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A sense of building tension. I can see the cold breath emanating from my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" jiggle on the starting line.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

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

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's hard to see a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us participants who wear them.

This is a thriving, massive market. Companies like Apple Watch dominate, all offering an wide array of diverse models to suit a spectrum of budgets. Depending on how high tech the watch you select, costs can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, I can't relax."

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

"Please don't notify me I've had a restless night."

A handful of the reactions I've had from other device users when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? Right now, annoying. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the trees along my route are interfering with my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us fasten these little gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our step count. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

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

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we analyse a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a quite obsessed with mine," one user confesses.

While she appreciates how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be productive enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a young baby, there's no point to be told I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

How Do They Work?

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

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your wrist which can observe blood flow, recording your heartbeat. More advanced devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, 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 early warning they might be more at risk of a stroke in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is complex. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A professor studying patient behaviour agrees. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their reading went up again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."