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There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the frosty air coming from my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I have to adjust my device. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's difficult to spot a person without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them.

This is a booming, massive industry. Names like Apple Watch dominate, each with an wide range of various versions to cater to a spectrum of needs. According to how advanced the watch you select, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

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

"It reassures me… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a poor sleep."

A small sample of the comments I've had from fellow smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Currently, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these small monitors onto our wrists and keep them on constantly, apparently at ease with the fact they're continuously recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them solely to give us an idea of our step count. Today, they can measure our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little preoccupied with mine," an individual reveals.

While she values how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

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

Is it not possible to just take it off?

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

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your bodily functions and processing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically project small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor blood flow, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the future.

But how to interpret these readings is complex. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

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

A professor specialising in cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their anxiety increased again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."