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There's a building tension. Visible is the chilled vapour coming from my fellow runners as they do the "starting line" wiggle on the starting line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I need to adjust my device. As does the guy next to me.

The person behind us sighs. I won't start until… yes! Connection established, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's hard to see a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them.

This is a booming, massive sector. Brands like Garmin lead the market, all offering an extensive range of different versions to cater to a range of lifestyles. According to how feature-packed the watch you go for, costs can vary between a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to switch off."

"It provides solace… It acts as a supporter supporting me."

"Stop telling me I've had a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the responses I've had from like-minded device users when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on my own device? Currently, irritating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the trees along my route are disrupting my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small devices onto our arms and use them all day and night, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Now, they can measure our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a accurate representation of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of metrics and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a bit fixated with mine," an individual confesses.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

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

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly too much for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine minute LED lights onto your wrist which can observe capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to interpret these readings is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A professor focusing on wearable tech agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse rose. They got more worried. They checked again, and their anxiety went up again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."