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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour coming from my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A quick movement of the hips.

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

Hold on. I must sort my device. So does the runner alongside me.

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

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who rely on them.

This is a booming, multi-billion pound sector. Brands like Samsung Galaxy dominate, featuring an wide selection of diverse models to cater to a spectrum of budgets. According to how feature-packed the device you choose, price tags can vary between an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to switch off."

"It provides solace… It's like a companion encouraging me."

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

A handful of the reactions I've received from other tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the foliage along my route are disrupting my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these little gadgets onto our arms and use them all day and night, seemingly at ease with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an idea of our step count. Now, they can analyse our nightly rest, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the data points we analyse a true reflection of the truth? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of metrics and constant notifications just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a a little fixated with mine," an individual admits.

While she values how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently active enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a young baby, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship 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 too much for me."

How Do They Work?

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

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. More advanced devices analyse changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to assess your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to understand these figures is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are incorporated, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

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

A clinical psychologist specialising in cardiology agrees. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate went up again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."