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A sense of building tension. Visible is the cold breath emanating from my competitors as they perform the "about to run" jiggle on the starting line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I need to adjust my device. As does the guy alongside me.

The person behind us sighs. I'm not moving until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

During the scramble, it's difficult to spot a wrist without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us runners who use them.

We're witnessing a explosive, massive sector. Brands like Samsung Galaxy dominate, featuring an extensive selection of various models to fit a variety of needs. Based on how advanced the watch you go for, price tags can start from £100 to a significant investment.

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

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

"Please don't notify me I've had a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments people have shared from other device users when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's indicating I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the overhead branches along my route are interfering with my satellite signal.

A vast number of us fasten these small devices onto our wrists and wear them all day and night, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them only to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Today, they can measure our sleep quality, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a true reflection of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of readings and constant notifications just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a bit obsessed with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she loves how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be energetic enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"I could, I suppose, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your health metrics and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They typically emit minute LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. More advanced devices measure changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall 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 perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

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

But how to understand these figures is complicated. The expert fears that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully understand their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse increased. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their reading went up again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."