How ‘circadian hacking’ can help with far more than sleep

Manipulating your body clock can improve health and productivity

It's 8.30pm on a gloomy November evening and I'm sitting on the sofa under a tartan blanket and wearing a pair of orange-lensed specs. My other half regards me with bemusement. A man who disapproves of paracetamol and plasters, Tim has lived through my audio-bathing phase, my steps-tracker phase and the notorious 2015 installation of our bedroom air-quality monitor, a period during which I informed him he should breathe out less carbon dioxide (could he, I asked, just tape his mouth in bed at night so I didn't wake up groggy with low oxygen levels?).

For all their absence of erotic charm, my latest health gadgets - the light-blocking night glasses and a dome-shaped morning light lamp that turns my face ghostly white - have seen me through five long winters. During these dark months, I've risen with a spring in my step and slept as metronomically as a small child - asleep when my head hits the pillow, awake at a regimental 6.32am, with no need for an alarm.