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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the cold breath exhaled by my rivals as they execute the "pre-race" jiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I have to adjust my device. As does the guy next to me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I won't start until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

In the mele, it's difficult to see a arm without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them.

It's a booming, massive market. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, each with an wide selection of different models to cater to a spectrum of needs. Depending on how advanced the device you go for, prices can vary between £100 to thousands of pounds.

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

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

"Stop telling me about a restless night."

A small sample of the responses people have shared from other smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are disrupting my GPS connection.

Millions of us fasten these little devices onto our arms and wear them all day and night, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them only to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they don't track.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we analyse a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a infant, there's no point to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the back of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect blood flow, recording your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually prevent illness, "identifying issues 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 medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to understand these numbers is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise 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 cardiology concurs. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their heart rate went up again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."