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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they execute the "pre-race" wiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I have to adjust my device. The same goes for the runner alongside me.

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

During the scramble, it's challenging to see a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who wear them.

This is a explosive, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an wide array of various devices to cater to a range of budgets. According to how advanced the watch you select, costs can vary between an affordable sum to a significant investment.

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

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

"Stop telling me I've experienced a poor sleep."

A handful of the reactions people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's reporting I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these compact devices onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them only to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Currently, they can track our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of the truth? Do they boost our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a quite fixated with mine," an individual admits.

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

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently active enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how healthy 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 necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to understand these figures is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor specialising in patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely 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 even more concerned. They checked again, and their anxiety increased again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."