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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the cold breath coming from my fellow runners as they do the "pre-race" wiggle on the starting line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I need to start my watch. So does the person next to me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's challenging to spot a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us runners who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion dollar industry. Names like Apple Watch lead the market, all offering an wide range of different models to fit a spectrum of budgets. Depending on how advanced the model you select, prices can vary between a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to relax."

"It reassures me… It acts as a companion guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a restless night."

A handful of the comments people have shared from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the overhead branches along my route are blocking my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these compact gadgets onto our wrists and use them all day and night, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an rough count of our step count. Now, they can measure our nightly rest, heart rate, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a bit obsessed with mine," a wearer confesses.

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

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was failing to be energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I have a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told I'm tired," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually shine minute LED lights onto your skin which can observe capillary action, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out 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 irregular signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the future.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as additional features are added, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher studying patient behaviour concurs. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM went up. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."