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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they do the "pre-race" jiggle on the starting line.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Hold on. I need to start my device. As does the guy beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I won't start until… done! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's hard to find a person without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us participants who use them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion dollar market. Companies like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, featuring an wide array of diverse models to cater to a range of budgets. Based on how high tech the device you go for, costs can vary between £100 to thousands of pounds.

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

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion supporting me."

"Stop telling me I've had a restless night."

A handful of the comments I've had from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Right now, annoying. It's indicating I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees along my route are interfering with my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these small gadgets onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously recording us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Now, they can analyse our sleep quality, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a true reflection of reality? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

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

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

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Couldn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and processing your data, but the majority use sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually emit small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, identifying your BPM. More advanced devices detect changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the future.

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

"I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM rose. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their reading rose further.

"Upon viewing stats 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."