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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Coffee has many benefits, but this isn’t one

• How your pillow steals deep sleep

• Under the microscope: Apple cider vinegar

• Adam’s Corner: What do you do when you’re lost?

On Our Radar 
We Love Coffee. This Study Isn't Why.

Drinking coffee has many potential health benefits. And the more you drink (up to 3-5 cups), the more it appears to help. 

However, that doesn’t mean coffee is immune to the same type of misleading claims we see all throughout wellness. 

A recent study suggests that coffee switches on an anti-aging receptor. It sounds great on paper, and we were excited to give you another reason to caffeinate. However, the study found the opposite of what the headlines say.

Researchers showed that brewed coffee and compounds such as caffeic and chlorogenic acids bind to a receptor (called NR4A1), which helps cells handle stress and damage. In the cells the researchers tested, coffee's compounds turned that receptor down, not up.

When you take a deeper look, the study wasn’t done on humans. This was lab work in dishes. Nothing about aging or measured in a living body.

But that wasn't the biggest issue with the study. The more we read the research, the more we realized the study had been badly misinterpreted. Not by the researchers, but by the people who make studies go viral.

The researchers themselves were careful. They flagged the biggest issue: the amounts of these compounds that did anything in the dish were far higher than a cup of coffee will ever put into your blood. 

They also talked about aging, but only as background, the reason they got curious. Their experiments never actually tested it, and the scientists knew it.

The study appeared to go through a game of telephone. The university's press release moved aging up into the headline. And by the time smaller sites rewrote it, the cautions were gone: no mention that the doses were unreachable, no mention that no one had tested aging at all. Just a promise about coffee that wasn’t true.

If you drink coffee, many studies suggest it might help improve longevity, but not for the reasons the study claims.

Together With BEDGEAR
How The Humidity On Your Sheets And Pillows Affect Your Sleep

Earlier this week, we shared research about all the reasons you have trouble falling and staying asleep. It clearly struck a nerve. We received hundreds of emails with people explaining their struggles, asking one simple question:

If temperature affects sleep, can’t you just lower the thermostat?

Yes and no. 

There’s a reason why dropping the thermostat in your bedroom doesn’t necessarily lead to a better night of sleep. Or why flipping your pillow to the “cooler side” feels amazing in the moment, but doesn’t translate to a great night of rest. 

Your body also responds to the thin layer of air pressed against your skin — the bed and pillow — and that depends on two variables: temperature and the moisture your body gives off all night.

The moisture is the half people miss. 

When sleep labs compared warm-dry nights to warm-humid ones, the humid nights were measurably worse. 

At the same temperature, higher humidity meant more time awake and less deep and REM sleep. 

So lowering the thermostat definitely helps, but if moisture can't escape the pocket around your skin, evaporation stalls, and your body loses its main tool for shedding heat, even when the room air is cold.

This hits some people harder than others. If you train hard, run warm in the night, or sweat heavily in your sleep, then you're shedding more heat and moisture than average, which means a pillow that traps it costs you more deep sleep than it would someone else. The harder you're training, the more this matters.  

Unfortunately, most pillows do not handle moisture in a way that benefits sleep.

Your head and neck sit pressed against one small surface for hours, so any heat and moisture that builds up there has nowhere to escape. 

Traditional memory foam makes it worse: it's dense and molds tightly to you, choking off the airflow that would otherwise carry heat away, which is exactly why it sleeps hot. A tightly woven cover slows things further, holding moisture against your skin instead of letting it wick off. 

Across a night, you can shed nearly half a liter to a liter of water through breath and skin combined.

Which is why the pillow you select deserves extra consideration. It's the one surface trapping both the heat and the water you're trying to shed. 

The fix is a pillow built to keep both moving all night, not for the first cool-to-the-touch minute.

We tried six different cooling pillows. We gave them to 5 different testers, including four people who have no working relationship with Arnold’s Pump Club. 

The winner for the best pillow that keeps you cool and improves sleep was the Night Ice pillow by BEDGEAR, and the science supports the testers' findings.

Start with the moisture, since that's the half most gear ignores. Dri-Tec^® fabric wicks sweat off the surface before it pools against your skin. Ver-Tex™ advanced cooling yarns pull heat off as you make contact. Underneath, React™ open-cell foam allows air to travel through the core rather than sealing it in, as dense memory foam does. And an Air-X^® mesh gusset vents warm air out at the edges instead of letting it sit under your head. That's the BEDGEAR Performance^® Pillow.

The pillow is where most people lose the most sleep to trapped heat, but it's not the only place it happens. 

Your sheets and mattress protector sit against your body all night too, and BEDGEAR applies the same airflow principle across those layers, so heat and moisture that make it past the pillow don't just get trapped one layer down instead.  

One catch: if you don't want a BEDGEAR pillow and go for a different option to keep your head cool: airflow does nothing if the pillow doesn't fit. A collapsed or wrong-profile pillow pins your head into the exact spot where heat and moisture collect, no matter how well the materials breathe. 

If nothing else, we recommend BEDGEAR's PillowID quiz (it’s free) because it matches you to the right profile for how you actually sleep. Then you can choose what’s right for you. 

If you want to take advantage of our favorite pillow for better, science-based rest, as an APC reader, you get 20% off BEDGEAR pillows and bedding when you use the code “PUMPCLUB20.”

Nutrition
Use It Or Lose It: Apple Cider Vinegar For Fat Loss

The claim: A shot of apple cider vinegar a day melts fat, and there's a real clinical trial to prove it.

Let's break it down: For a couple of years, this kept on popping up thanks to a published study. Whereas most health claims lack any published research and rely on anecdotes and good vibes, a 2024 trial suggested that daily apple cider vinegar (“ACV”) use led to weight loss and lower blood sugar. 

Much later, the journal retracted the study and the claims because editors cited implausible statistics, questions about the raw data, and the fact that the trial wasn't properly registered. 

Once that study was gone, there wasn’t much left to back up ACV as a fat-loss solution. Other reviews of vinegar research suggest it can slightly improve blood sugar, especially around meals, because acetic acid slows digestion. But there’s no solid evidence it's a fat-loss shortcut. 

And it comes with a real downside: ACV is rough on tooth enamel and can irritate your throat and gut. And vinegar can interact with certain medications and conditions. So, if you have blood-sugar or digestive issues, check with your doctor before making it a daily habit.

The Verdict: Apple cider vinegar is not a fat loss solution. The primary study that "proved" it works no longer exists.

Adam’s Corner
When You’re Lost, Do You Ask To Be Found?

“Rach, Ash is missing.”

Those were the words I said into the phone, and I’ve gone back and forth on whether to tell you what happened.

Because this wasn’t the type of memory that’s fun to share. 

We were on the East Coast for the summer, staying in a new town. I took a walk, pushing my daughter in a stroller, while my 8-year-old son rode his bike a little ahead, the way he likes to. We’d gone on this route before. He’d pedal to the corner, wait for us to catch up, then push off again.

It’s a small loop. Not the kind of place you think twice about. At some point, though, I didn’t see Asher. All the places he normally stops, he didn’t. It had maybe been 5 minutes.

Five minutes is nothing. Five minutes is also, when it’s your kid and the street is empty, a very long time. 

But I’d been in this situation earlier in the summer. He’d ridden ahead and gone home on his own before, so I told myself that’s what he did and finished the route back to the house.

Until I got home and found out he wasn’t there. 

I asked my other son. He hadn’t seen him. So I went back out with my daughter and checked the blocks we’d just walked. Nothing. I brought my daughter home, left her with her brother, and started running. Up one street and down the next, past the same mailboxes, calling his name. Nothing again. 

I got in my car and called my wife.

“Rach, Ash is missing.”

Facing Fear (With The Volume Turned All The Way Up)

I hadn’t called my wife earlier because she was in meetings. But now that she was out, it was time to admit I lost our son.

I told her what happened, and I was driving around searching for him. She didn’t wait for me to finish the sentence. She was already on her bike.

Five minutes became 15. And then 15 became 30.

We went to every place he knew. Nothing.

Around that thirty-minute mark, something moves into your chest that doesn’t have a good name. It isn’t dread. It’s fear with the volume turned all the way up, and underneath it a list of things you refuse to picture. You talk yourself down. You keep your eyes on the road, because steering is the only useful thing your body can do.

I called my wife. I told her if we went five more minutes, we were calling the police.

Almost on cue, an officer pulled up next to her.

“Are you Asher’s mom?”

She could barely get the words out. “Is he okay?”

“He’s safe. He’s with two of our officers right now.”

He was 2.2 miles from home. One wrong turn had folded into another, and then a few more, the way they do, until the streets stopped looking like anything he’d seen before. Scared, a long way out, an eight-year-old on a bike with no idea which direction pointed home.

The reason I’m writing this isn’t what I did. I ran, and I drove, and I made the calls any parent would make, and none of that is the point.

It’s how he got found.

