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A sense of nervous excitement. Apparent is the frosty air coming from my competitors as they perform the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I need to adjust my device. So does the guy alongside me.

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

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

This is a booming, massive industry. Brands like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, each with an wide range of various models to suit a variety of needs. Depending on how advanced the model you go for, prices can range from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I can't stop checking."

"It comforts me… It feels like a friend guiding me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a restless night."

A handful of the comments people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's telling me I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the overhead branches along my route are disrupting my satellite signal.

Millions of us attach these small monitors onto our arms and use them constantly, seemingly at ease with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we scrutinise a faithful picture of the truth? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the multitude of measurements and constant notifications just add to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a quite fixated with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she values how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I know that only too well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the long term.

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

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in cardiology agrees. Her work 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 condition experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate increased. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their reading rose further.

"If we see data about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."