people have shared from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? Currently, irritating. It's telling me I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm running below are interfering with my GPS connection.

Millions of us fasten these little monitors onto our wrists and keep them on all day and night, apparently at ease with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

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

But can they do what they advertise? And are the data points we scrutinise a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of metrics and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little obsessed with mine," an individual reveals.

While she loves how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be active enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a six-month old, there's no point to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your vitals and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project small, green LED lights onto your arm which can observe capillary action, detecting your BPM. Higher-end devices measure changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag 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 about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a stroke in the future.

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

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

A clinical psychologist studying patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."