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There's a building tension. Apparent is the frosty air coming from my fellow runners as they perform the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I have to adjust my tracker. So does the guy next to me.

The person in the line sighs. I'm not moving until… there! Signal acquired, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's challenging to find a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us runners who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, massive sector. Brands like Apple Watch are prevalent, each with an wide range of various models to cater to a spectrum of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the model you choose, costs can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

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

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion guiding me."

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

A handful of the reactions I've received from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm running below are interfering with my GPS connection.

Millions of us fasten these little devices onto our arms and wear them constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an rough count of our step count. Now, they can analyse our nightly rest, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they don't track.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the data points we obsess over a faithful picture of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a bit fixated with mine," an individual admits.

While she loves how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be productive enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a six-month old, I don't need to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually project small, green LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, detecting your BPM. More advanced devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically save lives, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), 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 at risk of a blood clot in the long term.

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

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on cardiology echoes this sentiment. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

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