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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I must adjust my device. So does the guy next to me.

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

In the mele, it's hard to spot a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us athletes who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Companies like Apple Watch lead the market, all offering an wide selection of diverse models to suit a variety of lifestyles. According to how feature-packed the watch you select, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to switch off."

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion guiding me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the comments people have shared from fellow device users when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are interfering with my satellite signal.

Millions of us attach these compact gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, seemingly at ease with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our step count. Today, they can analyse our sleep patterns, heart rate, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the data points we scrutinise a true reflection of reality? Do they improve our overall health, or do the plethora of readings and motivational messages just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a a little fixated with mine," an individual reveals.

While she values how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, there's no point to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I could, theoretically, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is possibly excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your vitals and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor pulsation, recording your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to assess your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the future.

But how to understand these readings is not straightforward. The expert worries that as more functions are incorporated, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

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

A health researcher specialising in wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate went up again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."