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A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" wiggle on the starting line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I need to adjust my device. So does the guy beside me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… there! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a wrist without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us runners who wear them.

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar sector. Brands like Samsung Galaxy dominate, featuring an broad array of various models to suit a range of lifestyles. According to how advanced the model you select, costs can range from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

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

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion guiding me."

"Please don't notify me about a poor sleep."

A handful of the reactions people have shared from fellow device users when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? Currently, frustrating. It's telling me I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are blocking my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these small gadgets onto our wrists and use them all day and night, apparently comfortable with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the numbers we scrutinise a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they boost our overall health, or do the multitude of measurements and constant notifications just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a bit fixated with mine," one user admits.

While she loves how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be productive enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I could, perhaps, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I value it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They typically emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the future.

But how to understand these numbers is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are added, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on patient behaviour agrees. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate increased. They got more worried. They checked again, and their heart rate went up again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."