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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Use it or lose it: The soleus push-up

• When “5 a day” doesn’t add up

• What happens to your brain without the internet

• Adam’s Corner: Nothing to lose

Health
Use It Or Lose It: The Seated "Blood Sugar Trick" 

If you've scrolled wellness TikTok lately, you've met the soleus push-up. Sit down, keep the ball of your foot planted, and raise your heels up and down, over and over.

The claims attached to it are enormous: crush your blood sugar, do it five minutes after meals, watch the spikes vanish.

Part of your calf muscle (called the soleus) can burn a surprising amount of blood sugar while you sit, but the jaw-dropping numbers came from hours of work, not a quick set at your desk.

The trend is based on a 2022 study from the University of Houston that had 25 people perform this exact movement, and it worked shockingly well: post-meal blood sugar dropped about 52%, and the insulin needed to handle it fell by around 60%.

The soleus is barely 1% of your body weight, yet it kept this up for hours without tiring, running on a slow, efficient kind of metabolism most muscles don't tap while you rest.

But here’s the catch we haven’t seen in a single clip: Those numbers came from near-continuous contractions across a long lab session. Nobody has shown that five minutes after lunch delivers the same thing.

That doesn’t mean it’s all a waste. Sitting is metabolically dead time, and the soleus push-up is a genuinely clever way to make some of it less dead.

But it's not a cheat code that erases a plate of pasta, unless you’re doing it for hours and hours. Even then, don't skip the walk or the weight-training session, and don't expect a magic trick.

If you sit for a living, you can do them during your next long stretch at the desk as something because it’s better than nothing.

Together With Pique
It's Not Just Five-a-Day. It's Which Five.

You hit your fruits and vegetables, but you might still be missing the plant compounds tied to a healthier heart. A new study says the issue isn't how much produce you eat. It's what kind.

Even if you eat produce, only about 1 in 5 people get the amount of flavanols linked to heart benefits.

Scientists reviewed the estimated flavanol intake of more than 30,000 adults, and fewer than 20% met the goal of 500 mg per day. Even among the healthiest eaters, only about 1 in 5 got there.

You might wonder why flavanols matter: other trials have found that they lower blood pressure and help keep arteries flexible. 

Part of the reason it’s tough to get enough flavanols is that their levels vary even within the same food. One apple variety can carry ten times as much as another, but some foods are more consistent than others. And that means when it comes to flavanols, the foods you pick matter more than how healthy the plate looks. 

If you want to boost your flavanol levels, berries are a good place to start. Blackberries give the biggest boost of the berries, followed by blueberries and strawberries. Dark chocolate and cocoa are a strong source. And apples with the skin on also help. 

But the biggest boost is green tea. A cup of green tea can provide, on average, about 100- 200 mg of flavanols per cup, and some brews go as high as 300 mg.

What actually ends up in your cup depends on where the leaf grew, when it was picked, how long it sat in a warehouse before it got to you, and how hot the water was when you finally poured. A dusty bag steeped for ninety seconds and a well-handled leaf brewed properly are not the same drink. They share a name. That's about it.

That gap is why we keep pointing readers to Pique. 

Their teas go through a slow, cold extraction and then get crystallized, which is a long way of saying the plant compounds come out of the leaf and stay intact instead of getting cooked off on the way. Every packet is the same extraction. They also screen each batch for pesticides, heavy metals, and mold. That's testing on real lots, not a claim printed on a box.

None of which means other teas are bad. Any green tea beats no green tea, and if you love your loose-leaf ritual, keep it. But if you're drinking tea for the compounds specifically, it's worth knowing they're actually in there.

Pump Club readers get 20% off for life plus a free starter kit on subscriptions over $100. Your lifetime discount applies automatically at checkout. 

Mindset
What Happened When 467 People Cut The Internet Out Of Their Phones

There's a move you make a hundred times a day without deciding to. You have a moment, maybe in line, at a red light, or between calls, and you’ve already grabbed your phone and started to scroll. 

Researchers wanted to know what happens if you take that option away. Not the whole phone. Just the part that makes it a bottomless well of access and entertainment.

When 467 adults blocked mobile internet for two weeks, they improved mood, focus, or life satisfaction. However, only a quarter of them actually pulled it off.

In the study, adults installed an app that would shut off the internet on their phones — data and Wi-Fi both — for two weeks. Texts still worked. Calls still worked. The laptop still worked. Only the phone's internet connection went dark.

Among everyone who finished, 91% improved in something: their mood, overall happiness with life, or focus. Seven in ten reported feeling mentally better.

