As a four-times UK Fitness Champion, former international adventure athlete and renowned personal trainer, our columnist JOEY BULL knows a thing or two about keeping fit. Here's her latest column.

Having felt a bit off the pace this week and not my optimum self, it was fortuitous timing to join a conference on growth hormone and come up with reasons as to why I’m not at fighting weight or fizzing with energy. You might have heard this one before, it's my hormones.

Growth Hormone is something we produce in abundance in youth, we have bounce, vitality, mental sharpness, and we can feel untouchable by such nuisances as weight gain, aches, pains and immobility.

But we're only getting away with it for a short time and that window closes pretty quickly.

After the age of 25, growth hormone starts to peter out and we stop making it in any kind of abundance.

This hormone is the big cheese of all our hormones, it is the chairman and the team captain and it makes us feel like we have power, insight, lucidity, inner peace, a bright intelligence, good sleep and sharp memory.

And that’s just the mind. With the recent news on how Covid, even mild infections, has caused brain shrinkage, the penny has dropped, slowly. Post Covid, bringing things quickly to memory and generally feeling 'on it' seems to have been impacted.

And while we're on such things, Growth Hormone has also been shown to decrease the onset of Alzheimers.

That's the mind, how about the body? Growth hormone maintains youth, stalls ageing, gives physical power, a stronger heart, healthier intestines, thicker and more elastic skin, improved facial tone, better musculature reduces fat mass and raises fertility.

And it goes on. All stuff that most of us would opt for in an instant!

Yet this powerhouse hormone is something we too often hear about in a negative context in sports and drug-taking competitors. It is exploited for performance and recovery, is mostly available by prescription, black market and worst of all, in my view, is synthetic.

Natural alternatives? Well, bioidentical options are out there but for the price of a comfortable salary. Then of course there’s the DIY version which I'll come to. So long as I don't forget that is!

We're yet to see the results of the Covid-19 and the vaccine long-term on the nervous system and the effects on the brain.

But survivors do mention a variety of mild to major compromises from an altered state of consciousness to a reduction in taste.

There are three pathways that this virus can take; Hypoxia, allowing for a cytokine storm permitting excessive inflammation, the Blood Brain Barrier that protects the brain from invaders from below the neck but damaged by an excessive inflammatory response, viruses can infiltrate. And thirdly Oxidative stress which impeded the biochemical communication from cell to cell. Ooh, that sounds familiar.

So you see how with even a little bit of this going on, neuro tolerance is stretched. Without attention, some of us will feel subtly or acutely a reduction in mental and physical performance.

To employ a current and an overused word, how to hack this? Go for functional food that supports our brain chemistry, those rich in vegetable oils and fish oils like sunflower and almond, salmon and lesser options like peanuts and asparagus. Then supporting levels of melatonin for good rest and recovery and quercetin along with a good supplement of EGCG.

But it doesn’t stop there, cell to cell communication needs re-firing and wiring, so after a good warm up, with the circulation well elevated, drill some mini mental and physical skills that are a bit fussy or confusing to start. You'll soon get the hang of them. Keep building your repertoire.

And the DIY version of boosting your Human Growth Hormone will have massive neurological benefits too.

With an anti-inflammatory diet (ditch the bread and sugars!), short but intensive workouts, good sleep and intermittent fasting of 18 hours, you will raise your power and performance in all ways by a massive percentage. Keep that up over time and you'll yourself feeling like that younger, sharper version!

To fix the frumpiness and fog this Spring I will be running a 4-week course covering diet and exercise that will get you both brain and bikini fit!