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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air coming from my competitors as they execute the "about to run" jiggle on the beginning point.

A quick twitch of the hips.

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

Hold on. I need to adjust my watch. As does the runner alongside me.

The person behind us sighs. I'm not moving until… there! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's difficult to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us runners who rely on them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion dollar industry. Brands like Garmin dominate, all offering an broad range of different models to fit a variety of lifestyles. According to how high tech the watch you select, costs can start from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I can't stop checking."

"It reassures me… It's like a supporter supporting me."

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

A small sample of the responses I've received from fellow device users when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Currently, irritating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these small devices onto our arms and wear them constantly, apparently at ease with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Now, they can measure our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they don't track.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a true reflection of our actual health? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of metrics and constant notifications just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a a little preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals.

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

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a young baby, I don't need to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly project small, green LED lights onto your skin which can observe capillary action, recording your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to assess your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities 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 carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may struggle to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor focusing on wearable tech agrees. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got more worried. They checked again, and their anxiety rose further.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."