Could I Be Hooked on My Fitness Tracker?

A sense of nervous excitement. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the starting line.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I have to sort my watch. As does the runner next to me.

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

During the scramble, it's hard to spot a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us runners who wear them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Names like Apple Watch lead the market, featuring an broad selection of diverse versions to fit a spectrum of needs. Based on how feature-packed the watch you choose, prices can range from £100 to a small fortune.

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

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

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

Just some of the responses I've received from like-minded device users when I question what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's reporting I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm running below are interfering with my location tracking.

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

Long past are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our daily steps. Today, they can analyse our sleep patterns, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

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

But can they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they improve our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

While she loves how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

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

"I am caring for a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They usually project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, identifying your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to make sense of these figures is complicated. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor studying wearable tech concurs. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."