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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air emanating from my competitors as they perform the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I must sort my device. As does the person next to me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

During the scramble, it's hard to see a person without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us participants who rely on them.

This is a booming, massive market. Brands like Apple Watch dominate, featuring an wide array of different devices to fit a variety of budgets. Based on how advanced the device you choose, price tags can vary between £100 to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to stop checking."

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

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the comments I've had from other smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the overhead branches along my route are blocking my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small monitors onto our arms and use them all day and night, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them only to give us an idea of our step count. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we analyse a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they improve our overall health, or do the multitude of measurements and cheerleading alerts just add to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a a little obsessed with mine," an individual admits.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being energetic enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I've not slept," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your vitals and processing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly shine small, green LED lights onto your skin which can observe pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

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 stroke in the future.

But how to make sense of these numbers is complex. The expert worries that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech concurs. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse increased. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety rose further.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."