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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Lower your blood pressure in 2 minutes

• What else is hiding in your creatine?

• The longevity claim that didn’t pan out

• A new approach for a lack of time

Instant Health Boost
The Boring (Effective) Way to Lower Your Blood Pressure

Nobody posts a wall sit. It’s boring. You slide down a wall, hold, and stare at the clock while your thighs scream.

But that basic exercise might be doing more for your blood pressure than your cardio.

Scientists found that holding a wall sit for a few two-minute rounds, three times a week, lowered resting blood pressure more than running, weights, or HIIT.

Researchers reviewed 270 randomized trials and compared different types of exercise. The good news is that every type of exercise helped. Aerobic training and weights dropped systolic pressure about 4.5 points. But isometric exercise, meaning you hold a muscle tight without moving, like a wall sit or a plank, dropped it nearly twice as much.

When you hold that contraction, you squeeze the blood vessels. And once you let go, blood rushes back through, and your vessels get better at relaxing and widening. Repeat that over a few weeks, and your resting pressure settles at a lower level.

If you want to give it a try on your body, here’s what the researchers tested: four 2-minute wall sits, two minutes of rest between each, three days a week. That's 24 minutes a week. Set your thighs parallel to the floor, so it's genuinely hard by the end of every hold.

If you can’t last for 2 minutes (no shame in that, it’s a long hold), start with 30-second holds and try to add 5 seconds a week.

Together With Momentous
Do You Know What Else Is In Your Creatine?

Creatine is probably the most studied supplement on the shelf. At this point, it has more than 600 human trials alone across the last three decades. Creatine works for a variety of health benefits. But there's a question almost nobody asks on the way to checkout: what else made it into the tub along with it?

After a deep dive into lab reports, we found that contamination in creatine mostly doesn't come from the creatine.

Researchers who've traced contaminant sources in commercial creatine supplements point to a specific list of culprits, and most of them are not the ingredient itself. 

Some studies point to the reagents and solvents used during synthesis, while others point to the metal tubing and equipment the powder passes through on the production line, or to the containers. 

Mercury and cadmium turn up because they're used in plastics manufacturing. Nobody's adding these on purpose. It's just what happens when a product moves through a supply chain that wasn't built with purity as the first priority.

Europe regulates this. EFSA, the EU's food safety authority, set specific limits years ago on the amounts of arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and lead that a batch of creatine monohydrate may contain. However, the US never adopted anything comparable. 

The FDA doesn't require heavy metal testing on supplements at all — which is why we are so so consistent in recommending you only buy supplements with third-party testing — and PFAS and microplastics don't appear on most brands' testing checklist, period.

Remember, single-serving exposure at those levels isn't a reason to panic. The goal with heavy metals isn’t zero exposure; it’s limiting exposure where you can, such as by not microwaving food in plastic or drinking from a plastic water bottle daily. 

Helping you get a better creatine without heavy metal exposure is why Momentous rebuilt their creatine and created the Signature Spec Creatine. 

Momentous Signature Spec Creatine is made in a pharmaceutical facility rather than a standard chemical plant, and is water-washed with reverse osmosis rather than the chemical rinses most of the category still uses. 

Compared to other premium creatine, impurities dropped 10x, and heavy metal limits got 2-5x tighter than the industry's already-premium bar, plus new screening for PFAS and microplastics that most competitors skip entirely. 

Every batch runs through six verification stages, is checked by outside labs like Eurofins and Light Labs, and is then certified by NSF for Sport and SuppCo's TESTED program, which buys the product off a real shelf and checks it against the label as any customer would.

Creatine monohydrate is still the gold standard, and that’s what this is. But now Momentous went the extra mile.

APC readers can get the brand new Signature Spec for 35% off a subscription or 14% off a one-time purchase. Just use the code “PUMPCLUB” at checkout. 

The research on creatine hasn't changed. What's worth asking now is whether what's in your tub is actually just creatine.

On Our Radar
The Longevity Story (That Wasn’t)

A few years ago, taurine had a moment. A paper hinted the amino acid might be a key component of aging itself. Then, a new study made the old study look premature and misleading.

Scientists used the same participants as in the original study and tracked them over a longer period, finding that taurine did not appear to be a marker of aging. 

Taurine is an amino acid best known for appearing in some very popular energy drinks. 

Back in 2023, a research paper suggested that taurine levels fell with age in mice, monkeys, and people. And then, giving older animals taurine appeared to extend healthspan and, in mice, lifespan. 

Fast forward a few years, and scientists retested with a larger analysis led by the National Institute on Aging. This time, taurine didn't reliably fall with age. It often rose or held steady, and it varied far more from person to person than across the lifespan. 

This is why it’s best not to overreact to a singular study. 

The scientists went so far as to suggest that taurine isn't a dependable marker of aging. And then a separate study doubled down and also found no link between taurine levels and age, muscle mass, strength, or performance.

This doesn't prove taurine does nothing for your health. It just proves the research couldn't replicate the original finding. Scientists are currently running more human trials to better understand whether supplementation will do anything for aging.

Based on the evidence we have now, there’s no reason to believe that low taurine levels drive aging. And if you follow a normal diet, you should get enough taurine, so there's no strong case yet for supplementing for longevity purposes.

Better Questions, Better Solutions
A Better Way to “Find Time That Doesn’t Exist” 

You want to move more, see your friends more often, and take a daily walk. You know you should. 

But every time you set a goal, you bump into the same issue: I don't have time to do all the things I know are important. 

So you feel bad about doing nothing, life stays busy, and the cycle repeats, causing a lot of frustration. 

Your schedule is your schedule, but maybe you’re asking yourself the wrong question.

Old question: When am I going to find time to exercise? 
Better question: What's the smallest amount of something that still counts, and where can I make it fit into my life?

The first question demands a block of time you feel you don't have (Arnold would tell you to look at your screen time and pull from those hours, so that is always an option and one with a lot of upside). 

When you look at your packed schedule and ask when you’ll find time, too often the answer is "never," and nothing happens. The second question assumes the time is already there in limited amounts, and asks you to use the space you have.

This isn't a mindset trick. Research suggests it’s a more effective way to create behavioral change and momentum that reshape how you invest your time. 

And it’s not like the small changes don’t lead to meaningful differences. Scientists found that tiny doses of movement, like brief, hard bursts of stair climbing, improved cardio fitness in people who "had no time" and improved cardiovascular health. 

The shift matters because it changes what a win looks like. 

With the old question, anything less than a "real" workout feels like a failure, so you skip it. Under the new one, sprinting up and down the stairs for three minutes is a win. A ten-minute walk is a win. A quick homemade meal is a win. And those wins stack into a habit. 

Instead of waiting to have time, start using the time you already have.

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