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There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the frosty air exhaled by my competitors as they perform the "pre-race" wiggle on the start line.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to start my watch. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… yes! GPS ready, I'm off.

In the mele, it's difficult to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who wear them.

It's a booming, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an broad selection of various models to cater to a range of needs. Based on how high tech the model you select, prices can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to switch off."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments people have shared from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's telling me my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the trees along my route are disrupting my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these little monitors onto our wrists and use them 24/7, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we relied on them only to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can analyse our sleep quality, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But can they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the avalanche of measurements and motivational messages just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a bit obsessed with mine," an individual admits.

While she loves how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be productive enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a infant, there's no point to be told I'm tired," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically shine small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, recording your heartbeat. More advanced devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is complicated. The expert concerns that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher studying patient behaviour concurs. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."