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There's a building tension. I can see the frosty air exhaled by my competitors as they do the "starting line" jiggle on the beginning point.

A quick flick 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 tracker. So does the guy next to me.

The person waiting tuts. I'm not moving until… there! GPS ready, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's difficult to see a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us athletes who wear them.

This is a booming, multi-billion dollar market. Companies like Apple Watch lead the market, all offering an wide array of various devices to suit a spectrum of budgets. Depending on how high tech the device you select, price tags can vary between an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to relax."

"It comforts me… It acts as a friend supporting me."

"Stop telling me I've had a bad night's sleep."

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

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on mine? Currently, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are blocking my satellite signal.

Millions of us fasten these little gadgets onto our arms and keep them on constantly, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can measure our sleep quality, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a a little fixated with mine," a wearer admits.

While she loves how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I know that only too well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can observe blood flow, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of 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 complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying wearable tech agrees. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse rose. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their reading increased again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."