Does Sugar Make Kids Hyper?

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Today’s Health Upgrade

Mindset
Number You Won’t Forget: 5 Minutes

Too Busy to Meditate for 20 minutes? Less can be good enough.

Plenty of people quit meditation for the same reason. Sitting still for long periods feels impossible, so they figure there’s no point trying.

But a short dose might do more than you think. Researchers randomized beginners to 5-minute or 20-minute guided breathing sessions, or to an audiobook for comparison, four times over two weeks.

The 5-minute group did as well as the 20-minute group on anxiety and depression, and better on stress and mindfulness.

Both meditation groups beat the audiobook. The trial was tiny and short, so you can’t say that “five minutes of meditation beats twenty.” But it’s also another piece of evidence that some mindfulness, even when it's very short, can be good for your mind.

The same lead researcher reviewed 203 randomized trials and found longer programs didn’t reliably cut stress, anxiety, or depression more than shorter ones.

One likely reason is that short is doable. People actually show up. In 8-week programs, participants did about two-thirds of the assigned home practice, and those who practiced more tended to do better.

If you want to see what it can do for you, start with 5 minutes per day. It can be as simple as letting your mind wander and explore, sensing what you’re feeling, and processing your emotions without judging them.

Do it whenever you can set aside 5 minutes, whether that’s the morning, night, or middle of the day.

Together With Pique 
What 55 Studies Reveal About Green Tea and Your Heart

Most people think heart health changes only after a scare. A bad blood test. A doctor’s warning. A family history that suddenly feels personal.

But the truth is more subtle and more hopeful. Some of the same small, forgettable habits you repeat every day quietly shape your cardiovascular future long before anything feels “wrong.” 

And one of them might already be sitting in your kitchen.

Scientists found that drinking green tea might be the easiest (and most enjoyable) way to provide an assist that helps protect your cardiovascular health. 

Researchers analyzed 55 randomized controlled trials of people who drank green tea for 2 to 48 weeks. Compared to a placebo, adding green tea to your life nudges your cardiovascular health in the right direction by improving total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, fasting blood sugar, HbA1c, and your blood pressure. 

What makes this research valuable isn’t that green tea produced dramatic changes. It’s that the researchers asked a more honest question: Can a simple, repeatable behavior meaningfully influence heart health over time?

The scientists believe green tea may reduce cholesterol absorption in the gut, improve how the liver processes fats, help muscle and liver cells respond more effectively to insulin, and reduce low-grade metabolic stress that accumulates over time.

Think of it less like flipping a switch and more like reducing friction. When systems move more easily, numbers tend to drift in healthier directions.

If you want a daily ritual that helps offset the inevitable stress of life, tea is one of the easiest wins we’ve found.

Before you start drinking, do a quality check. Pique uses cold-brew crystallization, a patented process that preserves up to 12x more catechins and antioxidants than standard tea bags. Pique’s matcha green tea is sourced high in the mountains of Japan, grown in a remote, pristine valley far from environmental toxins and industrial exposure, delivering exceptionally pure tea and clinically backed levels of the compounds behind the benefits you just read about. Or, go with their 

And Pique is doing something special for Pump Club readers: You get 20% off for life and a free starter kit with any purchase over $100.

No codes. No hoops. Your lifetime discount is automatically applied at checkout. 

Small habit. A little consistency. A healthier heart, built one cup at a time.

Mindset
Weekly Wisdom

Count the workout programs you’ve started in the last two years. And be honest.

Include the one you found on Instagram at midnight and the one you bought because the guy selling it had forearms like bridge cables, or the woman had arms you thought would look amazing in that dress you love.

Now consider how many you followed long enough to know whether it worked for your goals.

Notice the wording of the question. We’re not asking if it delivered results. We’re asking if you stuck to the program, consistently and as designed, long enough to know — with certainty — that it wasn’t working. 

Every program comes with a reason to start. Deciding how long to give it, or what would justify moving on, usually gets less attention. And it’s almost too easy to quit if you miss a few workouts, have a few bad workouts, or aren’t seeing changes fast enough, even if “fast enough” might be completely unrealistic. 

It’s part of the reason why people look forward to “the next program.”

You’re comparing the frustrations of something you’ve tried with the possibilities of something you haven’t. And usually, the new one looks better. It hasn’t asked you to repeat the same workout on a day when you’re tired and would rather be doing anything else.

You could replace “workout program” with a lot of difficult things in life.

Bennett’s quote is powerful if you recognize that it rewards patience and commitment. And if you can see where you lack those traits. 

The most powerful word in the whole quote is stay. Because even if it’s short-lived, most of us can focus. We go hard for three weeks, sometimes four. Then a new plan shows up promising faster progress, the old one starts to feel stale, and we tell ourselves that changing course is the smart move.

Before replacing a plan, decide what evidence would tell you it’s working. Otherwise, boredom can end up making the decision.

In the gym, that might mean keeping track of whether you can lift more weight or do another rep with the same weight and good form. Those changes give you a reason to keep going even when the workout feels familiar. Constantly changing what you do makes those comparisons harder.

The concern is abandoning an approach before you’ve learned enough to judge it.

