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There's a feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour exhaled by my rivals as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the start line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Hold on. I must sort my device. So does the guy next to me.

The person behind us tuts. I'm not moving until… yes! Signal acquired, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us runners who use them.

This is a explosive, massive market. Brands like Apple Watch are prevalent, featuring an broad array of diverse devices to suit a spectrum of needs. According to how high tech the device you choose, prices can range from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

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

"It comforts me… It feels like a companion supporting me."

"Stop telling me about a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the comments people have shared from other device users when I ask what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Currently, irritating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

A vast number of us attach these small devices onto our arms and keep them on constantly, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our step count. Today, they can measure our sleep patterns, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of the truth? Do they improve our overall health, or do the multitude of metrics and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she loves how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a infant, I don't need to be told I'm tired," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Couldn't she just take it off?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe too much for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your vitals and interpreting your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, identifying your BPM. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to interpret these readings is complex. The expert fears that as additional features are incorporated, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

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

A health researcher studying patient behaviour agrees. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients 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 medical services".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."