Use The Darkness To Create Light

Welcome to the positive corner of the internet. Every weekday, we make sense of the confusing world of wellness by analyzing the headlines, simplifying the latest research, and offering quick tips designed to make you healthier in less than 5 minutes. If you were forwarded this message, you can get the free daily email here.

Today’s Health Upgrade

• The 4-minute cancer defense

• Why more women should consider creatine

• Use the darkness to create light

Health
Four-Minute Cancer Defense

File this one under the studies that you and go, “Wait, that can’t be right…can it?”

A recent study found that just 4 minutes of intense physical activity per day can significantly reduce your cancer risk. 

Scientists studied more than 22,000 adults who don’t regularly exercise. They wore devices to measure activity and were studied for approximately seven years to determine cancer outcomes. 

In particular, the researchers were interested in vigorous physical activity, which they defined as an intense burst of exercise lasting about one to two minutes. 

The scientists found that as little as 3 minutes of vigorous physical activity per day can reduce your overall cancer risk by about 10 percent. Performing 4.5 minutes was associated with a 20 percent reduction in the overall risk of cancer and a 31 percent reduction in cancers closely linked to low activity levels.  

And when you consider that 33 percent of women and 25 percent of men don’t get the minimum recommendation for intense exercise, it’s even more reason to make room for a few minutes of movement. And remember: intensity can happen anywhere, whether sprinting up stairs, going for a ruck, doing as many reps of a bodyweight exercise, or any exercise in the gym.

On Our Radar
Why More Women Should Consider Creatine

Creatine was traditionally viewed as a “male” supplement, but if you’re following the research, it might help women more than men. And a new study offers another convincing reason to try the popular supplement. 

Researchers found that supplementing with creatine increases overall sleep when performing resistance training. 

Prior studies found that women’s sleep is disrupted during their menstrual cycle because of changes to the circadian rhythms, resulting in worse sleep quality and duration, which also affects exercise recovery. 

While many view creatine as “unnatural,” it is naturally produced in your body to provide energy to fuel everything from your muscles to your brain. But men and women don’t use and store creatine the same way.

Even though men and women both need creatine, research suggests that women store approximately 70 to 80 percent less creatine than men, meaning they might benefit more from supplementation.

In the latest study, taking just 5 grams of creatine per day improved total sleep duration in menstruating women on days they exercised (compared to non-workout days).

This is the latest in a long line of studies suggesting creatine’s numerous cognitive benefits, including protecting brain health and giving your brain more energy to perform at a high level when you’re sleep-deprived. 

If you’re looking to supplement with creatine, creatine monohydrate is backed by the most research. If you can find it, opt for brands that use Creapure, which is standardized for quality and purity. The safest and most trusted brand we’ve found is Momentous Creatine. And all members of The Pump Club receive 20 percent OFF when using the code PUMPCLUB. 

One Great Idea
Use The Darkness To Create Light

Editor’s Note: In honor of 9/11, we asked GORUCK CEO Jason McCarthy — a former Special Forces Sergeant “Green Beret” — to share what he learned from his experiences serving his country and going to war. 

—

I have a deep-seated conflict with 9/11 that will never die. I was 22, a freshly minted college kid with no real purpose in life on that perfect September morning when the Towers fell. I watched it live on TV, and that was close enough. My desire for revenge was born and absolute.

This led me to the Army recruiting station. I guess I wanted to serve my country, but that was secondary to my desire for revenge. There are many ways to serve your country, but I felt in the marrow of my bones that my job was to answer the call of war, as so many had done before me.

I became completely convinced that if I didn’t join, I would regret it for the rest of my life. This fear of regret is the emotion that ultimately overpowered my fear of dying in a far away land.

As I went through Special Forces training in the pine forests of North Carolina under men who had been in the invasion of Afghanistan, I contemplated a lot about life and death but did this as little as possible. I shielded myself from any feelings of weakness by telling myself, as we all had to, that we were invincible. We did this by moving fast and forward in a constant state of controlled aggression. And where we made mistakes, we trained and kept training until we felt invincible again.

We learned how to sacrifice our personal comforts for the mission and to believe we could do anything our country asked of us. Iron sharpens iron, they say, and they’re right.

There was a lot that I did not and could not foresee in those years of my life. I wanted revenge; that’s why I enlisted in the Army after 9/11. I wanted to be hunting Bin Laden in those cold, dark mountains in Afghanistan. I wanted to do all that I could for my country and more.

I wanted to be the superhero in the movie. My motivation began with me, me, me, as I believe revenge always does. I deployed to the war in Iraq and to Africa. I saw enough violence to want more. 

But I never quelled my desire for revenge; it just sort of dulled around the edges and kept fading away into the background, where it belongs.

Peace of heart came in a different form. In the years my teammates and I served together, what I found most impactful on my life was love. 

Love for the guy to my left and right, in spite of and maybe because the world we felt was so unjust that it deepened that love. It wasn’t the guns or the bombs or the battles or even the bloodshed; it wasn’t the fighting that mattered most in the end. Love is more powerful than hate and revenge, and this changed my heart.

So why did I have to go to war to find this out?

I believe the answer to this question is as old as mankind. To dare greatly and to do this as a way of life can only find fuel in a love for something greater than yourself.

This is the most important lesson that war taught me: that it’s not about me. 

Anger and hate and revenge fell by the wayside long ago. There is only love that remains, that we give and that we receive. Love was the greatest lesson I learned at war.

Here’s why I struggle. I’ve lost friends I never would have met without 9/11, and I’m a better person because I went to war. I’m here, I love my wife and our kids, and I love raising them in America. 

My life is great, and I feel guilty about that. 

Freedom is such a blessing, especially when you know what it costs. My kids are thrilled to be playing baseball this season, but they don’t get to play with the kids of my buddies, who are buried around the country because they never had kids. We’re all worse for their loss. For what might have been but wasn’t. 

Everything would be different if the Towers had never fallen. And yet, despite the sacrifice it’s brought, my life would be worse. How’s that for a conflict of the heart? 

There is no easy way to reconcile this; there is only who we are and what we serve now. Or, as Arnold would say, ‘be useful’ — which to me also comes from a place of love, of service over self. This is the way of life I aspire to lead, now and always.

I have a picture of my Special Forces team that I see every single day as I walk out my door. It serves as a reminder of what I feel I owe and will always owe.

I believe in our way of life, and I believe in giving back. I believe that journeys of the heart may begin far from where they end up. I believe that each of us can do our part to serve something greater than ourselves just by loving the people around us and letting them love us in return.

This way of life that I learned from Special Forces was my true north when I cried as I left the Army, it was my true north when my wife and I started GORUCK, and it’s my true north today, on this anniversary of that worst of days that led to so much love.

 —

Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell