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A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A swift flick of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I have to adjust my watch. So does the guy next to me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's difficult to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us runners who rely on them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Garmin dominate, featuring an broad array of different versions to cater to a variety of budgets. Depending on how high tech the watch you go for, price tags can vary between £100 to thousands of pounds.

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

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

"Please don't notify me about a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the responses I've received from other device users when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the trees along my route are disrupting my GPS connection.

Millions of us attach these small monitors onto our arms and wear them constantly, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can measure our sleep patterns, heart rate, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a bodily function they don't track.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the data points we analyse a true reflection of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just add to our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a a little preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals.

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

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being active enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

Inside the Device

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

They typically emit small, green LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, recording your BPM. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to assess your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

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 flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to understand these figures is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

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

A professor focusing on patient behaviour agrees. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate rose. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate rose further.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."