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An atmosphere of building tension. Apparent is the frosty air coming from my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the starting line.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I must sort my tracker. So does the guy next to me.

The person behind us sighs. I refuse to go until… done! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us runners who wear them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion dollar market. Brands like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, each with an wide array of various versions to suit a range of budgets. According to how high tech the model you go for, prices can range from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to relax."

"It reassures me… It acts as a supporter encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a poor sleep."

Just some of the responses people have shared from fellow smartwatch wearers when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's telling me I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my GPS connection.

A vast number of us attach these compact gadgets onto our arms and keep them on constantly, apparently at ease with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Currently, they can analyse our sleep patterns, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they don't track.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a true reflection of the truth? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the multitude of readings and motivational messages just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a quite fixated with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she values how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being productive enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that only too well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your health metrics and analysing your data, but the majority use detectors on the back of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can detect pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is complicated. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

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

A health researcher specialising in wearable tech agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients 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 observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM rose. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their reading rose further.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."