Is It Possible I'm Hooked on This Fitness Tracker?

There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the chilled vapour exhaled by my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the starting line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I must start my tracker. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person waiting tuts. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, I'm off.

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

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Apple Watch dominate, all offering an wide range of different models to suit a spectrum of budgets. Depending on how advanced the device you select, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

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

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion guiding me."

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

A handful of the comments people have shared from other smartwatch wearers when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Currently, irritating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the trees along my route are blocking my satellite signal.

A vast number of us strap these little monitors onto our wrists and use them all day and night, seemingly at ease with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can measure our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they don't track.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we analyse a faithful picture of reality? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of readings and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

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

While she values how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically shine minute LED lights onto your skin which can observe capillary action, identifying your pulse rate. Higher-end devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

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

But how to interpret these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as additional features are added, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

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

A health researcher specialising in patient behaviour concurs. Her work 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 heart health experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety went up again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."