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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Number you won’t forget

• Why you feel distracted (and can’t figure out what it is)

• Weekly wisdom

• Is your protein bar working against you?

Mental Health 
Number You Won’t Forget: 4 out of 10

More People Are Lonely Than Ever. Here's Why, And What the Science Says To Do About It.

Most people picture loneliness as something that happens at the edges of life: after retirement, after a move, after a loss. A new study of nearly 8,000 adults across eight countries suggests we've been looking in the wrong direction and possibly at the wrong solutions.

About 4 in 10 adults reported feeling lonely, with people ages 18 to 24 showing the highest rates. And those who felt lonely had nearly three to four times the odds of showing signs of depression and anxiety.

Before we get to what you can do, here's what the research can and can't tell us. Loneliness was measured using a self-report question that captured a single point in time rather than a before-and-after comparison. That means we can't tell what came first: the loneliness or the mental health struggles. But we do know that the link is strong enough to take seriously.

So why are people feeling lonelier? The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on loneliness identified that Americans went from spending about an hour a day in person with friends to about 20 minutes. People ages 15 to 24 had it worst: a 70% drop in face-to-face social time with friends over that period.

The easy explanation is screens. And while too much time scrolling has been linked to many mental health issues, a 2025 study following young adults found something that surprised us: social media use itself isn’t a guaranteed cause of loneliness. What mattered was how people engaged online. 

Compulsive scrolling — using the phone to numb rather than connect — was linked to greater loneliness. Direct messaging with people you actually know was associated with less loneliness. 

The problem isn't necessarily the device. It's what you’re doing with it.

If you want to fight back and feel more connected, a recent meta-analysis of 280 studies found that loneliness interventions do work. 

Psychological approaches — therapy, counseling, and structured programs that change how you think about social situations — showed the strongest effects. Digital-only programs tended to underperform compared to in-person approaches, but they were better than nothing.

The deeper insight is why the psychological approach works. 

Loneliness often runs on a bad prediction. The lonely brain expects that reaching out will feel awkward or end in rejection, so it pulls back, which deepens the loneliness. 

The best interventions help people notice that pattern and question it. And research on small, everyday connections confirms that the prediction is usually wrong: people consistently underestimate how much strangers and acquaintances enjoy being talked to and how much those moments actually shift your mood.

The first step is one small, in-person conversation that fights against the voice that says it won't be worth it. The barista. The neighbor. The coworker you pass in the hall. The person who is a part of the Pump Club. 

There’s a reason we do virtual hangouts twice every week in the app with Monday Morning Check-in and the Saturday Schmooze with Arnold, and then another two times with Coach Jen and Coach Nic.

Connection is something you practice one interaction at a time.

Together With Matic
The Chore You Haven't Done Is Subconsciously Distracting Your Brain

You sit down to dinner, and you're there, mostly. The food's good, somebody's halfway through a story, and a back corner of your head is still upstairs with the laundry you meant to fold. You're not folding it. You're not even really deciding to fold it later. You're just aware of it, the whole meal.

That low hum isn't a focus problem or a sign you're scattered. It's the cost of an open loop, and a clever set of experiments figured out how to close it.

You don't have to finish the task to get your attention back. You have to decide, specifically, when you'll do it.

Psychologists E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister ran a series of lab studies in which they had people recall unfinished tasks, and then sent them off to do something unrelated. The unfinished business didn't sit still. It pushed into a reading exercise as intrusive thoughts, made goal-related words jump out faster, and dragged down scores on word puzzles that had nothing to do with the original task. 

Then came the part that matters: when people wrote down a specific plan for the unfinished task, the interference vanished. 

They hadn't done a single thing toward actually completing it. They'd only decided when and how. The relief held strongest for people whose plans were real enough that they later followed through, and for tasks that genuinely mattered to them.

It lines up with what researchers call attention residue. Research on task-switching found that when you move off something unfinished, part of your focus stays stuck behind, and whatever you do next pays for it.