On a computer test of how long they could sustain their attention, they regained roughly what a person loses to 10 years of aging.

The improvement in how people felt was, on average, bigger than what antidepressant studies typically produce.

The scientists believe that with the feed gone, people spent more time with other humans, more time moving, more time outside, and slept a little more. 

But the biggest reason is perhaps the most obvious: people felt more in charge of their own attention, as if their day belonged to them again. 

That's what lifted the mood scores, because dependence on the phone can crowd out the things that make people feel good.

Despite those changes, the study showed how hard it is to use your phone less.

Everyone who signed up wanted to use their phones less, and they knew what the researchers hoped to see. And yet, the majority still couldn’t make it the full 2 weeks. 

That’s why the takeaway isn't "go dark for two weeks." Instead, it’s figuring out how to get a little bit of your attention back. 

Here’s something that could work: Pick the one app or the one window that sucks you in, and set a timer for how much you’ll spend on it each day. Or use technology that helps reduce the amount of time you spend. We’ve tested the Brick and found it very helpful at reducing social media time and giving back time for life.

Adam’s Corner
Nothing To Lose

She was losing, and I couldn't turn it off.

Serena Williams was playing her first singles match in years. There's something about greatness that makes you appreciate the moment. And when you get a glimpse of it, especially when you thought it was over, it's best to make time to take it all in.

Serena played against 20-year-old Maya Joint, and somewhere late in the first set, she tweaked her right knee.

Later on, we'd learn it was a bad knee injury. Enough that it would end up shutting her down for doubles too.

But before we knew what she was battling, Serena played two more sets on that knee. Two hours and twenty-two minutes all told. She won the second in a tiebreak and eventually lost the third. 

After the match, I wasn't thinking much about the loss but about something I read when she first announced she was coming out of retirement. 

A reporter had asked how important it was for her to prove she could still win. Her answer was something that could help more people than anything she could do on the court during her comeback. 

“I don't need to win. I've won more than most people have in their whole lives. I don't have anything to prove, I don't have anything to lose, and everything here is just to gain.”

The Loss Column

Many people might read this and think, “Of course Serena has nothing to lose. Twenty-three majors. She's on the short list of the greatest athletes who ever lived, in any sport, and everybody already signed off on it years ago. When you've won everything, showing up for fun is free.”

But that's not what's going on.

She wasn't risking a tennis match. She was risking the last picture of herself. And keeping that perception required nothing from her. Stay home. Let the record talk. It would have talked forever.

Instead, she walked onto the most-watched court on earth and lost to a kid half her age, on a bad knee, on live television, while her two daughters sat in the front row of her box.

It's not exactly “nothing to lose,” but that's why I love and respect her mentality.

Because you could easily argue that she has everything to lose. But that's the mind game we all must play when we step into the arena.

“Nothing to lose” isn't a fact about your situation. It's a decision about what counts as the prize.

She shrank the prize down to something a loss couldn't reach.

Her kids getting to see her play was the win. The outcome was secondary. One daughter had never once watched her mother do the thing her mother is famous for.

Of course she wants to win. She’s a competitor. But there’s more to the big things we chase than wins and losses. 

The Wrong Ledger

Go back and look at what she said she wanted: To play tennis again. To have her daughters see her do it. To find out what her body could still do at 44.

That's the list. Now ask what a twenty-year-old ranked 87th in the world can take off of it.

Nothing. 

She lost the match and kept the entire prize, and that isn't a consolation or putting lipstick on a pig. 

It's a mindset that is undefeated. An arithmetic that will leave you more fulfilled if you see how it adds up. 

She counted the right things, and once you count the right things, the scoreboard starts to look different.

Most people’s ledgers look nothing like hers. They are full of stuff that belongs to other people. What they'll say. What they'll think. Whether anyone notices. Whether it looks like a midlife crisis. Whether somebody you haven't spoken to since 2011 sees you be bad at it.

Most of what we think we have to lose belongs to somebody else.

And the court of public opinion has never handed a single person a verdict they got to keep. It doesn't pay out. There's no version where you win it and get to stop showing up for it.

The Woman In The Balcony

Before her singles match, Serena came back to play doubles. And on that day, there was someone watching on the balcony.

Lindsey Vonn.

Earlier this year, Vonn had been airlifted off a mountain in Cortina.

She's 41 and retired in 2019 with a body that had been rebuilt so many times it hardly qualified as original equipment, then had a knee replaced in 2024, an actual titanium joint, and came back anyway. She won two World Cup downhills and hit the podium many more times. It was thrilling and inspiring. 

But for so many reasons that people couldn’t appreciate at the time. 

