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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my fellow runners as they perform the "starting line" wiggle on the starting line.

A quick movement of the hips.

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

Hold on. I need to adjust my watch. The same goes for the guy beside me.

The person waiting tuts. I'm not moving until… done! Signal acquired, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's challenging to find a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us participants who use them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion pound sector. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, featuring an wide array of various models to fit a range of lifestyles. Depending on how advanced the device you choose, costs can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to relax."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say about a poor sleep."

Just some of the responses I've had from fellow smartwatch wearers when I question what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Currently, annoying. It's telling me my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my GPS connection.

A vast number of us strap these compact gadgets onto our arms and keep them on constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Long past are the days when we used them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can measure our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of measurements and constant notifications just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite obsessed with mine," one user reveals.

While she values how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being productive enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, there's no point to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the majority use detectors on the back of the watch.

They typically emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can monitor pulsation, identifying your BPM. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that for most people 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 "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the long term.

But how to interpret these numbers is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are introduced, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

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

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She observed a vicious circle 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 heart rate rose further.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."