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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the starting line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I must start my device. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… done! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's challenging to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us runners who wear them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar sector. Brands like Apple Watch are prevalent, each with an wide array of different models to fit a spectrum of budgets. Based on how high tech the device you select, costs can vary between £100 to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to switch off."

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

"Stop telling me about a poor sleep."

A handful of the comments people have shared from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on my own device? Right now, irritating. It's reporting I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small devices onto our arms and keep them on constantly, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Now, they can measure our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

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

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a significant period.

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

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your vitals and processing your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly project small, green LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, detecting your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

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 show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the years to come.

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

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher specialising in wearable tech agrees. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate went up. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their reading increased again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."