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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Not so fast: the new mushroom study

• The key to a younger brain? (It might surprise you)

• The strongest case for daily tea time

• The pull towards more

Not So Fast
That "Magic Mushroom Blend Beats Stress" Study? Read the Fine Print.

Adaptogens are marketed as a solution for people feeling overwhelmed and overworked. And a new study appears to add more fuel to the flames by suggesting a five-mushroom supplement "significantly" lowered stress, anxiety, fatigue, and even the stress hormone cortisol in just six weeks. 

Adaptogenic mushrooms are an area of nutrition we find fascinating. At the same time, we call it like we see it, and there's a reason to pump the brakes on the praise attached to the latest study.

The claimed benefits for mushrooms didn’t align with the results.  

The study included all the mushrooms you see in popular supplements: Reishi, lion's mane, cordyceps, shiitake, maitake — all packed into a capsule that calms your nervous system. 

The paper claims the blend lowered a stress-related chemical called norepinephrine, but its own data table shows that the chemical increased in the supplement group. Another section says perceived stress didn't differ between groups, and then results suggest it did. 

And while there were some improvements, they were tiny in practice. For example, a cortisol drop of about 5% is well within the range your body swings through on a normal morning. 

We're not telling you mushrooms are snake oil. But we are saying that some evidence might overstate their claims, while other evidence might support their use. 

A 2025 review pooled data from 16 randomized trials testing β-glucans, the bioactive fiber found in mushrooms (as well as oats and yeast). The independent researchers, with no product to sell, saw improvements in fatigue, energy, and mood.

We’ll continue to dig into the research to better understand who these products might help most. 

If you’re looking to reduce stress and fatigue, the behaviors with decades of data aren’t sexy, but they are effective: sleep, training, mindfulness, social connection, breathing practices, and meditation. 

Instant Health Boost
The Surprising Thing Linked to a Younger Brain (It's Not What You Think)

If you have kids, it might feel like you’re losing your mind on a daily basis. However, a study of more than 300,000 adults found that your brain might benefit despite the craziness.

Parents appear to have a younger brain than non-parents. However, even if you don’t have children, the science suggests you might be able to unlock similar benefits.

Researchers analyzed aging data and brain scans to understand the relationship between having children and brain age. Having even one child was linked to roughly the equivalent of being a year younger on cognitive tests for women, and up to several years younger for men. 

The biggest improvements in brain age were seen in people with two or three children, with the greatest gains in memory and reaction-time tests, as well as positive changes on brain scans.

On the cognitive tests, the effect was stronger in men, and that's why the researchers believe this might not just be about having children. Men obviously don't go through pregnancy, so if the benefit came from the biology of carrying a child, it wouldn't show up in fathers at all. (Although there are many other reasons why fathers could show greater positive benefits.)

The researchers suggest that a parenting lifestyle could lead to a healthier brain because it provides more social contact, structure and routine, a greater sense of purpose, a sense of being needed, and often less alcohol and tobacco.

This was an observational study, so it can't show cause and effect. It's even possible that there is reverse causation: that better baseline health makes people more likely to have kids in the first place, rather than kids improving the brain. And more kids — up to a point — didn't mean more benefit. The pattern peaked at two or three and didn't keep climbing. Past that, it actually tailed off.

Together With Pique
Ten Years of Tea Lowered Cognitive Decline Risk. A Cup Now and Then Didn't.

You've heard tea is good for your brain, so maybe you have a cup when you think of it and figure that counts. A decade-long study from China suggests the occasional cup isn't really doing the work.

People who maintained a regular tea habit for 10 years showed less cognitive decline. The on-and-off drinkers saw almost no benefit at all.

Researchers followed more than 6,000 adults aged 60 and up over 10 years. They tracked how often people drank tea and, more importantly, whether they stuck with it. Thinking and memory were scored with a standard test. To prevent healthier people from skewing the comparison, they analyzed the data to account for those differences.

After that adjustment, consistent frequent tea drinkers had about a 12% lower risk of cognitive decline than consistent non-drinkers. And the people who drank tea frequently only part of the time only saw their risk improve a tiny bit. Consistency was the whole story.

Tea has many health benefits tied to its caffeine, L-theanine, and plant compounds called catechins. All are linked to steadier blood flow and lower inflammation in the brain. A single cup doesn't build anything. Years of steady exposure might. 

In other words, drinking is the easy part. Consistency is the hard part. Tea isn’t hard, but sometimes it’s easy to let the little things get in the way. The kettle, the steeping, the timer, the soggy bag, the loose leaf going stale in the back of the cupboard. 

That's why so many of our readers say they prefer Pique. 

They make drinking tea even easier to stick with. No bags, no steeping, no cleanup. A stick of crystallized tea dissolves in hot or cold water in about ten seconds, so the cup happens whether you're rushed or not.

And since the study credits compounds like catechins and L-theanine, it matters that every cup actually carries them. Most brewing degrades a chunk of those compounds with heat before they reach you. Pique uses a patented Cold Brew Crystallization process, low-heat steeping over hours instead of minutes, that they say preserves up to 12x the catechins of conventionally brewed tea. Every batch is triple-toxin-screened for pesticides, heavy metals, and mold, and sourced from certified organic farms.

So you get both halves of what the research rewards: a cup easy enough to drink every day for years, and a cup worth drinking when you do.

As an APC reader, you get 20% off for life, and a free starter kit on subscriptions over $100. Your discount applies automatically at checkout. Just visit piquelife.com/pumpclub to activate it.

The study's lesson was never about one good cup. It was about ten years of them.

No matter your tea preference, make the habit easy, and then the potential cognitive benefits will take care of themselves.

Better Questions, Better Solutions
The Pull Toward More

Old Question: What's the best new diet, supplement, or training method?
Better Question: What proven principle am I skipping while I chase the next big thing?

Most people feel like they need to keep hunting for a better protocol. It's actually a trick your brain plays on you, sending you in directions you don’t really need.

A few years ago, researchers ran eight experiments asking people to improve something, such as a Lego structure, an essay, a recipe, or a travel itinerary. 

Over and over, people fixed problems by adding. New pieces, extra steps, more rules. Meanwhile, the simpler fix of taking something away barely registered. 

And it wasn't that people weighed subtraction and rejected it. Subtraction didn't come to mind as readily. Additive solutions surfaced almost automatically; subtractive ones took deliberate effort most people never spent. When researchers reminded participants that taking things away was an option, far more of them did.

Something similar may happen with health. The new diet, the trending supplement, the novel training split — they're all additions. 

They feel like progress because they're effortful and exciting. Meanwhile the proven basics (protein, sleep, walking, lifting, repeating the same unglamorous week) feel like standing still. So we skip past them. 

Not because they stopped working, but because they don't light up the part of us that wants something new to try.

So it’s worth reminding yourself that novel and effective are not the same thing. The boring stuff isn't a placeholder until the better answer shows up. 

The boring stuff usually is the answer. Repetition is the strategy elite performers never outgrow.

It’s the Bruce Lee quote played out in real life: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Try this: Before you add anything new this week, take a page out of the system we use to help people build better habits. 

Name one basic behavior you've gotten inconsistent with. Not a fresh plan, but an old one you half-abandoned, or one you heard about that sounded too basic that you ignored. 

Then do only that for the next 14 days. No additions allowed. Let the results remind you what you already had.

The next big thing will always be louder than the proven thing. That's exactly why it's worth your suspicion.

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