Why Uncertainty Is More Stressful Than Bad News

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Today’s Health Upgrade

Reader Question
Your Tendons Need Resistance (But Don’t Overthink The Type)

Reader question: I saw an item last week about tendon health. I read that a push/pull/lower-body split is best for tendon health. Is that true?

After discussing lifting for stronger tendons, an app member asked about shifting his workout split to keep his tendons happy. 

While your workout program design influences everything from results to recovery and injury risk, healthier tendons are a simpler equation.

Your tendons primarily respond to two things: how much load lands on them across the week and over time, and how fast you ramp up your training intensity and volume.

Many different workout designs and splits are effective. But it’s easy to run into trouble. A good workout design isn’t just about reps, sets, and days off. It’s about exercise selection, total volume, and how you progress. 

And when it comes to tendons, it’s much less about the workout split and more about how you train. You want to resistance train —any type or equipment (including bodyweight) — and make sure your program doesn’t overload your tendons too quickly, but also progressively increases the challenge over time.

A meta-analysis of 27 studies found tendons get stiffer mainly when the load is heavy. Remember, in this case, stiffer means healthier and springy, not that tight, achy feeling. 

The type of muscle contraction didn't matter much. Intensity did.

But this process takes more time than most people realize. A muscle can get stronger in weeks. Tendons take months.

That gap is where people get hurt. Your biceps might be ready for the heavier dumbbell long before the tendon attached to it is. And that’s when smart programming matters. Or, more appropriately, where thinking “adding more reps and sets” can do more harm than good. 

Recovery matters too. Lab research shows that after a hard session, tendons break down collagen first. Rebuilding peaks about a day later and stays elevated for a few days. If you hammer the same tendon hard every day with too much intensity or volume, you keep interrupting that rebuild. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t work the same muscle back-to-back days. But a good program will help keep you safe, support better recovery, and make sure you can train in a way that gets you stronger, leaner, and more muscular while keeping your joints, tendons, and ligaments as safe as possible. 

Training isn’t rocket science, but it is exercise science. If you want to see how an evidence-based program can help you hit your goals and reduce your injury risk, we have you covered. 

Together With Momentous
Resistant Starch: The Carb Your Body Wants More Of

Carbohydrates are often treated as something to limit. We’ve shared repeatedly why you don’t need to fear carbs and that they don’t make you fat unless you’re consuming too many calories. 

But more research now suggests your body loves certain types of carbs.

Resistant starch can feed beneficial gut bacteria, help control blood sugar, improve digestion, and perhaps even support weight loss and weight management.

Resistant starch is a carb your body can’t fully digest, so it behaves more like fiber.

Carbohydrates are four calories per gram, and your body breaks down regular starch (carbs) in your small intestine, converts it to glucose, and absorbs it.

Resistant starch skips that step. It travels to your colon intact, where your gut bacteria ferment it. Those bacteria feed on the resistant starch, meaning your body absorbs fewer calories.

In studies, resistant starch provided only 2 to 3 calories per gram, instead of the normal 4, depending on the starch and the person eating it.

That’s why some studies suggest resistant starch could help you lose weight. 

In a trial of people with overweight or obesity, participants ate identical meals. Those who took resistant starch daily lost about six pounds over eight weeks compared with those given regular starch. 

Think of it as paying a middleman. You still get most of the energy, just less of it, and your gut bacteria get fed in the process.

And it’s not just weight loss; it also supports gut health and better metabolic health. Resistant starch survives that process and reaches the colon, where gut bacteria ferment it and produce short-chain fatty acids, including butyrate.

A review of 36 randomized trials in people with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes found that resistant starch reduced post-meal glucose spikes. And some studies also found better insulin sensitivity after several weeks. 

So if resistant starch has all of these benefits, you’d think people would eat more of it, but that’s not the case. 

Americans eat an estimated 5 grams per day, while many studies reporting benefits use 15 to 40 grams. In other words, most people don’t see the benefits because they don’t eat enough. 

When many people hear about resistant starch, they think of cooling starch (such as rice, potatoes, or pasta). That’s true, and the research found that when people ate cooled starch, their blood sugar rose less. 

That’s the good part. That bad part? The cooling process added only about 1 gram of resistant starch per 100 grams of rice. 

If you want more resistant starch in your diet, here’s where you can start:

But if you struggle to eat enough, that’s why we created Fiber+. Not all fiber is the same, and we developed Fiber+ to give you the fiber that improves health outcomes.

Fiber+ includes resistant starch, the carb your body wants more of. Every scoop includes Solnul® resistant potato starch to feed the good bacteria in your gut, support steadier blood sugar, and help you get the benefits you just read about without eating a mountain of cold rice.

Then there's psyllium, the soluble fiber with some of the strongest research in nutrition. It helps lower cholesterol, keeps you fuller longer, and takes the edge off blood sugar spikes after meals.

And rice bran hull adds insoluble fiber, which keeps things moving and makes digestion a lot more predictable.

Three types of fiber. Three different jobs. One scoop.

The best part? It's easy. Fiber+ mixes into water, juice, yogurt, oatmeal, or a smoothie, comes unflavored or in real cinnamon and orange, and has no artificial sweeteners. That matters more than any ingredient, because the fiber that helps is the fiber you take every day. Arnold helped Momentous develop it for exactly that reason: a habit you'll actually keep.

APC readers get up to 35% off with code PUMPCLUB. 

Carbs were never the problem. Most of us just weren't getting the right ones.

Better Questions, Better Solutions 
Why Not Knowing Feels Worse Than Bad News

Most worry gets aimed at the outcome: the layoff that might be coming, or the scan result still sitting in a lab somewhere. So we brace. We rehearse the worst version in the shower and at red lights, as if picturing it enough times will make it hurt less when it lands.

A lot of what wears you down is the waiting. Bracing harder keeps you stuck there.

Old question: How do I stop worrying about what might happen?
Better question: What's one thing I can find out or decide today?

Your brain treats an open question like an alarm nobody turned off. As long as the answer could go either way, it stays on guard and prepares for two versions of tomorrow at once. That costs energy whether the news ends up good or bad.

Uncertainty can stress you out more than a bad outcome you see coming.

Researchers tested this with a computer game. Volunteers flipped over rocks that might hide a snake, and a snake meant a real electric shock to the hand. The odds behind each rock kept shifting, so people had to keep learning which ones were dangerous.

Stress rose and fell with uncertainty. When the chance of a shock sat around 50/50, people felt the most stressed, and their bodies showed it through wider pupils and more sweat. 

When a shock was close to guaranteed, stress dropped. Knowing the pain was coming was easier to handle than wondering.

The researchers suspect this response has a purpose. People whose stress spiked most during uncertain stretches got better at predicting which rocks were dangerous. Stress seems built to push you toward an answer. Feed it worry, and it keeps pushing.

If you find yourself ruminating about what-ifs, pick the open question taking up the most room in your head. In the next 24 hours, do one thing that shrinks it. 

Send the email asking where things stand, or book the appointment you've been putting off. If no answer exists yet, make a decision you control, like setting the date you'll stop waiting and make your next move.

Every answer you get is one less ambiguous unknown your body has to guard against.

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell