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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the start line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I have to sort my tracker. As does the person next to me.

The person waiting sighs. I'm not moving until… done! Signal acquired, away I go.

In the mele, it's challenging to find a person without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us athletes who wear them.

We're witnessing a booming, massive sector. Brands like Garmin dominate, featuring an extensive range of various versions to cater to a range of lifestyles. Based on how feature-packed the device you choose, price tags can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It feels like a friend encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me about a restless night."

Just some of the responses people have shared from other device users when I ask what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on my own device? Currently, irritating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the foliage along my route are blocking my location tracking.

Millions of us fasten these compact monitors onto our wrists and wear them constantly, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Now, they can analyse our nightly rest, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the data points we obsess over a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she appreciates how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a six-month old, there's no point to be informed I've not slept," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I value it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the back of the watch.

They usually shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can observe blood flow, detecting your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the long term.

But how to interpret these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A professor focusing on cardiology concurs. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got more worried. They checked again, and their anxiety rose further.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."