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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Can you supplement your way to more muscle?

• Your diet is good, but the fat stays. This could be your problem.

• The 10-second trick that helps you use your phone less

Fitness 
Why More Amino Acids Doesn’t Guarantee More Muscle

BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids) have a reputation as a shortcut to more muscle, largely because they contain leucine, the amino acid that helps activate muscle building. It’s an appealing idea: take more of the ingredient that starts the process, get more growth.

A randomized trial tested how much that muscle-building signal could accomplish when a muscle couldn’t move.

Despite the appeal of supplementing your way to more growth, taking extra leucine each day without physical activity didn't prevent muscle loss. 

Researchers put one leg of active adults in a cast. Half were younger adults, averaging 23 years old, and half were older, averaging 69, with equal numbers of men and women. Participants received either 5 grams of leucine with each of their three daily meals (15 grams total of leucine per day) or a calorie-matched placebo.

Muscle biopsies and CT scans showed that the immobilized legs had less muscle protein and lost quadriceps size. Researchers found no protective benefit from leucine in either age group. 

This short study of muscle loss can’t tell us whether supplements improve gains during a training program or over a longer period. But it does hint at how little extra leucine accomplished when normal muscle loading was removed.

Leucine helps activate a pathway involved in muscle protein synthesis, the process of making new muscle proteins. BCAAs can increase that process after resistance exercise. But a short-term increase doesn't mean a supplement will build bigger muscles over time.

There’s also a supply problem. BCAAs provide only three of the nine essential amino acids your body must get from food. Building muscle protein requires all nine. 

More leucine provides a stronger signal without necessarily supplying everything needed to complete the job. Complete proteins, such as whey or soy, provide the full set, including leucine.

The real point is that powder and pills are supplemental.

For muscle growth, challenging resistance training and adequate protein work together. Extra amino acids can’t compensate for a lack of hard work.

Protein stimulates muscle protein synthesis even at rest, so it's wrong to say it does nothing without exercise. Resistance training amplifies the response and makes it longer-lasting. During immobilization, muscles can become less responsive to protein, which helps explain why adding more of one amino acid may accomplish little.

If you’re trying to build muscle, keep your workouts challenging as you get stronger, and eat enough protein from sources that provide all essential amino acids. If you’re training, 1.6g/kg to 2.2 g/kg is enough to build muscle. If you get it from food, you don’t need extra powders.

Together With Eight Sleep
Same Diet, Same Weight Lost. Half the Fat.

You can eat right, hit your calories, skip the late-night treats, and watch the scale drop. And still lose the wrong thing.

That’s what researchers found when they compared identical diets and changed how long people slept. 

In both situations, people lost the same amount of weight, but when they didn’t get enough sleep, significantly less came from body fat.

The study was tightly controlled, which makes the results even more interesting. Overweight adults spent two weeks in a sleep lab on a moderate calorie cut. Months later, they did it again, in random order. 

In one round, participants slept 8.5 hours each night. During the short-sleep condition, they got only 5.5 hours of rest.

Both groups lost approximately 6.5 pounds. With more sleep, they lost 3 pounds of fat. But with less sleep, they lost only 1 pound of fat. 

That means short sleepers not only lost less fat, but also burned more muscle. On short sleep, people’s bodies burned a little less fat for fuel, and their resting metabolism slowed more. They also reported feeling hungrier. 

In the lab, that didn’t matter because researchers controlled every bite. In real life, it’s one more reason diets fall apart on little sleep.

This isn’t the only study showing that cutting sleep affects body composition. 

A 2018 trial reduced sleep by about an hour on weeknights for 8 weeks. The outcome was similar: participants lost weight, but those with less sleep lost less overall fat. And that held even with weekend catch-up sleep. 

We’ve seen plenty of people grind through a diet on low sleep and wonder why they look softer instead of leaner. This may be part of why.

You might be thinking 8.5 hours sounds impossible. But you don’t even need that much rest. Even in the long-sleep round, people averaged just under 7.5 hours of actual sleep. The short round averaged about 5¼ hours. 

That’s an important detail that’s easy to miss. In the long-sleep round, people had 8.5 hours in bed. They slept just under 7.5 hours. They spent a full hour lying there.

Most of us live in that gap. You set a good lights-out time. Phone down, kitchen closed. Then you stare at the ceiling, or wake up at 3 a.m. too warm to drift back off. The time in bed looks fine. The sleep doesn’t.

That’s why so many people in our community found the Eight Sleep Pod to be the missing piece in their sleep routine. It’s a smart mattress cover that goes on your existing mattress. 

It cools or heats each side of the bed on its own, anywhere from 55°F to 110°F. Autopilot cools the bed before you get in, then adjusts through the night as your body temperature changes.

People fall asleep up to 44% faster on the Pod. More of your lights-out window becomes real sleep.

It also tracks your sleep stages, heart rate, and HRV from the cover itself, with 99% heart rate accuracy compared to a standard ECG. No watch, no ring.

Each morning you get a plain-language brief on what helped and what didn’t. The pod learns what your body needs and adjusts the temperature to help you get higher-quality rest. 

You still have to set your bedtime and build better nighttime habits. But once you get into bed, the Eight Sleep Pod handles the rest. 

As a Pump Club subscriber, you get up to $300 OFF with code “PUMPCLUB.” For three years running, readers have made it a go-to purchase. And you get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't love it. 

Better Questions, Better Solutions
What You’re Escaping When You Reach for Your Phone

The Sunday screen-time report shows up, and the number stings. But you’re hopeful for change. So you delete an app, set a limit, and swear this week will be different.

Next thing you know, you’re tapping “ignore limit” without a second thought.

The Old Question: How do I spend less time on my phone?
The Better Question: What am I trying to avoid feeling when I pick it up?

So much of people’s phone dependency comes from quick grabs in small moments, whether waiting in line or making something to eat. The reflex is to fill the short gaps. 

In those moments, you’re giving your brain somewhere to go so you don’t have to sit with boredom or thoughts you keep putting off. 

Turns out, almost everyone struggles with this. 

Scientists left people alone in an empty room for 15 minutes with nothing to do but think. The only thing in the room was a button that gave a mild electric shock, one they’d already tried and said they’d pay to avoid.

Two out of three men pressed it anyway, and one in four women did too. Crazy as it sounds, participants would rather feel pain than be bored.

So if you can’t sit still for 90 seconds, you’re not broken. You’re human. But it hasn’t always been this way, and it doesn’t need to be this way either.

A later study found that people expect quiet time to feel much worse than it actually does. When they actually sat and waited, they enjoyed it more than they predicted, about as much as people who got to scroll the news. Yet they still picked the scroll.

In other words, the urge to grab your phone is partly a bad guess. Your brain assumes the boredom will be awful. Most of the time, it isn’t.

In one study, researchers asked about 600 people to either use their phones normally or cut back by one hour a day for a single week. 

People who cut back felt less anxious and less down, got more exercise, and felt more satisfied with their lives. Four months later, they were still using their phones about 45 minutes less per day. One week of effort changed the habit for months.

In another study, adults turned off the internet on their phones for two weeks. They could still call and text. Most people felt better, and their focus improved by about as much as you’d expect from being a decade younger. They also didn’t just sit there bored. They spent more time in person with people, exercising, and outside.

That’s the real trade. Every scroll you skip is a few seconds you get back for something that actually fills you up.

Try This: The 10-Second Rule

Before you open the app you grab most, wait 10 seconds. Just count. Then decide if you still want it.

That’s it, and it works better than it sounds. Researchers tested an app that does exactly this: it makes you wait a few seconds before social apps open. 

About a third of people gave up and closed the app. After six weeks, they were opening those apps 57% less. What worked was the wait itself. Reminder messages telling people to reconsider didn’t help.

You don’t need an app to start. Just count to 10 on your own. Or make it physical: move your most-grabbed app off your home screen, or leave your phone in another room while you cook, eat, or wake up.

You’re not trying to quit your phone. You’re just putting a speed bump between the urge and the scroll. Most urges are gone in 10 seconds.

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 we use it 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 edit and review our interpretations of the research, ensuring 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