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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Distraction dulls pain. Attention may do something else entirely

• How to turn down the noise on your “monkey brain”

• Will biotin help you grow your hair?

• The weird trick that reduces endurance fatigue

Health
Looking Away Can Ease Pain. Looking Closer May Change Your Immune Response.

Distraction is one of the oldest forms of pain reduction. If you’re getting a shot and don’t look, it tends to take the edge off.

And it’s not just in your head. 

Scientists found that distraction reliably turns down the experience of pain.

But new research suggests that paying closer attention to a physical sensation may change how your body responds.

One review combined 92 randomized trials and found what you might assume: if something occupies your attention, it can make pain easier to tolerate.

But what happens when you have to focus on the pain?

In a new experiment, participants received a histamine skin prick, which produces the small, itchy welt used in allergy testing. They were told either to concentrate on the sensation or distract themselves.

The people who paid attention developed welts that were roughly one-third smaller and faded sooner. Nearly 9 in 10 showed the same general pattern. However, while the skin reaction improved, focusing made the spot feel even itchier, even though the visible reaction was smaller.

Researchers think attention may strengthen the sensory information the brain uses to regulate the inflammatory response. 

When scientists numbed the skin with lidocaine, part of the effect disappeared. Focusing also increases heart-rate variability, which may reflect greater activity in the branch of the nervous system involved in calming inflammation.

To be fair, the research is still relatively new. A smaller histamine welt does not prove that concentrating on pain will speed healing. But other studies suggest this might be more than a coincidence, and that focusing on pain (in some situations) could change your body’s response for better healing.

Together With Wispr Flow 
How To Help Silence the Part of Your Brain That Panics

Something's bugging you, and you can't quite put your finger on it. A conversation that went sideways. A worry stuck on a loop. A stressor that you feel but can’t quite identify. So it just runs all day in the background.

Research suggests there’s a way to turn off background stressors, and brain scans show why it works. 

Researchers placed participants in an fMRI scanner and showed them faces representing anger and fear. The amygdala, the brain's threat detector, lit up right (as it’s supposed to). Then they asked participants to pick a word that represented the emotion they saw.

The moment people labeled the emotion, the amygdala went quiet, and the part of your brain that handles reasoning (the prefrontal cortex) took over.

Putting a feeling into words, just naming it, measurably turns down your brain's alarm response. 

This wasn’t exactly a real-world scenario, but other studies have found that talking out your thoughts and emotions can be an incredibly effective way to help your brain deal with all the daily noise. 

It's why asking "how are you actually doing?" is more than small talk, and why journaling helps those who stick with it.

But here’s the problem: very few people stop to narrate and make sense of their day, talking out observations, creative thoughts, and reactions. 

And if you do, writing is slow, and the moment can move faster than your hands.

You can talk about three times faster than you can type, and while that sounds like a weird stat, it’s meaningful in this context. 

The window for naming your thoughts and feelings is small, and speed is what gets the words out before it closes.

So we went looking for the best tools that get thoughts out of your head and into words. Most voice tools were so bad that we quit within a week. 

Wispr Flow is the one voice tool that stuck. It’s the best way we’ve found to turn any thought you have into what you need it to be, whether messages, emails, or work ideas.

There’s nothing to open, and it cuts out your “ums,” fixes the grammar, and learns your names and odd spellings so they come out right. And it works on Mac, Windows, and your phone.

It's not a mood tracker, and it's not pretending to be therapy. But Wispr Flow does the one thing the research points at: gets your thoughts and feelings into words while the window's still open, whether that's a note to yourself, a text to a friend, an important work email, or a line in a journal you'd never keep by hand.

Pump Club readers get 60 days of Wispr Flow Pro for free. They’re covering the first two months so you can see why we find it so useful.

Your Money Is No Good Here
Do Biotin Supplements Grow Your Hair?

Biotin is a mainstay of the hair-care aisle. It’s in the gummies, the “hair, skin, and nails” pills, even the shampoos promising thicker strands.

But unless you’re deficient in biotin, taking more of it isn’t likely to do anything for your hair. And a true deficiency is extremely rare.

One scientific review searched the medical literature for cases in which biotin improved someone’s hair or nails. The authors found 18 reported cases, which already seems a bit low.

And when we looked more deeply at the data, it didn’t get any better. Every person had an underlying reason for being deficient, such as a genetic disorder, medication use, or a diet that severely limited biotin.

When you accounted for healthy people with normal diets, there was almost no evidence that taking biotin led to increased hair growth.

And that’s because most people already get enough biotin from food. Eggs, nuts, seeds, salmon, and sweet potatoes all contain it, and the amount your body needs is small.

Biotin’s reputation doesn’t come from nowhere, but — like so many things in nutrition science — the logic sounds reasonable but doesn’t hold up well in reality. A biotin deficiency can cause hair loss, so naturally, it’s easy to assume that taking extra would promote hair growth.

But fixing a shortage and a true nutritional deficiency is different from piling on more when you already have enough.

A 2023 systematic review examined supplements marketed for hair loss and found that much of the evidence was limited or low quality.

In the best placebo-controlled trial testing biotin itself, it performed no better than a sugar pill.

Biotin supplements aren’t entirely harmless, either. In a study of healthy adults, taking 10 milligrams a day (an amount found in many hair supplements) interfered with several thyroid and hormone tests. Biotin can also make troponin appear falsely low. That’s the marker doctors use to help diagnose a heart attack, and the FDA has warned that the interference can lead to missed diagnoses.

If you take biotin, make sure your doctor knows before ordering bloodwork. Otherwise, save your money.

When hair starts thinning, your first question most likely isn’t whether you need more biotin. It’s identifying what’s causing the hair loss in the first place, and that’s a conversation for a doctor and a blood test. Not something you address with a gummy or pill.

On Our Radar 
The Mid-Workout Trick That Reduces Fatigue During Cardio Workouts 

Some endurance athletes take a sip of sports drink, swish it around, and spit it out. It looks pointless. But something is happening that helps the athletes push harder, even without digesting any calories. 

Rinsing your mouth with a carb-based drink might make hard workouts feel easier and help you produce more power.

In a meta-analysis of cycling trials, riders produced more power after rinsing with carbohydrates than with a placebo. A separate review of 34 studies found a similar benefit, although slightly smaller. 

It’s worth noting that while fatigue was down and power was up, the cyclists did not finish their time trials any faster. 

The possible explanation has nothing to do with fueling your muscles. 

Carbohydrates in your mouth appear to activate areas of the brain involved in reward and movement. Your brain detects available energy and may loosen the brakes on effort, even when you spit out the drink. 

This also isn’t a trick for every workout. Most of the research has focused on longer-distance endurance or high-intensity cardio. And the evidence is strongest when exercising without eating first, although a more recent analysis suggests there may still be a small benefit after a meal.

If you’re training hard before breakfast or can’t tolerate calories during intense exercise, having a carb-based drink with you could help you push harder. Just swish a carbohydrate drink for five to 10 seconds, then spit it out. 

But if you’re exercising long enough or hard enough where it feels like you repeatedly hit a wall and it affects your performance, your best bet is to eat a meal within 3 to 4 hours before you train.

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 edit and review our interpretations of the research, ensuring 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