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There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the starting line.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I must sort my watch. The same goes for the guy beside me.

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… there! GPS ready, I'm off.

In the mele, it's challenging to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion dollar sector. Brands like Apple Watch dominate, each with an wide range of diverse versions to cater to a spectrum of needs. According to how advanced the watch you choose, price tags can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to relax."

"It comforts me… It's like a companion encouraging me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the responses people have shared from fellow device users when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Right now, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm passing under are blocking my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these little gadgets onto our arms and wear them 24/7, apparently at ease with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Today, they can analyse our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we analyse a true reflection of our actual health? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite obsessed with mine," an individual reveals.

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I've not slept," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can detect capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. More advanced devices analyse changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing 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 electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

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 at risk of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to understand these numbers is complicated. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are introduced, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher focusing on cardiology concurs. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate rose. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their anxiety went up again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."