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There's a nervous excitement. Apparent is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I need to start my watch. So does the runner alongside me.

The person in the line sighs. I'm not moving until… there! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to find a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them.

We're witnessing a booming, massive industry. Names like Garmin dominate, each with an wide range of various devices to suit a variety of needs. Depending on how high tech the watch you choose, prices can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to stop checking."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a poor sleep."

A handful of the responses I've had from fellow device users when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the foliage along my route are interfering with my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these small monitors onto our wrists and use them 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them only to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Now, they can analyse our sleep quality, heart rate, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they don't track.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the numbers we obsess over a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," a wearer admits.

While she values how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be energetic enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a six-month old, I don't need to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I could, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your vitals and analysing your data, but the most use sensors on the back of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can monitor capillary action, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues 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 conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic impulses 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 early warning they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to make sense of these readings is complex. The expert fears that as more functions are incorporated, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM rose. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate went up again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."