Could I Be Hooked on This Fitness Tracker?

An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the frosty air exhaled by my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the beginning point.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I need to adjust my device. The same goes for the guy beside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… there! GPS ready, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's difficult to spot a person without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us runners who wear them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion dollar market. Names like Apple Watch are prevalent, all offering an broad range of various devices to suit a range of budgets. Based on how high tech the watch you choose, costs can start from £100 to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to stop checking."

"It provides solace… It acts as a supporter supporting me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the reactions people have shared from fellow device users when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these compact monitors onto our arms and wear them all day and night, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, blood pressure, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they don't track.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a a little obsessed with mine," an individual confesses.

While she values how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I know that only too well."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I love it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your vitals and processing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can observe pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

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 vulnerable of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to understand these readings is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A health researcher focusing on patient behaviour concurs. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading rose further.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."