Your Phone Is Draining Your Brain (Even When It's Off)

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

Today’s Health Upgrade

• Number you won’t forget

• The critical window before you go to bed

• Weekly wisdom

• How to protect yourself from misleading health headlines

Performance
Number You Won’t Forget: 20 Percent

You might think your phone isn't a distraction when you’re not using it. But research suggests it pulls on your brain in more ways than you imagine.

When your phone is on you — even if it’s face down or not being used — it can reduce your focus, memory, and problem-solving ability.

In two experiments, researchers tested whether smartphone proximity affects cognitive performance. Participants took memory and reasoning tests while their phones were either (1) on the desk beside them, (2) in their pocket or bag, or (3) in another room. 

Even though all phones were silenced and face down, performance dropped as the phone got closer. 

Those with their phones in another room performed up to 20 percent better on memory and reasoning tasks.

The researchers believe this “brain drain” happens because your brain automatically monitors the presence of your phone, diverting attention away from the task at hand. Even if you’re not consciously thinking about it, your brain spends energy resisting the urge to check for messages or notifications—leaving fewer resources for deep thinking and problem-solving. The effect was strongest among people who described themselves as highly dependent on their phones.

If you want to think more clearly, improve memory, or get better work done in less time, create physical distance from your phone during focus periods. Leave it in another room, silence notifications on your computer, and schedule dedicated times to check messages.

It’s the simplest productivity hack with the biggest payoff: keeping things out of sight leads to a higher likelihood of achieving more focus and entering a flow state.

Together With Eight Sleep 
The 90-Minute Window for Better Sleep

You’ve probably heard that keeping your room cool helps you sleep. But new research reveals it’s not just the temperature of your bedroom that matters, it’s also how your body temperature changes leading up to the moment you fall asleep.

A faster drop in core body temperature before bed leads to deeper sleep and better recovery.

Researchers tracked healthy adults during a normal night’s sleep using ingestible temperature sensors and heart rate variability (HRV) monitors, an indicator of how well your nervous system recovers. They discovered that people whose core body temperature dropped more quickly in the 90 minutes before sleep had significantly higher parasympathetic activity, which is the “rest and digest” branch of the nervous system. The difference wasn’t small: a 0.3°C faster temperature decline led to a 15 to 20 percent increase in HRV during the first sleep cycle.

While a cool room helps, the scientists found that the rate of cooling — not just the final temperature — helps signal your body that it’s time to power down and recover. When your core temperature drops smoothly, your heart rate slows, your nervous system relaxes, and your body prepares for deep, restorative sleep.

You can help this process by creating a pre-bed “temperature drop zone.” Try taking a warm bath or shower about 90 minutes before bed. The warmth brings blood to the surface of your skin, and as you cool down afterward, your core temperature falls faster. Then, keep your bedroom cool (around 65–68°F), use breathable bedding, and avoid intense workouts or heavy meals within two hours of sleep.

These simple steps help your body naturally activate recovery mode so you can wake up more refreshed and ready to go.

Want help instantly cooling down before bed? The Eight Sleep Pod is scientifically proven to help you chill out faster, and automatically adjusts temperature throughout the night to keep your core temperature in the optimal recovery zone. 

That means your body doesn’t just start the night cooler, it also stays in the ideal state for deeper, more restorative sleep as your temperature naturally fluctuates through each sleep stage.

Clinical research found that consistent thermal regulation can increase deep sleep by up to 34 percent and reduce waking up in the middle of the night by 23 percent. In other words: better cooling equals better sleep recovery.

This isn’t a gimmick — it’s physiology in action. Your body’s temperature is one of the most powerful levers for improving physical and cognitive performance, as well as longevity. By automating that process, Eight Sleep helps you achieve the same benefits researchers observed in the lab — every single night.

If you tend to run hot, wake up sweaty, or want to feel sharper and more energized the next day, this is one of the smartest health investments you can make. It’s like giving your body a built-in recovery coach — one that never misses a night.

