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An atmosphere of building tension. Apparent is the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they do the "about to run" 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. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I have to start my watch. As does the guy alongside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… done! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's hard to spot a person without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us participants who rely on them.

This is a thriving, massive market. Brands like Garmin lead the market, all offering an extensive range of diverse models to fit a range of needs. According to how advanced the watch you choose, costs can vary between an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

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

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

A handful of the responses I've received from fellow device users when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on mine? At this moment, annoying. It's telling me my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the overhead branches along my route are interfering with my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these compact gadgets onto our arms and wear them constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can analyse our sleep quality, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a true reflection of our actual health? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a bit obsessed with mine," one user confesses.

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

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your health metrics and processing your data, but the majority use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly shine minute LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to assess your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity 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 vulnerable of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to understand these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher specialising in patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM increased. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."