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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the cold breath emanating from my competitors as they perform the "starting line" shuffle on the start line.

A swift flick of the hips.

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

Hold on. I have to sort my tracker. So does the runner beside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… yes! Signal acquired, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's difficult to spot a person without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us participants who wear them.

We're witnessing a booming, massive sector. Companies like Garmin lead the market, featuring an broad selection of diverse devices to cater to a range of budgets. Based on how feature-packed the device you select, costs can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

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

"It reassures me… It feels like a companion supporting me."

"Stop telling me I've had a restless night."

A handful of the comments I've had from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the trees along my route are interfering with my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us fasten these compact gadgets onto our arms and wear them all day and night, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them only to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of metrics and motivational messages just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she loves how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a six-month old, I don't need to be informed I've not slept," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its workout tracking, I just wonder 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 proprietary way of monitoring your health metrics and processing your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your skin which can observe pulsation, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the future.

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

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

A health researcher focusing on patient behaviour agrees. A study into the effect 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 increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM increased. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate rose further.

"When people are presented with stats 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 vicious cycle."