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There's a nervous excitement. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my rivals as they perform the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A quick flick of the hips.

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

Wait a second. I must start my device. As does the person next to me.

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us athletes who rely on them.

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar sector. Brands like Apple Watch lead the market, all offering an broad array of various models to cater to a spectrum of budgets. Depending on how feature-packed the watch you choose, costs can vary between £100 to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I can't switch off."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a poor sleep."

A small sample of the comments I've received from like-minded device users when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on my own device? Currently, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are disrupting my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these small devices onto our arms and keep them on 24/7, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our step count. Now, they can track our nightly rest, heart rate, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the data points we scrutinise a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of metrics and cheerleading alerts just add to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," an individual confesses.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be active enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I love it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can observe capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. More advanced devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to understand these numbers is complex. The expert concerns that as additional features are incorporated, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

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

A clinical psychologist specialising in wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM increased. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."