Am I Hooked on My Fitness Tracker?

There's a nervous excitement. I can see the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they do the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to start my tracker. So does the guy next to me.

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

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a person without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion dollar industry. Brands like Samsung Galaxy dominate, each with an extensive range of diverse models to cater to a range of lifestyles. According to how high tech the watch you choose, costs can start from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to relax."

"It reassures me… It acts as a friend guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the responses people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on mine? Right now, annoying. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my location tracking.

Millions of us fasten these compact devices onto our arms and use them 24/7, apparently comfortable with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Now, they can analyse our sleep patterns, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they don't track.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a faithful picture of reality? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and constant notifications just add to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a a little fixated with mine," one user admits.

While she loves how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Prior to discovering she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently active enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be notified I've not slept," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I could, theoretically, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can detect capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. More advanced devices measure changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

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

A health researcher specialising in cardiology agrees. 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 heart health experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM went up. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their reading increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."