A study of tens of thousands of artists, film directors, and scientists offers a useful way to think about that decision. Researchers examined their careers for “hot streaks,” periods when their highest-impact work clustered together. Those stretches tended to coincide with a particular sequence: people explored different styles or topics, then narrowed their focus.

Exploration alone didn’t show the same association. Neither did focused work without the preceding exploration. This was an observational study of careers, so it can’t prove that committing causes a breakthrough, much less tell us how long to follow a workout program. But it suggests that experimenting and committing can each have a useful place.

Trying different approaches helps you learn what suits you. Following one for a while gives you the chance to use what you learned. You can make a small adjustment, see what happens, and build from there. 

But when you replace the whole approach whenever you’re dissatisfied, it becomes harder to figure out what needs changing.

That’s the value of a commitment window. You give yourself a date to reassess, with something more useful than your enthusiasm that morning to guide the decision.

Turn Wisdom Into Action

Choose one area where you keep restarting. It might be training or a project that never gets past the planning stage.

Set a 12-week commitment window. This is a realistic time frame for the things that matter. 

Write down the start and end dates, the approach you’ll follow, and one measure of progress. For training, record your weights and reps and total weight per session (this is an easy way Pump Club members see their progress). For a writing project, track finished pages. Twelve weeks is a practical trial period, not a scientific deadline for results.

Make adjustments within the plan as needed. That doesn’t mean switching the plan. Or doing more sets than lifted. Or ignoring rest periods. 

But it might mean changing an exercise that hurts. Or it could be shifting the days you exercise to create a schedule where you can be consistent. Or adjusting how many days you train per week. 

A commitment should still allow you to respond to a real problem, not rewrite the design.

Start a switch list. When another approach catches your attention, write it down along with the problem you expect it to solve. Keep following your plan until the review date.

At the end of the 12 weeks, compare your results with where you started. Then revisit the list. If you still want to change course, you’ll be able to explain what needs to improve and judge whether the new approach addresses it.

Health
Sugar Doesn’t Make Kids Hyper. Here’s What Does.

At some point on Saturday night, a kid in a taco costume will ricochet off a living room wall. (Yes, I’m talking about my middle child)

I can already see myself telling a friend about it, and hearing them say, “Yep, that’s the sugar.”

Forget the fact that my 8-year-old son bounces off walls regularly. The idea that sugar makes kids hyper is mostly fiction.

Here’s the problem with “it’s the sugar”: if you know your kid just ate candy, you’re already expecting chaos. So the only fair test is one where nobody knows who got sugar.

Scientists have run that test many times. More than 30 years ago, researchers gathered 23 of these experiments. In each one, some kids got real sugar, and others got something that tasted just as sweet but had no sugar. The kids didn’t know which they got, and neither did the adults watching them. Then the researchers looked at how the kids acted, how well they paid attention, and how they did on thinking tasks.

The sugar kids and the no-sugar kids looked the same in all their behaviors. The researchers were careful to say a small effect, or a few extra-sensitive kids, couldn’t be completely ruled out.

So another team built a study around only those “sensitive kids.” They recruited children, ages 6 to 10, whose parents were sure sugar set them off. Each family ate three different diets for three weeks apiece: one loaded with sugar and two low in sugar, sweetened with sugar substitutes instead. Nobody knew which diet was which. Every week, the researchers checked the kids’ behavior, focus, and memory, 39 measures in all.

Sugar didn’t change any of them, even in the kids whose parents were most convinced.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In another experiment, researchers worked with 35 boys, ages 5 to 7, whose moms said sugar made them hyper. Every boy got a sugar-free drink. But half the moms were told their sons had just had a big dose of sugar.

Then the moms and boys played together while researchers filmed them. 

Afterward, the moms who thought their sons had sugar rated them as more hyperactive, even though none of the boys had any. On the video, those moms also stayed closer to their sons and tended to criticize them more.

The kids weren’t different. The parents’ expectations were.

So what makes kids bounce? The likeliest suspect is the clock. 

In one study, kids ages 7 to 11 went to bed about an hour later than usual for five nights in a row. Their teachers, who didn’t know which kids were short on sleep, rated them as more restless, more impulsive, and quicker to get upset. 

Now add a costume, a crowd, a dark street, and a doorbell every 30 seconds.

And if you’re wondering about yourself: researchers pulled together 31 studies in which adults either got sugar (or other fast carbs) or a sweet-tasting fake, then reported how they felt. 

Sugar didn’t improve mood. Within an hour, people actually felt a bit more tired and less alert. That afternoon trip to the candy bowl is more dip than rush.

That’s not to say too much sugar has no downsides. But if it’s Halloween and you want your kids to enjoy a little extra candy (that’s what we’re doing at Arnold’s Pump Club), it’s likely not the reason they have extra energy. It’s probably just the holiday and the time of day when they get to enjoy their treats.  

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And that’s it for this week. Thanks for being a part of the positive corner of the internet. And remember: don’t wait to make a change. Take action on any goal, don’t quit in the hard moments, and the results will come. Have a fantastic weekend!

-Arnold, Adam, and Daniel

The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards

We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell