Drop Dead Healthy

by A. J. Jacobs

  “What can I do about this?” Vlad asks. He points to his shoulder, which he’s scratched up while carrying the log.

  Erwan shrugs. Maybe aloe vera, someone suggests.

  “Use the blood of your enemies,” says John.

  We all laugh, except for Vlad. I feel the tribe fracturing. I’m worried for Vlad. I want him to censor himself and get back on the good side of the alpha males, but I don’t know if he can.

  Erwan lifts his foot and points to a bloody toe that he got while climbing the tree.

  “Cuts and scratches help renew the body,” he says.

  Our final exercise will be sprinting. In Paleolithic times, the theory goes, there wasn’t a lot of leisurely jogging. There was walking, then sprinting. You’d sprint from a hungry tiger, or sprint to catch an antelope.

  We start on a bike path, we pack of shirtless guys. Erwan gives a signal, and we all sprint across the street at a diagonal angle, dodging bikers and in-line skaters, pumping our legs furiously, then hopping over a short wooden fence on the other side.

  Erwan smiles widely. “You feel alive? That’s the way to work out. No warm-up. Just sprinting!”

  You know what? I do feel alive. That was fantastic. Liberating. I can feel my heart expanding and contracting. I can feel my skin tingle.

  A gray-haired woman approaches us to ask us why five half-naked men are sprinting through the park. We try to explain. “Oh, I thought you were robbing someone,” she says matter-of-factly, and then leaves.

  We walk back across the street to prepare for another speed run.

  “Can we start on smoother pavement?” asks Vlad. “This hurts my feet.”

  “Listen,” says Erwan coolly. “Toughen up.”

  Everyone laughs, except Vlad.

  “For someone who boils their meat, that’s talking pretty tough,” Vlad shoots back.

  Vlad turns to John: “And I can tell you trim your chest hair.”

  “I’m not sure what your fascination is with my chest hair,” responds John to a tense silence.

  We sprint through the bikers again, jumping over the fence. Erwan and John are ahead. I edge out Vlad by a couple of feet—a fact he ignores. “I’m glad you’re here because you’re as slow as I am, and I didn’t want to be the slowest one.”

  He does make it hard to feel bad for him.

  And that’s it. Three hours of huffing and puffing in New York’s savanna. I’m cold and tired, and I have to take care of my cavekids.

  As we say good-bye, Erwan asks again about the premise of my book.

  “It’s about me trying to be the healthiest man alive.”

  “I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” Erwan says, with a smile. “But I am being the healthiest man alive. Not trying. Being.”

  When I get home, I spend twenty minutes digging the glass splinter out of my toe while telling Julie about Vlad and his barrage of insults.

  “So will you be running around with a loincloth from now on?”

  No. Probably not. But the caveman workout shouldn’t be dismissed. For one thing, I have to concede that Erwan has a point about exercising under the sky.

  I’ve always preferred the indoor life—to quote Woody Allen, I’m at two with nature—but that’s not going to work this year. Recent research shows that just being outside might improve your health, at least for those without debilitating hay fever. A Nippon Medical School study showed that two-hour walks in a forest caused a 50 percent spike in natural killer cells, a powerful immune cell.

  A 2010 study asked 280 subjects in Japan to take strolls in both the park and the city. After the nature walks, the participants showed lower “concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure.” Strolling through parks is apparently a popular hobby in Japan, and goes by the poetic and slightly racy name of “forest bathing.”

  What’s so great about the great outdoors? One theory is that plants release a chemical called “phytoncides.” Plants use the chemical to protect themselves from decay, but it may benefit people, too.

  It may be simpler than that. It may be that the very sight of nature calms us down. There’s a famous 1984 University of Delaware study in which patients recovering from gallbladder surgery stayed in different hospital rooms. Some had a view of a green field, some had a view of a brick wall. The ones with the natural view recovered more quickly and required less powerful painkillers. They even liked their nurses more.

  Exercise and Old Age

  A few days later, I ran through Central Park to visit my grandfather. I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath, but I made the mile-and-a-half jog without collapsing, which is an improvement.

  When I got to his apartment, my grandfather asked me about my health quest. I told him about the cavemen, which made him chuckle.

  He was sitting in his recliner, where he spends most of his day, his feet propped up and swollen from poor circulation. Walking is hard because of a slipped disk. It’s strange to see him this way. Unlike me, my grandfather was athletic for almost all of his life—tennis, running, biking, Frisbee. He was the only person I knew who had a rowing machine in his home. And pogo sticks.

  Even in his eighties, he swam in the rough Atlantic surf. He’d wade in and a wave would smack him. He’d stumble momentarily, but then plow ahead, get smacked again, plow ahead.

  When I was a kid, he’d play Ping-Pong, and to make the game fair, he’d get down on his knees. He’d take me on bike rides, powering up the hills on the same orange Kabuki ten-speeder that he owned for decades. He’d often ride sitting straight up, clasping his hands behind his head. Not the best safety role model, but I loved it.

  My late grandmother was obsessed with exercise as well, constantly nudging me to stop lollygagging, as she put it.

  “I thought of Grandma the other day,” I tell my grandfather. “She always told me that orchestra conductors lived a long time because they moved their arms so much. This book I’m reading says there may be truth to that.”

  My grandfather smiles, and waves an imaginary baton.

  “A wise woman,” he says.

  My grandmother died six years ago, just short of their sixty-eighth anniversary. Theirs was a good marriage. Not a perfect one. But good.

  He loved to tease her. At the dinner table, if the conversation turned to somebody’s upcoming nuptials, he’d go into the office and retrieve his Bartlett’s Quotations. He’d open it to George Bernard Shaw’s passage on marriage and read it to the table:

  When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal and exhausting condition until death do them part.

  Then he’d giggle until he shook.

  “Oh, Ted,” Grandma would respond, laughing. She got back at him, though. Eventually, she tore out the page, and those readings came to an abrupt end.

  Another time, we were out to dinner at an Italian place near their apartment. During a pause, my grandfather turned to me and asked, “How do you think the New York Post is going to play it?”

  “Play what?” I asked.

  “How will they play it when they find out Grandma’s pregnant?”

  Then he’d giggle until he shook.

  “Oh, Ted,” Grandma responded.

  But even when teasing, he was devoted. He still had at least some of that insane and delusive passion that he had when they met while students at Cornell in 1932 (he climbed up the side of her building to see her because men weren’t allowed inside the women’s dorm). Even to the end, he still held her hand when they walked. Or occasionally, he’d goose her (“Oh, Ted”).

  “She was the greatest woman I ever knew,” he told me over lunch, a few weeks after she died. His eyes shined with tears.

  Their marriage was likely as important to his longevity as his constant aerobic activity. Studies have shown that a good marriage is a boon to your health. It’s been associ
ated with a lower rate of heart attacks—as well as of pneumonia, cancer, and dementia.

  I find the marriage/health link massively unfair. Nature is being a bit of a sadistic bastard. So you found your soul mate? Let’s reward you with a long life and freedom from sickness. Haven’t been lucky enough to find that special someone? Sorry. You’ll probably die sooner. It reminds me of how highly paid celebrities get free cars, shoes, and jewelry. Those of us without $15-million-per-movie contracts have to actually buy things.

  Yet whether I like it or not, the statistics point to marriage as healthy. Though I should qualify that. As Tara Parker-Pope writes in her book For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, staying in a bad marriage is terrible for your health. “One recent study suggests that a stressful marriage can be as bad for the heart as a regular smoking habit,” she writes.

  But why do good marriages help? Pope lists a few of the more common theories:

  • Married folks are less likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as excessive drinking and staying out late.

  • Marriage comes with familial and social ties that lower stress.

  • And married men are more likely to visit the doctor, thanks to their wives’ pestering.

  That last one isn’t a trivial point. I wonder if my grandfather—a typically stoic man—would have gone to the doctor without my grandmother’s urging. Even now she’s looking out for him, in a way. As she was dying in the hospital, she pleaded with her kids to take care of their father—and each other.

  After an hour of chatting with my grandfather, I said good-bye. I was planning on running back across Central Park, but an empty cab pulled up right in front of me at a red light. And what can I say? I’m a weak man.

  Outwitting Myself

  I wish I enjoyed exercising more. Julie—owner of an impressive collection of bike shorts and sports bras—loves the gym. She looks forward to it in much the same way I look forward to reading on the couch while she’s at the gym.

  In the bestseller Born to Run, Christopher McDougall writes about tapping into humans’ innate and infectious joy of running. With rare exceptions (like after that sprint through the park during the caveman workout), I don’t feel the joy of running. I feel the joy of lounging. Maybe I’ll grow to love physical exertion over time, like spouses in arranged marriages learn to adore each other. But for now, running and I are barely on speaking terms.

  So I have to get clever. My only chance is to outwit myself into exercising. One tactic is to leave my shorts and sneakers by the door at night. Research shows you’re more likely to work out if you give yourself visual cues, such as this one. (I’ve found it helpful, except when Julie puts away my shorts, thinking I’m just being sloppy.)