That’s because an unfinished task keeps a background monitor running, your brain staying on alert for a chance to deal with it. A concrete, trusted plan tells that monitor the job is handled, so it powers down before you've lifted a finger. The catch is that it has to be specific. "I'll vacuum Saturday after coffee" works. "I'll get to it" doesn't, because some part of you knows that isn't a real plan.

So when a chore starts tugging at you mid-dinner, don't white-knuckle through it or feel bad about it. Give it a time and a place, and write it somewhere you trust. That's often enough to hand your evening back.

Some tasks, though, reopen the same tab every single week. A plan you have to remake every Sunday night is a loop that never fully closes. For those, the smarter move isn't closing the tab. It's deleting the task.

The research is clear that what closes the loop is a plan your brain actually trusts. The problem with a weekly chore is that you have to rebuild that trust from scratch every Sunday night.

Vacuuming is the cleanest example of this. It's never done. You do it Saturday, and by Wednesday the floor is quietly filing the task again, so the monitor never fully powers down. You can write "vacuum Saturday" on every list you own, and the loop still runs, because some part of you knows another one is already loading behind it.

So delete the task.

We’re all for cleaning your home. But as two dads with multiple kids and a business to run, there’s never enough time for family, work, and keeping the home looking the way we want. 

The dream is to have a home that cleans itself, and this is the closest thing we’ve found.

Forget everything you think you know about robot vacuums. We've never seen a home robot move like this. Matic drives itself with the same kind of self-driving intelligence as Tesla FSD and Waymo, and watching it navigate and avoid obstacles live, in a real home, is a joy — a little Wall-E that cleans your floors and charms your pets and kids while it works. This one's the real thing.

A few things that set it apart during out testing, beyond its intelligence:

No tangled pet hair to pick off. The brush roll uses angled fins to push hair sideways instead of wrapping it around the roller, so there's no second hidden chore lurking underneath the first. Finally, a vacuum that can handle our furry friends.

No dirty-water tank to manage. A built-in wringer squeezes the waste out of the mop roll with each spin and sucks it up, along with dirt, into a single HEPA-12 bag that captures 99.5% of particles down to 0.3 microns. One bag. Nothing to empty, no filter to change, no tank to rinse — and cleaner air to breathe with every clean.

No one to wake. At 55 dB, it’s quieter than a conversation, and it runs while the baby sleeps, while you're on a call, while you're finally present at dinner. It disappears into the background of your life and your mind, which is the entire point.

WIRED gave Matic the only perfect 10/10 it's awarded in 17 years of reviews. The Verge tested 80 robot vacuums over 7 years and named Matic the best, saying it "fixes the stuff every other robot vacuum gets wrong."

We got it, tried it, fell in love, and then partnered because one less thing on your plate is one more thing you can conquer. 

You can't buy more time. But you can stop renting a corner of your attention to a task a robot was built to handle.

As a Pump Club subscriber, when you buy a Matic, you’ll also receive an annual bag pass with a full year of unlimited HEPA bags, completely free. A great self-gift for the dads who've earned it, or a thoughtful one to give this Father's Day.

You have enough to focus on. Removing one weekly stressor off your plate for good can free up your mind. Put that focus where it belongs - other responsibilities that require your creativity.

The Catch
Find Today’s Answer And Win

Every week, we feature “The Catch,” where we hide a trivia question in an email and then randomly select and reward those who submit the correct answers. Here is this week’s Catch:

One summary challenges one of the most common assumptions about why young people feel so alone, and points to another reason you might not think to blame. A 2025 study found that time spent on social media didn't predict loneliness in young adults, so which specific phone behavior actually did?

Submit your answer here. Three people who answer correctly will be randomly selected to receive a $20 gift to the Pump Club store.

Mindset
Weekly Wisdom

Somewhere, something is waiting that you’re ignoring. 

The blood test offer has been sitting in your inbox since March. The scale hiding in the back of the closet now, behind the shoes. That appointment with your doctor you keep putting off, despite lingering symptoms.

