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There's a building tension. Visible is the cold breath exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "starting line" jiggle on the starting line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I need to adjust my tracker. The same goes for the guy next to me.

The person in the line sighs. I won't start until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us athletes who use them.

It's a explosive, massive market. Brands like Garmin lead the market, each with an extensive range of diverse devices to cater to a range of lifestyles. Based on how high tech the model you select, prices can start from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to switch off."

"It provides solace… It's like a companion encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a restless night."

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

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Currently, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches along my route are interfering with my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small monitors onto our arms and keep them on all day and night, apparently at ease with the fact they're continuously recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can analyse our sleep patterns, heart rate, glucose levels, our body battery.

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

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of the truth? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of metrics and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little preoccupied with mine," one user admits.

While she values how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a young baby, there's no point to be notified I've not slept," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I value it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically project minute LED lights onto your arm which can detect blood flow, recording your BPM. More advanced devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

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

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to make sense of these figures is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying patient behaviour agrees. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."