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A sense of nervous excitement. Apparent is the frosty air emanating from my rivals as they perform the "about to run" jiggle on the start line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I need to start my watch. The same goes for the person alongside me.

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

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us runners who rely on them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, all offering an extensive range of diverse versions to fit a spectrum of budgets. Based on how high tech the model you choose, costs can vary between a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to relax."

"It reassures me… It's like a companion supporting me."

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

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

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's telling me I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the overhead branches along my route are blocking my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us strap these little monitors onto our arms and wear them 24/7, apparently comfortable with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can measure our sleep quality, stress levels, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we analyse a true reflection of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of metrics and constant notifications just add to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a quite obsessed with mine," one user reveals.

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

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Couldn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the majority use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They usually shine minute LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, detecting your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the future.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as additional features are introduced, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher studying wearable tech agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their anxiety went up again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."