As an APC reader, use the code “PUMPCLUB” to save $350 OFF the Pod 5. And because you shouldn’t have to settle for something you don’t love, you can try the sleep pod risk-free for 30 days. Explore Eight Sleep and experience what optimized sleep feels like.

Mindset
Weekly Wisdom

When life gets hard, most of us instinctively want to get through it as quickly as possible to escape the discomfort, fix the problem, or find the shortcut. 

But Einstein’s reminder flips the perspective: what if the difficulty isn’t blocking your path, but is the path?

Every challenge contains information about your limits, your fears, your habits, or your assumptions. If you rush to escape, you miss the lesson. But if you stay present long enough to study the difficulty — to ask why it feels so heavy, what it’s trying to show you, and how it might be sharpening you — you start to uncover the opportunity inside it. 

Growth isn’t something that automatically happens after the struggle; it’s the process of facing it with curiosity instead of resistance that provides you with the insights that make you better. 

Turn Wisdom Into Action:
When you hit a wall — at work, in training, in a relationship — pause before reacting. Instead of asking “How do I get out of this?”, ask “What is this teaching me?” Write down one thing the struggle is revealing: maybe a skill you need, a boundary to set, or a pattern to break. That small shift from avoidance to awareness turns hardship into a teacher, and opportunity becomes visible where frustration once lived.

Better Questions, Better Solutions 
How To Protect Yourself From Misleading Health Headlines

Old Question: Is this story true or false?
Better Question: What exactly are they comparing, and is the risk meaningful in the real world?

Most viral health headlines aren’t technically wrong; they’re just missing context. They take a small piece of data, strip away the details, and turn it into a panic. 

But when you ask what’s actually being compared—to what, at what dose, and in whom—you begin to see the full picture. The difference between fear and understanding often comes down to asking one more question.

Take the recent Consumer Reports article we covered yesterday about “dangerous” levels of lead in protein powders. The headline spread everywhere: Protein Powder Contains Toxic Lead. Social media lit up. Every major news outlet covered it and took the information at face value. People lost their minds, got worried about lead poisoning, and threw away their supplements. 

That’s not being dramatic. People were genuinely worried. 

But, as we discussed yesterday, here’s what most stories left out:

Consumer Reports based its claim on a misleading safety threshold of just 0.5 micrograms of lead per day. That number is not a federal standard; it’s an ultra-conservative internal benchmark with no clinical evidence that it represents harm.

The FDA’s actual guidance for lead in foods is actually many multiples higher. 

Common foods like spinach, strawberries, apples, carrots, and chocolate naturally contain trace amounts of lead from soil, sometimes more than the protein powders being criticized.

When you put those numbers in context, the danger looks a lot different. The protein powders weren’t unsafe; the problem was a misleading definition of “safe.”

And that’s what made it so frustrating. There are many issues you could point out in the supplement industry. This just wasn’t one, and it created unnecessary panic because of a lack of context.

Which just made it feel that Consumer Reports cared more about creating buzz and fear than actually helping you. 

So that’s our job: help you ask better questions so you can live healthier, without all the panic, fear, and stress. 

Next time a health headline goes viral, slow down and ask three simple questions:

1. Compared to what? (Are they using a real-world reference?)

2. Based on what standard? (Is this established or a made-up benchmark.)

3. What is the danger? (The practical danger of .5 micrograms of lead is nothing. But you weren’t told that.)

4. Who’s being studied? (Results in mice, children, or hospitalized patients may not apply to you.)

These questions transform confusion into clarity. Because the truth is, health isn’t hiding in the headline—it’s buried in the context. And once you learn to look there, you stop being scared by every story and start making decisions based on reality, not reaction.

And that’s it for this week. Thank you for being a part of the positive corner of the internet, and we hope you all have a fantastic weekend!
-Arnold, Adam, and Daniel

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell