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A sense of building tension. Apparent is the frosty air exhaled by my fellow runners as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the start line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I must sort my watch. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I'm not moving until… done! GPS ready, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a person without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who use them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound market. Brands like Garmin are prevalent, featuring an wide selection of diverse devices to fit a variety of budgets. According to how feature-packed the device you go for, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, I can't relax."

"It comforts me… It's like a companion encouraging me."

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

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

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's reporting I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small devices onto our wrists and use them all day and night, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Now, they can measure our sleep patterns, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

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

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they improve our overall health, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a a little obsessed with mine," one user admits.

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 active enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

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

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I could, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is maybe too much for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your health metrics and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to make sense of these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are introduced, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A health researcher focusing on cardiology concurs. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate increased. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate went up again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."