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There's a building tension. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my rivals as they do the "about to run" jiggle on the starting line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I need to start my watch. As does the guy next to me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… there! Connection established, I'm off.

In the mele, it's difficult to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us participants who wear them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Apple Watch lead the market, all offering an wide selection of different devices to suit a variety of lifestyles. According to how high tech the device you choose, costs can vary between an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It's like a companion guiding me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a restless night."

A small sample of the reactions people have shared from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are disrupting my satellite signal.

Millions of us strap these compact monitors onto our wrists and use them constantly, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can measure our sleep patterns, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we scrutinise a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a quite preoccupied with mine," an individual reveals.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They usually emit small, green LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

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

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these readings is complex. The expert worries that as further capabilities are added, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse rose. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their reading went up again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."