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An atmosphere of building tension. Apparent is the frosty air emanating from my fellow runners as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I have to sort my watch. The same goes for the runner alongside me.

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

In the mele, it's challenging to find a person without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us participants who wear them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion pound sector. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, featuring an wide range of diverse versions to fit a variety of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the watch you choose, price tags can range from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't switch off."

"It provides solace… It acts as a friend guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the reactions people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on my own device? At this moment, irritating. It's indicating I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm passing under are disrupting my satellite signal.

A vast number of us strap these little devices onto our arms and wear them constantly, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But do they do what they advertise? And are the data points we analyse a true reflection of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of readings and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a a little obsessed with mine," one user reveals.

While she loves how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being productive enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I love it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your vitals and analysing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project small, green LED lights onto your skin which can observe blood flow, identifying your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially save lives, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular electrical activity 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 preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to interpret these numbers is complicated. The expert concerns that as more functions are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in cardiology agrees. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse rose. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety rose further.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."