It wasn’t the police, at least not at first. 

My son, lost and frightened and further from home than he’d ever been alone, stopped a stranger and asked for help. Everything after that — the officers, the phone call, the version of this story where he ends up safe — started with that one decision.

He felt lost, and he treated lost like a problem to solve instead of something to hide.

Honesty (When You Need It Most)

Once the dust settled and Asher was safe, I kept coming back to my son's bravery, skillful assessment, and his ability to be honest with himself when he needed it most.

You might not be on a bike, but many of us have faced the moment when we lost our way in life, felt scared, and knew things were not right.

We take a wrong turn, and it feels fine, so we keep going. Something is clearly off, and we keep going anyway, sure the next block will straighten things out.

You’ll start the diet next week. You’ll pick the workouts back up once things settle down. That ache you keep meaning to get looked at? It can wait a little longer. 

You tell yourself the road bends back on its own. It usually doesn’t.

You look up one day, and you’re miles from where you meant to be, and the distance itself becomes the reason you don’t stop.

The feelings and emotions negotiate a false reality. Too far gone to fix it now. Too embarrassing to admit how you got here.

So you keep pedaling, because pedaling at least feels like motion.

But that’s when you need honesty to drive a type of clarity that sometimes can only be found when you’re lost.

My son is eight. He hasn’t learned yet that grown-ups treat asking for help like a confession. He just felt lost and decided lost was a thing you get out of. He hit the brakes. He found a stranger. 

He did the hard part by recognizing the farther he’d gone, the worse his odds were getting. He understood that better than a lot of adults I know.

I tried not to think about the version where he keeps riding. But my brain still went there.

What I know is this: the turn he took didn’t decide how the day ended. What decided it was that he was willing to stop, look at someone he’d never met, and admit he couldn’t get home on his own.

Sometimes, Your Reflexes Can’t Be Trusted

Admitting you’ve made a mistake or are struggling is a challenge.

Most of us are wired to keep it to ourselves. Head down, figure it out alone, because asking means saying the sentence we hate most: I got this wrong.

You don’t know my son, but it’s a big struggle for him too. He already carries more pride and stubbornness than a kid his size should be able to hold. He hates being wrong. He will argue a losing case straight into the ground, staring down every piece of evidence that says he slipped up, refusing to blink.

And still, scared and alone and a long way from anything he recognized, he did the one thing that fought against every strand of stubbornness and pride in his DNA. He asked for help.

And here’s the crazy part: When I finally got to him, he wasn’t relieved. He was bracing because his reflex was to prepare for an even worse outcome than being lost. He was certain my wife and I would punish him, and all he could see was the trouble he thought he was in.

We weren’t angry. We were terrified, and then we weren’t, because he was standing right in front of us. He just didn’t know that yet. In his head, the consequence was already on its way.

He asked for help anyway.

He was sure the worst was waiting on the other side of admitting he was lost. The worst never came. What was waiting was two parents who only wanted him back.

That’s the thing about reflexes and pride: they can steer us right, but then can also do us wrong. 

We assume admitting we’re off track will cost us something. That people will think less of us, or that owning the mistake is worse than just living with it. So we say nothing and keep going. That’s the mistake.

The move you’re most afraid to make, the one with all the resistance stacked against it, is usually the exact thing that ends the whole ordeal. The one your pride has been talking you out of since the first wrong turn.

You’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. So have I. That part isn’t the question.

The question is the one my son answered without knowing anyone was asking it.

When you’re lost, do you ask to be found? -AB

-Adam Bornstein is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of Arnold’s Pump Club

The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards

We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.

1. The Content: All APC emails are researched, written, and fact-checked by the APC editors (see bottom of the email), with written contributions from Arnold (noted with “Arnold’s Corner”). Links take you to original studies (not second-hand sources).

2. Does AI play a role? Not for the primary content, but it is used in two ways. The main items are original content written by the APC team. The summaries at the end are AI-generated based on the human-written content above. We also use an AI tool to review our interpretations of the research and ensure scientific accuracy. We don’t assume AI is right, but we use technology to hold ourselves accountable.

3. Yes, we have partners (all clearly noted by “Together With”). Why? Because it allows us to keep the APC emails free. We first test products, and then reach out to potential partners who offer ways to help you improve every day. The bar is set high, and to date, we have turned down millions in ad deals. (Example: we will not partner with any non-certified supplements or those without evidence in human trials). If we won’t buy the product, we won’t recommend it to you. And if there’s no evidence it works, then there’s no place for it here.

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell