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There's a building tension. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my fellow runners as they execute the "starting line" wiggle on the start line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I must sort my device. So does the guy alongside me.

The person waiting sighs. I'm not moving until… there! Connection established, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to see a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us runners who use them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, featuring an wide selection of diverse models to cater to a range of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the watch you go for, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to relax."

"It provides solace… It's like a friend supporting me."

"Please don't notify me about a restless night."

Just some of the reactions I've received from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I question what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on my own device? At this moment, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these compact devices onto our arms and use them all day and night, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Now, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they don't track.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite fixated with mine," an individual admits.

While she loves how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I have a young baby, there's no point to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure 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 health metrics and analysing your data, but the majority use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, identifying your heartbeat. More advanced devices measure changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the future.

But how to understand these numbers is complex. The expert concerns that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

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

A health researcher studying wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM went up. They got more worried. They checked again, and their heart rate rose further.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."