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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Is your joint supplement linked to Alzheimer’s?

• How to build a more resilient brain

• Fact or fiction: You need animal protein to maximize muscle growth

• The 50-year study on sugar and child development

In The News
Can A Popular Supplement For Joint Pain Cause Alzheimer's? 

If you take glucosamine for your knees, the coverage of a new study probably made your stomach drop.

The headlines suggested that the joint supplement millions of people use might fuel Alzheimer's. The study is real, but the scary conclusion overlooked the one detail that matters most.

The potential risk only showed up in brains that already had Alzheimer's. In healthy brains (of both mice and humans), glucosamine had no impact. 

Scientists bred animals to develop Alzheimer's and then gave them glucosamine, which has been used to help with joint pain. The supplement caused a further decrease in memory. 

But when they examined healthy mice given the same dose, they found nothing. It was almost as if the brain shrugged it off. That is arguably the most important finding, and the thing the headlines left out. 

The human side of the research offers even less reason to panic. 

Researchers reviewed medical records of more than 24,000 dementia patients and 41,900 with mild cognitive impairment. Glucosamine users who already had dementia were roughly 25% more likely to die within five years, and those with mild impairment progressed to Alzheimer's about 25% more often. 

But here's why the data is incomplete and misleading: people who take glucosamine have achy joints, and achy joints are associated with less movement, more inflammation, more illness, all of which wear on the brain by themselves. 

The study adjusted only for age and sex. It can't separate the supplement from the behaviors that led to arthritis.

And that 25% is relative. About 5 in 100 people with mild impairment end up with Alzheimer’s. This nudges the number to 6 in 100. So the difference is one additional person out of 100, not one in four.

Based on the science we have, if you're healthy and taking glucosamine for your joints, there's likely no reason to worry. If there's a dementia diagnosis in the picture, it's a fair question to raise with a doctor to consider whether there’s a better approach for your overall health.

Together With Babbel
Learning A Second Language Might Buy Your Brain Extra Protection

You don’t need to worry about glucosamine causing Alzheimer’s, but that could leave you wondering what you can do to protect your brain

Learning might be the best way to fight off the neurodegenerative threats of aging, and language appears to provide a unique advantage. 

A bilingual brain doesn’t dodge the wear of getting older. However, learning a language appears to build more resilience and help you function at a higher level as you age. 

Scientists believe that learning a language builds cognitive reserve, the brain's ability to function even as damage builds up.

A meta-analysis of 21 studies found bilinguals tend to show symptoms of dementia about 5 years later, and get diagnosed about 3 years later, than people who speak one language. 

Not because they catch the disease less often (they don't), but because the brain compensates longer before symptoms break through.

The protection of knowing multiple languages also shows up in stroke patients. About 40% of bilinguals had normal cognition afterward, compared with 19% of people who spoke only one language. 

And imaging supports both findings: bilinguals carry denser gray and white matter in the control hubs that steer attention and decisions. 

To be fair, bilinguals differ in schooling, work, and where they live, so nobody can call it a clean cause-and-effect. Learning another language can’t guarantee anything, but it’s hard to find a downside.

A new language is novel, demanding, and social, and that's exactly the kind of activity your brain loves. You also get the payoff with the strongest research: you can connect with more people and open yourself up to new life experiences.

For most people, starting a language sounds hard because it takes too much time, and memorizing words is not the same as speaking. 

That's where Babbel offers an effective solution. Lessons run about ten minutes and are built around real conversations, not vocab drills. Babbel uses games, podcasts, and speaking practice that get people talking in as little as three weeks. 

Pump Club readers have told us it stuck where other apps didn't, so we set up a special offer for all of you.

Right now you can get up to 55% off Babbel and see for yourself.

Fact or Fiction
Do You Need To Eat Meat to Maximize Muscle Growth?

“Muscle requires meat.”

Enter into any conversation about muscle-building nutrition, and you’ve probably heard some variation of this claim. Plants are fine for a side salad and for nutrients, but if you're serious about building muscle, you need the chicken, steak, and eggs. 

The truth? Research now suggests that when total protein is matched and at sufficient levels, a vegan diet stimulates the muscle-building signal just as well as an omnivorous one.

Evidence has been building from dozens of studies, and the scientists put the muscle-building signal to the test directly in a recent randomized controlled trial. They put 40 healthy, active adults (men and women) on a weight-maintenance diet built either entirely from animal foods or entirely from plants. Both groups ate the same amount of protein, roughly 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight, and performed resistance training. 

Researchers tracked daily protein synthesis (the rate at which muscle builds new tissue). The rates came back statistically identical. Plant or animal, the source didn't change the muscle-building response.

The scientists also found it didn't matter whether people spread protein evenly across five meals or loaded it into one or two. 

Some might ask about funding (we also get emails about it daily), which might be the most interesting part for skeptics. The study was funded by a beef-industry group, which makes a plant-equals-animal result all the more telling, since it runs counter to the funder's own interests.

Now, this was a smaller study and limited duration. But it aligns with other studies showing that if you eat enough total protein, you can build muscle on a plant-based diet. And that’s mostly because your training determines your muscle building more than your diet. 

When it comes to your gains, your muscles respond to amino acids, especially leucine. For some people, that means eating more plant protein overall in order to get enough of the amino acids your body requires because plant protein tends to have fewer amino acids than animal protein. But if you do that and consume enough high-quality protein throughout the day, a varied plant-based diet delivers the same building blocks as meat. 

If you’re looking for more plant-based foods that are high in protein, you can start with beans, lentils, tempeh, seitan, edamame, chickpeas, and brewer’s yeast.

On Our Radar
What You Eat in Pregnancy (And The Start Of Life) May Protect Your Baby for 50 Years

You can't choose what you ate as a baby. But if you're pregnant, or hope to be, you can choose what your baby eats. And it’s possible that it matters more than you think. 

How much sugar a child consumes before birth and in their first two years may lower their risk of diabetes and high blood pressure 50 years down the road.

After World War II, Britain imposed sugar rationing. When that limit ended in 1953, sugar use almost doubled. That historical shift set the stage for an interesting study. 

Scientists used the time period of lower sugar consumption to compare babies raised with little sugar to babies raised with more, and they followed more than 60,000 of them into adulthood. 

The researchers found that the low-sugar group was about 35% less likely to get type 2 diabetes and 20% less likely to get high blood pressure. And when they did get sick, it came later in life.

The big numbers are a little deceptive. In real terms, about 3 more people out of 100 reached age 60 without these diseases. Less sugar early seems to push these problems back, but it doesn't erase them entirely. 

The first two years are when a baby's body is still learning how to run. It's setting the rules for how it handles sugar and how it controls blood pressure. 

It’s possible — although not proven — that too much sugar during this early window may teach the body the wrong rules, and those rules can have an influence. The data showed that protection strengthened after babies started solid food, around six months. So it's not only what a mother eats. It's what ends up directly in the child’s mouth. 

And it’s important to mention that the data does not suggest a need for extremes. The low-sugar group wasn't eating zero sugar. They ate about what doctors already suggest today.

Your best bet is to find easy ways to cut added sugar, such as reducing soda and sugary snacks during pregnancy. Then, for your baby's first two years, limit added sugar. Skip the juice and the sweet yogurts. You don't have to be perfect. Those babies weren't, and it still possibly made a difference. 

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