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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour emanating from my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick flick of the hips.

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

Wait a second. I have to adjust my watch. The same goes for the person alongside me.

The person waiting sighs. I'm not moving until… there! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's hard to see a person without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us participants who wear them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion dollar sector. Names like Garmin are prevalent, featuring an extensive selection of various models to cater to a variety of budgets. Depending on how feature-packed the watch you choose, costs can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to relax."

"It comforts me… It feels like a companion supporting me."

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

Just some of the comments people have shared from other device users when I inquire what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on mine? At this moment, annoying. It's telling me I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the foliage along my route are interfering with my GPS connection.

Millions of us strap these compact monitors onto our arms and use them 24/7, apparently at ease with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Today, they can track our nightly rest, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we obsess over a faithful picture of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just add to our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a a little preoccupied with mine," a wearer confesses.

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

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a young baby, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that only too well."

Couldn't she just take it off?

"I could, I suppose, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I value it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the back of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

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 future.

But how to interpret these readings is complex. The expert concerns that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher focusing on cardiology concurs. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

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

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."