for its role as a repair hormone. Athletes have been known
to use GH for its performance-enhancing qualities, namely
its ability to accelerate repair of connective tissue. But GH,
which is secreted by the brain’s pituitary gland, is also a
powerful cognitive modulator, shown to improve many
aspects of brain function, including processing speed and
mood. In older adults, GH replacement therapy has been
shown to boost cognitive function in patients with mild
cognitive impairment (pre-dementia that often leads to
Alzheimer’s disease) and in healthy controls after just five
months.^17 But while injecting extra growth hormone is both
illegal and potentially dangerous, there are a few hacks at
our disposal to naturally boost this powerful chemical.
While growth hormone deficiency manifests as severely
stunted growth and stature in children (which led to its initial
identification and naming), it has a very different primary
role in adults: to preserve lean mass during periods of
famine or in a fasted state. One of the best ways to boost
growth hormone, therefore, is through intermittent fasting.^18
When one fasts for anywhere from fourteen to sixteen hours
onward for a female and sixteen to eighteen hours onward
for a male, growth hormone begins to increase. After
twenty-four hours of fasting, growth hormone has been
reported to shoot up as high as 2,000 percent!^19
Aside from fasting, heat conditioning (sauna use, for
example) is a powerful way of boosting growth hormone. In
one small but revealing study, two twenty-minute sauna
sessions at 80°C (176°F) separated by a thirty-minute cool-
off period caused growth hormone levels to double in