Vonn was doing this for herself. And that mattered more than the medals, especially given what happened next.

A little more than a week before the Olympic downhill, she caught the netting in Switzerland and ruptured her ACL. Zero percent of it left, by her own description.

The talking heads got to work. Dangerous. Irresponsible. A 41-year-old with a fake knee and no ACL had no business on that hill, they explained, at length, on television, to people who had never stood in a start gate.

She didn't withdraw. 

What she said was that she knew her chances weren't what they'd been, but there was still a chance, and as long as there was one she was going to try.

Thirteen seconds into her run, her arm clipped a gate. Inches too tight on the line, she'd say later. She went airborne, came down wrong, and broke her tibia badly enough to need multiple surgeries, and she could have lost her leg. The crowd stood there in silence for a full minute. Her sister, watching from the bottom, said she dared greatly.

The next day, from a hospital in Treviso, Vonn wrote that it wasn't a storybook ending or a fairy tale; it was just life, and that she'd dared to dream and worked so hard to get there.

And then: no regrets.

She lost the ending, the medal, and probably the career. But she didn’t lose the reason she stood on the mountain in the first place. No regrets.

Because the medal was never the prize, and she told everyone that before she went. She came back for a mountain that kept pulling her, and nobody on earth gave her permission to do it. 

Four months later she was on a balcony in London watching another woman do the same thing.

Nobody Hands You A Summit

There’s a formula that determines how many people end up with a goal.

The doctor says the word pre-diabetic. The knee gives out on a hike you used to do without thinking about it. There's a wedding in July. A photo somebody tagged you in that you keep going back to look at. A scan comes back with something on it.

And then, suddenly, everybody's got a plan.

There’s nothing wrong with it. It's how the machine often works. And anything that gives you a goal and vision can be a good thing, even if it comes out of a bad thing. 

Something takes a thing away from you, and wanting it back is human. 

And the goal sets itself. You never had to decide anything. You only had to react.

The doctor's appointment is the most effective personal trainer in America, but it doesn't take new clients until something is already wrong.

Which leaves the rest of you in a strange spot. If nothing's currently broken, if you're basically fine and busy and tired and holding it together, you don't have a summit. You have maintenance. And maintenance feels close enough to effort that you can go years without noticing the difference.

Nobody schedules it for you. But it’s also why, for so many people, when the stakes are removed, many lists stay a list. Because it’s not about talent, time, or genetics. Those can make it easier or harder.

But the line of succeeding vs. not comes down to who was willing to be bad at something where other people could see.

And while you wait, nothing happens. That's the whole downside. You stay right where you are, in perfectly acceptable shape, going nowhere in particular, with a story about why that's reasonable, and the story gets more reasonable every year until it's just your life.

Everything To Gain

Which brings me back to Serena's sentence, and the words I don’t want you to overlook. It’s the part that’s changing how I think about the goals and vision I want to pursue.

We stop at “nothing to lose” because it sounds tough. But that's the setup. The last clause is the payoff, and it's the one worth stealing.

Everything here is just to gain.

So look at what she was actually gaining. She got to play tennis again. Her daughters got to watch. She found out what her body could still do at 44.

Every one of those was paid out the second she walked onto the court.

The summit gets all the glory, but the reward isn't only sitting at the mountain top waiting to see if you're worthy of it. It shows up at the trailhead. Vonn never needed the medal. She'd already gotten Cortina, and she got it the moment she stood in the start gate, before she pushed off.

At that same press conference, Serena said one more thing that didn't make any headlines. Asked why she was doing this at all, she said that having the opportunity to maybe do it one more time was kind of cool and exciting.

Kind of cool and exciting. That's the greatest tennis player who ever lived describing the upside of Centre Court at 44.

Not glory. Not redemption. Not proving the doubters wrong. Cool and exciting, and already hers before she hit a single ball.

It’s a mentality that can only add to your life: Stop running the numbers on what taking a chance might cost you. That math is what's kept you exactly where you are. Ask what you get. Not if it works. Not eventually. What you get by going after the thing you want. 

You find out what you're made of, which right now you're only guessing at. 

Your kids see you chase something rather than hear about it at dinner. You stop being a person who talks about it. And the thing you've been carrying around finally gets set down, because it's no longer a plan. It's just what you do and who you are.

All of that is available on demand. Before anything goes right.

Serena didn't need to win. She needed the chance to play. She had it, so she took it, and everything after that was upside.

You have one too. It's been sitting there since before you started reading this.

Everything here is just to gain. -AB

-Adam Bornstein is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of Arnold’s Pump Club

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