topsoftbe on "strange records in wp_options"

Thanks, but they didn't point me in any direction at all. In fact, before posting, I had googled and searched myself.
I am not a WP specialist, but I know that while applying an update there are a lot of _transient_ records created, but these are deleted by the update process just before it finishes.
But here are nu updates applied and these rogue records accumulate very fast. My database is growing quickly, so I have to delete these records regularly. It looks like some run-away function tries to do something in an endless loop.
Is there a way of seeing what is going on inside WP, some kind of process monitor?
If I can't figure out what is happening under the hood, I will just have to reinstall all my blogs.