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Today’s Health Upgrade

• A powerful inspiration to get your steps

• Weekly wisdom

• The creatine study is NOT what it appears

Health
Number You Won’t Forget: 28%

We’ve told you that “movement is medicine.” It’s more than a catchy saying. A recent study suggests that exercise does far more than make you feel better.

Scientists found that exercise helped more people survive colon cancer.

In the CHALLENGE trial, researchers followed about 900 people with stage III or high-risk stage II colon cancer who had already finished surgery and chemotherapy. 

Half got health-education materials. The other half got three years of coaching and supervised sessions, aiming to add about 2.5 hours of moderate exercise a week. 

And before you think that means living in the gym, most people got their movement from walking three or four times a week.

Then the researchers waited nearly eight years to see what happened.

The exercise group was 28% less likely to have their cancer come back, develop a new cancer, or die. 

In real terms, after five years, about 80 of every 100 people in the exercise group were alive and cancer-free, compared with 74 in the education group. By year eight, 90 of every 100 exercisers were still alive. 

Because this was a randomized trial, not just observational data, the researchers can say with more confidence that the exercise program caused the drop in cancer recurrence.

Consider it another piece of evidence showing that a strong body is a resilient, healthy body.

And the next time you don’t have time for the gym, remember that sneaking in a walk might do more than you think. 

Mindset 
Weekly Wisdom

You could give a pretty convincing talk on what’s wrong with health today. Food companies engineer snacks you can’t stop eating, and work now follows everyone home in their pocket. Somebody should do something.

And you’d be right. 

But on many nights, you find yourself standing in the pantry eating those exact snacks with one hand and answering a work Slack with the other.

This isn’t guilt, but an example of how two things can be true at once. That collision is exactly what Tolstoy was pointing at.

He wrote this line in 1900, in a short essay called “Three Methods of Reform.” 

The sentence right before it says the only revolution that lasts is a moral one, the renewal of the inner person. The next sentence gets specific and a little brutal. People had abolished slavery, he wrote, and then went right on living in ten rooms and eating five-course dinners.

Tolstoy was naming a gap every generation has, including ours.

Big problems feel like they need big outside solutions, like a new policy or a partner who finally gets on board. Those things can help. They also park your progress in a waiting room you don’t control.

Inner change runs on a different clock. You can start it tonight, and nobody has to approve it.

That’s the part of this quote we hope you find hopeful. 

Accountability is the one form of power nobody can take from you. If the change starts with you, there’s nobody left to wait for.

Everyone carries a contradiction or two. Maybe you want your kids off screens, and they picked up the phone-at-dinner move from watching you. Or you’re fed up with burnout culture at work while you're still reading and responding to emails at 11 p.m.

Be curious about the changes you seek to the problems you want to address.

Tolstoy had his own contradiction. He preached simple living while living on a family estate, and it caused decades of conflict at home. He still learned to make his own boots and went out to work the fields alongside the peasants. 

He never fully closed the gap. He kept walking toward it, and that direction is what made his words worth repeating a century later.

And before you think changing yourself is selfish, studies show that when you move, others tend to move with you. 

Researchers followed more than 3,700 couples over 50 and tracked what happened when one partner made a healthy change. Among men who smoked, nearly half quit when their partner quit too. Only 8 percent quit when their partner kept smoking. Exercise and weight loss showed the same pattern.

The most striking finding: a partner who had always been healthy had less influence than a partner who changed. People follow the one who was stuck right next to them and found a way forward.

Turn Wisdom Into Action
Change happens, and it can happen at home, in your office, and in your community.

You just have to choose to take action.

Pick one thing you wish the world did better on health, whatever gets you fired up, from ultra-processed food to an always-on work culture.

Now find where that same problem lives in your own week. Get specific. Phones might show up as the scroll that eats your first 20 minutes awake. Food could be the 3 p.m. vending machine run you make on autopilot.

Make one small change to that spot. Charge the phone in the kitchen overnight. Pack a snack you actually enjoy so 3 p.m. has a plan. Keep it small enough that a bad day can’t knock it out.

Then, let people notice. This is how change happens, and you create momentum.

Somebody has to go first. It might as well be the person you can actually change.

Beyond The Headline
Can Creatine Build Muscle Without Exercise?

A new creatine study offered a tantalizing promise: take the supplement and even if you skip the gym, you can still build muscle and strength. 

We’ve talked a lot about creatine. We’re believers, but we're also realistic and always take a critical look at any study.

So when we saw the headlines, we dug deeper into the research, and we’re glad we did. Because many outlets misrepresented what the study found.

The study included sedentary adults ages 45 to 65 who took either 10 grams of creatine or a placebo for 12 weeks. Participants chose whether to join an exercise and diet program. Only the supplement was randomized, and each no-exercise group included just 13 people.

Headlines and social media posts claimed that sedentary adults who took creatine gained lean tissue and improved their bench press and leg press without following an exercise program.

But that’s an inaccurate summary of the study's findings. 

Creatine can make a body scan report more lean mass without proving that someone built more muscle.

Creatine pulls fluid into muscle cells; this is a good thing because it hydrates the muscle, but it’s not true muscle growth. And body scans count that water as lean tissue. 

Because the researchers didn’t measure body water or muscle size, they couldn’t separate new muscle from added fluid.

The way members gained “lean tissue” suggests it was more likely water than new muscle.

Most of the increase in lean mass appeared during the first six weeks, then stalled or declined, which tends to run counter to what you see with muscle growth, where results progress over time. 

In the creatine-plus-exercise group, the increase dropped from about 3.7 pounds above baseline at week six to 2.8 pounds at week 12. That pattern fits shifting water levels better than steady muscle growth.

The strength results weren’t much more convincing. Participants who took creatine without exercising increased their bench press roughly 8 percent, but the improvement didn’t reach statistical significance even compared with their own starting point. 

Some of the change could have come from getting better at the test. In other words, like any skill, doing reps makes you better at it.

Creatine also appeared to help exercisers lose more body fat, but only when fat was expressed as a percentage. Adding water to the lean side of the calculation automatically lowers body-fat percentage. Fat mass itself wasn’t clearly different from placebo.

It’s important to separate two truths: this study overstated creatine's effects. And creatine still deserves its strong reputation. 

When combined with resistance training, it’s one of the best-supported supplements for improving muscle and strength. It also shows promise for improved cognition and supporting brain function under stress or sleep deprivation.

The studies suggest taking 5 to 10 grams per day. The research suggests 5 grams is best for physical benefits, while 10 grams may be better for cognitive benefits. Because creatine has quality-control issues, stick to third-party certified creatine monohydrate. This is the best creatine supplement we’ve found. 

Creatine is effective, but it’s not magic. If you want to build strength and muscle, you still need to put in the work at the gym.

And that’s it for this week. Thanks for being a part of the positive corner of the internet. And remember: don’t wait to make a change. Take action on any goal, don’t quit in the hard moments, and the results will come. 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 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