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A sense of building tension. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to adjust my watch. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, I'm off.

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

This is a booming, multi-billion pound industry. Names like Apple Watch dominate, all offering an wide range of diverse devices to cater to a variety of budgets. Based on how advanced the device you choose, costs can vary between an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to switch off."

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

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

Just some of the reactions people have shared from fellow device users when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are interfering with my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us strap these small gadgets onto our arms and keep them on constantly, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Now, they can track our sleep patterns, heart rate, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's difficult to find a bodily function they don't track.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a true reflection of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and constant notifications just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little fixated with mine," one user confesses.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be energetic enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is maybe too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually project minute LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the long term.

But how to make sense of these numbers is not straightforward. The expert fears that as further capabilities are introduced, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher studying patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their reading rose further.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."