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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Outsmart stress

• Arnold Q&A

• Weekend challenge

Outsmart Stress

There’s something rarely mentioned about stress that might be the most important thing you need to know.

Research suggests that it’s not the number of stressors you have to manage in your life that create problems; how you manage and cope with the stress determines if it harms your health.

On any given day, it’s easy to worry that too many things are going wrong. And that the impact of the volume of stressors will cause you to break down. But stress itself isn’t the problem. Your body is good at managing stress as long as you don’t allow the stressors to cause emotional and psychological breakdowns. That’s where the real problems begin.

Scientists found that your emotional responses to stress are more closely linked to outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, increased inflammation, and shorter lifespan.

Luckily, even on the most stressful days, there are many ways to outsmart stress, lessen the emotional burden, and protect your health. Research suggests that any exercise — even just a walk — can make a big difference. That’s because when your body experiences stress, your body wants to release energy. Doing so can cause a physiological change that helps you destress.

If you can’t exercise, all it takes to overcome stress is more positivity and satisfaction. When you feel the stress hitting hard, call a timeout — even if you’re at work — and try to change your mood. You can do something that makes you laugh (like watching comedy), helps you relax (like meditation), challenges your brain in a low-stress environment (such as reading or a crossword puzzle), or brings you joy (talking to a friend). As we mentioned, you can’t always control how many stressors you face, but that doesn’t matter. Instead, focus on offsetting stress with another positive emotional response.

Arnold Q&A

On Wednesday, Arnold did another Q&A with the Pump App community. Here are a few of his responses.

On balancing bodybuilding and acting

On the upcoming release of Be Useful

On Training Your Kids

How Arnold Takes His Coffee

Weekend Challenge

On Monday, we talked about staying hungry, being curious, and always learning.

I believe it’s a big part of my success — that’s why there is a whole chapter in my book called “Shut your mouth and open your mind.”

I also don’t think you can live a full life if you aren’t out there every single day trying to learn something new.

So this weekend, I want you to put this into practice in your own life. I want you to learn something new.

It could be picking up a book you bought months or years ago about a subject you wanted to learn. It could be finally starting to learn a language like you’ve always planned (we’ve found that our friends at Babbel are great at helping with this). It could be just talking to someone you’ve never spoken to to learn about their challenges or job.

I can tell you that I’ve learned about some of the most fascinating jobs I never would have heard about by sitting down on a movie set with a different crew member at lunch. Once, I sat with someone whose job was dealing with all the waste a movie produces. You might say, “Arnold, that’s just a garbage man.” But I learned about all the challenges of that job and how we can reduce our waste slowly.

When you learn something new, you can find something to do about it. But I don’t need you to do anything else this weekend.

Just go out into the world with curiosity. Open your mind. Learn something. Tell me what you learned about on Twitter.

Stay hungry!

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell