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Today’s Health Upgrade
The unexpected relationship between coffee and gut health
“Microplastics” aren’t just from plastic materials
Beyond the headline: probiotics and blood sugar
Adam’s Corner: Let’s Talk About Failure
On Our Radar
Your Morning Coffee Is Doing Something Scientists Didn't Expect
You already know coffee gives you energy. Maybe you've read that it's linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, better cognitive function, and a longer life. Now, a new large-scale study offered another reason coffee is associated with health benefits, and it has nothing to do with the caffeine.
In research that tested 150 foods, coffee (including decaf) had the biggest impact on the bacteria living in your gut.
Researchers analyzed gut microbiome data from more than 22,000 participants across five US and UK cohorts. Coffee drinkers had 4.5 to 8 times higher levels of a healthy bacterium (called Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus) compared to non-drinkers. When researchers directly exposed it to coffee in lab conditions, its growth increased by roughly 350%. Other foods — even fiber-rich ones known to support gut health — didn't come close.
The reason for the increase isn't what most people would guess. Decaffeinated coffee produced nearly identical results, meaning the caffeine wasn’t doing the heavy lifting. Instead, researchers believe it’s coffee's polyphenol content — specifically, chlorogenic acid and its byproduct (quinic acid) — that likely drives the gut health benefits.
So why does this bacterium matter? L. asaccharolyticus is involved in producing butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid your gut lining depends on. Butyrate helps maintain the intestinal barrier that keeps harmful substances from leaking into the bloodstream, dials down inflammation, and supports immune function.
Think of it as structural maintenance for your digestive system. The bacterium is rare in populations that don't drink coffee and significantly more abundant in those who do, which makes the coffee connection worth paying attention to.
That said, L. asaccharolyticus is still relatively new to science, identified for the first time in 2018. The study shows coffee feeds it, not that this bacterium is definitely responsible for coffee's health benefits. That connection is plausible and actively being studied.
Together With Our Place
Are You Unintentionally Adding Microplastics To Your Meals?
Most of us have a non-stick pan we've held onto longer than we probably should. It does the job, cleanup is easy, and a few scratches seem like a cosmetic issue. According to scientists, those scratches are doing something more than ruining the finish.
A scratched Teflon-coated pan can release thousands to millions of microplastic and nanoplastic particles, and the fix is one of the simplest swaps you can make in your kitchen.
Researchers examined microplastic and nanoplastic release from non-stick cookware using Raman imaging, a technique that scans surfaces and collects spectral data to detect particles invisible to the naked eye. They tested both new and used Teflon-coated pots and pans, simulating real cooking conditions by dragging steel spatulas and wooden turners across the surfaces, the kind of thing that happens every time you make dinner.
A single surface crack released approximately 9,100 plastic particles. More extensive damage pushed that figure to roughly 2.3 million particles. Researchers believe the mechanical force of cooking utensils gradually dislodges fragments from the Teflon coating, and as that coating degrades over time, the rate of release accelerates.
The health implications of ingesting these particles are still understudied and not completely understood. This research tells us the particles are present in significant numbers, but it doesn't yet tell us what that means for your body over years of exposure. That question is actively being investigated.
What we can say is that replacing a visibly scratched or worn non-stick pan is a low-cost, low-effort precautionary step that can help you reduce unnecessary exposure to microplastics. You don't need to overhaul your entire kitchen. Start by looking at what you use most often. If the surface is flaking or visibly marked, it has earned its retirement.
At Arnold’s Pump Club, we tested different cookware and created a simple checklist to minimize risk:
No forever chemicals of any type
No coatings (which could scrape off with wear and tear)
The ability to cook over high heat (a problem for some cookware with chemical exposure)
Easy clean-up
The best of the bunch was Our Place’s Titanium Cookware Set. It offers nonstick cookware with zero coating, which means zero forever chemicals and a surface that doesn’t degrade.
Instead of relying on coatings that break down, it’s made from pure titanium, ultra-hardened for lifelong durability. It combines the best of stainless steel, cast iron, and nonstick.
We tried it out under all conditions for three months, and it held up. The best part? It’s both oven and dishwasher-safe. So it’s easy to prepare any meal, and clean-up is not a problem.
Our Place is running its biggest sale of the season right now, up to 40% off sitewide, but only for a limited time. We love their stuff and bought the pans before asking them to become an APC partner.
And if you're not sure it's right for your kitchen, their 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns mean there's no downside to finding out.
Beyond The Headline
Are Probiotics Actually Helping Your Blood Sugar?
I recently saw an ad on Instagram suggesting probiotics will prevent diabetes. Any truth to this? -Lisa, Toronto
Most people taking a probiotic aren't sure if it's working. The research has been just vague enough to keep the hope alive, and the supplement aisle fully stocked. A new analysis clears some of that fog, though maybe not in the direction the industry would prefer.
A review of 8 controlled trials found that probiotics produced a small but consistent improvement in long-term blood sugar control in people with pre-diabetes, but had no meaningful effect on cholesterol, blood pressure, or body weight.
Researchers pooled data from trials involving people with pre-diabetes who took probiotics for 8 to 24 weeks — in capsules, powders, or fermented dairy like yogurt and kefir — using common strains you'd find on most supplement labels. The researchers primarily focused on HbA1c, a blood test that reflects your average blood sugar over the past 2 to 3 months.
Probiotic users saw a slight reduction (0.07%) in HbA1c compared to placebo. What stood out wasn't the size (it doesn’t jump off the page), but the consistency. Every single study pointed in the same direction, with no exceptions. No side effects were observed, either, which matters for something people take daily.
For context, the landmark Diabetes Prevention Program study, which focused on diet and exercise for diabetes prevention, produced reductions roughly 10 to 20 times larger than probiotics.
So probiotics do something, just not very much.
Your gut plays a role in how you process carbohydrates and respond to insulin. Certain probiotic strains appear to reduce gut inflammation and improve the response, though researchers are still working out which strains and at what doses matter most.
If you already eat yogurt or take a probiotic for gut health, there's no reason to stop; there may be a small bonus. But if pre-diabetes is your concern, the fundamentals still do the heavy lifting: more fiber, daily movement, resistance training, better sleep, and stress management. Probiotics can support the foundation. They can't replace it.
Adam’s Corner
Failure Is Misunderstood
He wants to deadlift the person he used to be.
That’s not exactly how Ben said it. But that’s what it is. Ben’s goal — the one he’s been chasing, the one he described to me in Birmingham at the Arnold Sports Festival UK — is to pull from the floor the exact number that once appeared on a scale when he stepped on it. His former body weight loaded onto a barbell.
He talked about it the way people talk about something they’ve been living with for a long time. The tone — the pain and intensity —of a man who has decided something and isn’t in a hurry to undecide it until it has been accomplished.
And he’s close. Oh so close. He can deadlift 430 pounds (195 kg). That’s real weight. Ben is strong. However, the number he’s chasing is just beyond that.
At one point, the number on the scale was 482 pounds (218.7 kg to be exact).
As Ben put it, “That’s the albatross around my neck I need to defeat utterly.”
Before you write off Ben, the amount of weight he has lost and what he has overcome would shock you.
I listened. I asked a few questions. And somewhere in our conversation, I noticed something shift in his expression. The intensity was still there. But underneath it, just barely visible, was something else.
Frustration. Pain. Maybe even some doubt. The particular kind that comes not from quitting, but from continuing. From doing everything right and still not being where you wanted to be by now.
“I keep getting close, but I have a mental block” he said.
I recognized that feeling immediately. I’ve seen it for more than 20 years of helping people overcome barriers. And over the last month, I heard it in Columbus and the UK for our live events.
Friction Isn’t What You Think
A few weeks earlier in Columbus, I’d spent time with Ryan. He had set a goal weight for the event. He fell ten pounds short. He’d lost nearly twenty pounds and hit a deadlift PR, and he couldn’t quite locate the satisfaction in either of those things because he’d arrived at the number he was supposed to hit and found it just out of reach.
There was Nicki, who had never done a pullup in her life and can now do three in a set. Still working. Still frustrated that more haven’t arrived yet.
There was Lisa, who emailed me upset because she can’t yet afford to travel to these meetups. She’s saving. She’s planning. She’s going to get there. But right now the goal is still on the other side of a gap she can’t close today.
Every one of these people is in motion. Every one of them is doing the work. And every one of them has found a way to frame what they’re doing as falling short.
I’ve been thinking about why that is. And I think it comes down to a misunderstanding so common, so deeply embedded in the way we talk about goals and effort and progress, that most of us don’t even notice it.
We’ve been taught to treat falling short as failure. It isn’t. It’s only a failure if you stop.
When you go after something that matters — something genuinely hard, the kind of goal that requires you to become someone you aren’t yet — friction is not an accident. It’s not a signal that you chose wrong or that something is broken.
It’s a signal that you care. That you’re going after something meaningful. That you believe in a future version of yourself and are willing to push toward it even when it resists. The resistance is the proof of what you’re after.
Some people feel that friction and take it as a sign to stop. I understand the logic. The mind, looking for evidence, finds the gap between where you are and where you wanted to be, and presents it as a verdict.
You tried. It didn’t work. Maybe this isn’t for you.
But friction, frustration, and struggle is not a verdict. That’s a test.
We all have experienced it in many different ways. My first book proposal was rejected. So I wrote another. Rejected. I wrote another. Rejected again. The fourth one was approved. If I’d stopped after the first rejection — or the second, or the third — that would have been failure.
But I didn’t stop. Which means none of those rejections were failure. They were part of the process. Not “you can’t do this,” and more, “do this better, and what you want will arrive.” Steps on a path I couldn’t fully see yet.
That’s not a fitness story. That’s not a weight loss story. It’s not a deadlift story. It’s just how life works, in every domain, for everyone who has ever tried to build something that didn’t already exist.
It’s Not A Roadblock. It’s a Springboard
Here’s the part that gets missed in almost every conversation about goals and failure:
Even if you never hit the goal you set, you have still evolved as a person and are better for it.
The journey of pushing, scratching, clawing, and showing up when you don’t want to — when others would have stopped, when no one would blame you for stopping — that journey makes you a different person than you were. A better one. That change is permanent. No one can take it back.
And if you don’t quit, that evolution continues. The person who doesn’t stop is almost impossible to stop. I genuinely believe that. Success becomes not just possible but close to inevitable, because you keep accumulating something that can’t be rushed or bought or shortcut: the knowledge of what you’re actually made of.
There’s no shame in working hard at something and falling short. It will hurt. You’ll be disappointed. But you’ll be better for it. The thing you don’t want to do is miss the success that’s already right in front of you.
Ryan lost twenty pounds. He doesn’t get to lose those twenty pounds again, or take them back, or have them not count because he wanted thirty. They’re gone. He’s different.
Nicki can do three pullups. Three things she could not do before. The version of her who couldn’t do any of them is receding.
And Ben. That wonderful man still struggles, understandably, to see what I do.
Ben has lost an amount of weight that most people cannot fully comprehend. Ben has already dropped 196 pounds and kept it off. That is rare air.
Ben inspires me. He has rebuilt his body across years of consistent, unglamorous work.
The number on the bar is the last checkpoint on a journey that required more from him than most of us will ever be asked to give.
He’s not almost there. He’s still going. Those are not the same thing.
I’m not going to tell you to stop believing in failure. That’s not how the mind works, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. You have to make that choice on your own.
What I hope is that you can start to see your frustration differently. That the things you believe are holding you back are often the exact experiences you need to get past the biggest hurdles in your life.
That falling short of a goal, on the way to still pursuing it, is not the end of the story. It’s just the part where the story gets hard.
Life is fluid. As long as you keep moving, the thing you’re calling failure is really just the path — one step in a journey that isn’t over, toward a version of yourself that’s still being built.
If you don’t quit, you haven’t failed.
That’s not a consolation. That’s the whole truth. -AB
Better Today
Take any of these tips from today’s email and put them into action:
1. A 22,000-Person Study Tested 150 Foods for Gut Health. Coffee Was A Big Winner.
Scientists tested 150 foods for their impact on gut bacteria, and coffee ranked first by a wide margin, boosting levels of a bacterium called Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus by 4.5 to 8 times compared to non-drinkers. Decaf produced nearly identical results, which point researchers toward coffee's polyphenols — specifically, chlorogenic acid — rather than caffeine as the likely driver. That bacterium helps your body produce butyrate, a compound your gut lining depends on to stay intact and keep inflammation in check, which may help explain coffee's long track record of health benefits.
2. A Scratched Non-Stick Pan Can Release Up to 2.3 Million Microplastic Particles
Researchers using high-precision surface scanning found that a single crack in a Teflon-coated pan releases roughly 9,100 microplastic particles, and more extensive damage pushes that number to approximately 2.3 million. The particles come from the coating itself, dislodged by normal cooking with spatulas and turners. The long-term health effects of ingesting these particles are still being studied, but swapping out a visibly scratched pan is one of the lowest-effort steps you can take to reduce daily exposure.
3. The Truth About Probiotics and Blood Sugar: They Work. Just Not by Very Much.
A review of 8 controlled trials found that people with prediabetes who took probiotics for 8 to 24 weeks saw a consistent reduction in HbA1c — a measure of average blood sugar over the past 2 to 3 months — with every single study pointing in the same direction. The reduction averaged 0.07%, which is real but modest: diet and exercise programs produce results 10 to 20 times larger. If you already take a probiotic, keep it. However, if pre-diabetes is your concern, the fundamentals of movement, sleep, good nutrition, and maintaining a healthy weight are still doing most of the work.
The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards
We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.
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).
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.
Yes, we have partners (all clearly noted). 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
