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An atmosphere of building tension. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they do the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I need to start my device. The same goes for the guy alongside me.

The person waiting sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's challenging to find a wrist without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an extensive range of various versions to cater to a variety of needs. Based on how advanced the device you go for, price tags can start from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to switch off."

"It provides solace… It's like a supporter supporting me."

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

A handful of the responses I've received from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's telling me I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage along my route are interfering with my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these little monitors onto our arms and keep them on all day and night, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Today, they can measure our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

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

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of readings and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she appreciates how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a infant, there's no point to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the majority use detectors on the back of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can monitor blood flow, identifying your BPM. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to understand these numbers is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying cardiology agrees. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety went up again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."