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Today’s Health Upgrade
Is your brain offline?
Don’t skip leg day (if you want to live longer)
The diet that doesn’t make you diet
Arnold’s Podcast
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Health
Where Does Your Mind Go When It “Goes Blank”?
It’s one of the strangest human experiences—those moments when you realize you're not thinking about anything. Not stressed. Not planning. Just…nothing happening in your brain.
Scientists call it mind blanking. And it might reveal more about how your brain protects itself than you think.
Mind blanking appears to be a distinct mental state that’s triggered when your brain’s arousal drops too low to sustain thought.
Researchers wanted to explore what happens during those mental blackouts. Unlike distracted thinking or mind-wandering, mind blanking is different because there’s an absence of conscious thought. You’re awake but mentally offline.
Using brain scans, scientists found that participants who reported blank minds showed a unique pattern: a momentary deactivation of all major brain networks. This synchronized silence is also observed during sleep, anesthesia, and deep meditation. In short, the brain temporarily powers down the systems responsible for generating thoughts.
Mind blanking becomes more likely when your brain's stimulation level drops too low, whether due to fatigue, low attention, or even boredom. High arousal is needed to sustain a stream of thought. Without it, the brain hits a pause.
They believe mind blanking isn’t a malfunction—it’s a protective reset. A moment of cognitive idling that might help your brain conserve energy, recalibrate, or prepare for the next round of thinking.
Whether it happens during meditation, a long meeting, or staring at the wall, mind blanking may be your brain’s way of recharging. The next time it happens, you might not be zoning out but buffering brilliance.
Instant Health Boost
A Warning For Those Who Skip Leg Day
If you want to live longer, you might want to make stronger legs a priority.
That’s because recent research found that lower body strength is strongly associated with improved longevity.
Scientists tracked older women over three years to see which physical performance measures predicted disability. They split disability into two types: Progressive disability ( a gradual loss of function) and catastrophic disability (a sudden drop from full independence to severe limitations).
The most powerful predictor of future disability? Lower-body performance.
Leg strength reflects more than just muscle; it’s a marker of functional independence, cardiovascular resilience, and metabolic health — all of which are essential for avoiding falls, maintaining independence, and staying active. Walking speed, in particular, reflects "biological age" and may offer early warning signs of physical decline.
Walking, lunges, step-ups, and squats can make a difference if you want to start preserving your youth.
Nutrition
The Diet That Doesn’t Make You Diet Every Day
We’ve all heard the same advice: if you want to lose weight, you must cut calories daily. But what if there’s another way?
A method of intermittent fasting helped people lose more weight than traditional daily calorie counting, but not for the reasons you might think.
We’ve often shared that caloric intake is the driver of weight gain or loss. It doesn’t matter what your diet is; if you lose weight, it’s because you found a way to eat less overall.
In this 12-month randomized clinical trial, researchers compared two popular diet strategies: a 4:3 intermittent fasting plan (cutting calories by 80 percent on three nonconsecutive days per week, eating freely the other 4 days) and a daily caloric restriction plan (cutting calories by 34 percent every day).
Both groups received the same behavioral weight loss support and were encouraged to exercise 300 minutes per week (which was tracked by movement wearables).
At the end of the year, both groups lost weight, but the 4:3 intermittent fasting group lost more. But the weight loss number wasn’t the only thing that stood out.
Consistency and adherence appeared to be better on the intermittent fasting diet than on daily caloric restriction.
In fact, only 19 percent of intermittent fasters dropped out of the program compared to 30 percent of daily dieters, suggesting that the 4:3 structure might be easier to maintain. Even though both groups were asked to track their food intake, the fasting group only had to log calories 3 days per week, and that lighter tracking burden may have helped them stay consistent.
Notably, the researchers found no difference in physical activity between groups, meaning the greater weight loss wasn’t because one group moved more — it was likely because they stuck to their eating plan more reliably.
So, while this study does not prove that fasting is superior to calorie cutting, it does suggest that fasting could be a more sustainable option for some people, especially if daily tracking and restriction feel overwhelming.
If you struggle to stick to a diet every day, try committing to just three low-calorie days per week. The best diet isn’t the one with the fanciest rules; it’s the one you can follow long enough to see results.
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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell
