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A sense of building tension. I can see the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they perform the "starting line" wiggle on the starting line.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to start my tracker. As does the runner beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Signal acquired, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us runners who wear them.

This is a explosive, massive market. Brands like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an extensive selection of diverse devices to cater to a variety of needs. Depending on how feature-packed the device you select, price tags can range from £100 to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I can't switch off."

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

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

A small sample of the comments I've had from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's telling me my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are blocking my GPS connection.

Millions of us strap these small devices onto our arms and wear them 24/7, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Long past are the days when we used them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a true reflection of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and constant notifications just increase our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she values how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be energetic enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a infant, there's no point to be told I've not slept," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your health metrics and processing your data, but the most use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor pulsation, recording your pulse rate. More advanced devices analyse changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to gauge your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is complex. The expert worries that as additional features are added, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher specialising in cardiology concurs. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their anxiety rose further.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."