And you've built a reason for all of it, one that sounds almost healthy: you're not the type to obsess over numbers or fear or anxiety. You feel fine. You'll deal with it when there's time.

It sounds like peace. It might even sound like confidence. But underneath, you already know it isn't either of those. You're not at peace with it. You're just not looking at it.

Avoiding “confrontation” — whether people, experiences, information, or introspection — is the most sophisticated form of self-protection there is, and it almost never feels like avoidance. 

It feels like optimism. If I don't check, nothing's wrong yet. If I don't ask, the answer can't change my life. Not looking feels like keeping your options open. It's really just keeping the door shut.

Baldwin wasn't writing about lab results or sleep scores. He was writing about something harder, and the line works because it refuses to lie to you in either direction. He concedes the painful half first: not everything you face can be fixed. Some things you'll look at and have to carry anyway. 

That's exactly what avoidance is terrified of: the fear that facing something obligates you to solve it, and since you can't solve everything, why look at all?

Then he closes the trap. Nothing changes until it's faced. Not the things you can fix, and not your relationship to the things you can't. The looking isn't the cure. It's the only door the cure can walk through.

There's a real difference between not obsessing and not knowing, and we collapse the two on purpose. 

Refusing to weigh yourself every morning because the number jerks your mood around is wisdom. Refusing to ever know where you stand because the truth might ask something of you is fear wearing wisdom's clothes. 

One is a boundary. The other is a blindfold.

The people who turn things around aren’t necessarily the ones with the most discipline. They're the ones who finally looked. They booked the appointment. They read the results. They said the hard sentence out loud. Nothing about their situation got easier in that moment. It just got real, and real is the only ground you can build on.

Turn Wisdom Into Action
Pick the one thing you've been purposely avoiding. You already know what it is because it's the thing that flinched when you read this. The bloodwork. The conversation. The number. The symptom you keep explaining away. 

This week, take the leap, rip off the band-aid, and face your fear: book the appointment, open the email, step on the scale once.

You don't have to fix everything or have all the answers. You do need to take the first step and stop pretending you can't see it.

You can't change what you won't face. And continuing to put off what you need only gives the barrier more power and influence over you than it deserves. You can handle the situation. You just have to act.

Nutrition 
Is Your Protein Bar Working Against You?

Plenty of people reach for a protein bar convinced it's an easy way to eat better. And it can be: convenient protein, often some fiber, easy to keep within reach when life gets busy.

But if you don't make the right adjustments, a protein bar can take you further from your goals rather than closer.

Researchers tested exactly that in a double-blind, randomized, crossover trial. For one week, participants ate a daily bar, either high-protein (21 g protein) or high-protein-with-fiber (20 g protein, 14 g fiber), and then compared those weeks to a no-bar control. 

The researchers wanted to know: when you add a bar to your day, does the rest of your eating adjust to make room?

Mostly, it didn't. 

Those eating the bar actually increased their intake by as much as 13 percent, and people offset only about a fifth of those added calories on their own. The other 80% piled on top of what they already ate. 

The group was young, so it’s possible that they have different appetite and eating habits than people decades older. At the same time, intake was self-reported, and other studies show that people tend to significantly under-report how much they eat. The study also noted a small bump in body fat, but one week is too short and the tool too imprecise to call it real fat gain. 

But the big-picture takeaway still holds true: if you add food and don't adjust, total intake climbs, even if you’re trying to make healthier choices.

Researchers call this caloric compensation — your appetite's attempt to "make room" for extra food by easing off later. It works, but only partway. Add 200 calories, and your body might trim 40 on its own; the other 160 come along for the ride.

The bar isn't the villain. The fix is to use it as a swap, not an addition: let it replace the vending-machine snack, the gas-station pastry, or the skipped lunch you pay for at 4 p.m. 

Check the label too, since some "protein bars" run 300-plus calories and are closer to a candy bar or a small meal you didn’t want. 

And that’s it for this week. Thanks for being a part of the positive corner of the internet. Take action on any goal this weekend, and we hope you have a fantastic weekend. 

-Arnold, Adam, and Daniel

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