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There's a building tension. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my fellow runners as they execute the "starting line" wiggle on the start line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I have to start my device. The same goes for the person beside me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… yes! Connection established, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's hard to see a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us runners who use them.

It's a thriving, massive market. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an wide selection of various versions to fit a spectrum of lifestyles. Depending on how feature-packed the watch you select, price tags can start from £100 to a significant investment.

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

"It provides solace… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a restless night."

A small sample of the reactions people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, irritating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the overhead branches along my route are interfering with my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us attach these small monitors onto our arms and use them constantly, apparently at ease with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an rough count of our step count. Currently, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of measurements and constant notifications just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a quite preoccupied with mine," an individual reveals.

While she values how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I've not slept," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I could, theoretically, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically project small, green LED lights onto your arm which can detect capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. Higher-end devices measure changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is complicated. The expert fears that as additional features are introduced, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher specialising in patient behaviour concurs. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."