  My favorite tactic, though, is an admittedly unorthodox method I came up with after reading about “egonomics.”

  Egonomics is a theory by a Nobel Prize–winning economist named Thomas Schelling. Schelling proposes that we essentially have two selves. Those two selves are often at odds. There’s the present self, that wants that frosted apple strudel Pop-Tart. And the future self, that regrets eating that frosted apple strudel Pop-Tart.

  The key to making healthy decisions is to respect your future self. Honor him or her. Treat him or her like you would treat a friend or a loved one.

  But the future self—that’s so abstract, I thought. What if I made my future self more concrete? So I downloaded an iPhone app called HourFace that digitally ages your photo. I did it with a picture of myself, and, well, the results were alarming. My face sagged and became splotchy—I looked like I had some sort of biblical skin disease.

  I’ve printed out the photo and taped it to my wall, alongside my Carl Sagan quotation about skeptical open-mindedness. And you know? It works. When I’m wavering about whether to lace up my running sneakers or not, I’ll catch sight of Old A.J. Respect your elder, as disturbing-looking as he may be. This workout is for him.

  The future self needs to be around for my sons. They deserve to know him.

  I thought Julie would dismiss my egonomics, but she found it intriguing.

  “Can you age me?” she asked. When I showed her photo to her, she burst out laughing and said she looked like Dustin Hoffman. That’s inspiring, she said. On the rare times she doesn’t feel like exercising, she’ll do it for Dustin.

  Checkup: Month 2

  Weight: 168

  Hours of sleep per night: 6 (not good)

  Visits to the gym: 12 (should have been more)

  Bench press: 55 pounds, 15 reps

  I lost only a pound this month, but that’s because I’m gaining muscle weight. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I flex in my bathroom mirror searching for any microscopic changes to my biceps and chest.

  I’m still doing my best to control portions. Still using my kids’ cartoon dinosaur plates at home. At restaurants, I transfer half my entrée onto the smaller butter plate, and get the other half in a doggie bag. My chew-per-mouthful ratio is ten to one, which is decent, if not great. I carry my little blue-and-white shrimp fork in my back pocket wherever I go—which has resulted in tiny holes in the back of my jeans, as well as several puzzled waiters who returned the fork to me after I accidentally left it on the plate.

  So the portion size is respectable. But what should I put in those portions? I’m still struggling with what constitutes a healthy menu.

  This month, at the very least, I pledged to cut down on sugar, since almost everyone agrees it’s poisonous in large doses. But the stuff is so sneaky. Case in point: I was at Newark Airport—on my way to Los Angeles for an Esquire article—and I spotted a little kiosk called Healthy Garden. That sounds promising, I think to myself. So I wander over only to find: highly salted Chex mix, plastic containers of Gummi bears and Swedish fish, “Grandma’s” chocolate chip cookie (I’m assuming from the ingredients that Grandma has a Ph.D. in chemistry from CalTech), and a “healthy mix” of fruit and nuts. The “healthy mix” contained some decent stuff, like walnuts and almonds. But it also had banana chips, which included refined cane sugar, coconut oil, and best of all, banana flavor. When you need to add banana flavor to bananas, there’s something askew with the world of food.

  My sugar woes aside, I do feel slightly healthier overall. Less logy, more energetic. As if my body used to be cloudy and smog-filled (think Beijing), and now it’s only moderately polluted (maybe Houston). I like climbing a flight of stairs without my heart thumping like a cartoon animal in love.

  But is that sensation worth all the hours at the gym and the dietary restrictions and extra showers? I’m not convinced. Maybe I need a break. For my next body part, I’ll do something that doesn’t require additional sweating or hunger pangs.

  Chapter 3

  The Ears

  The Quest for Quiet

  WE TOOK OUR THREE SONS to Benihana for dinner tonight. It’s their favorite restaurant, thanks to the unbeatable combination of airborne food and machete-size knives.

  But healthy it’s not.

  First, there’s the food, an orgy of salt and grease. Second, there’s the smoke from all the grills, which fills the room and is eyerubbingly thick, what I imagine it’d be like in a Charles de Gaulle Airport lounge circa 1965.

  But what I notice tonight is the noise. The hiss of the soy sauce on the grill, the escalating chatter of the crowd. And my sons. God love them, but my sons are loud beyond comprehension. (Whenever I ask my son Zane to be quiet because his mom is napping, he’ll walk by her room shouting, “TIPTOE! TIPTOE!”)

  Tonight, they’re each carrying around a little plastic trumpet they were given at a friend’s birthday. Interesting choice for a party favor. How about handing my kids a pack of Marlboros and some razors? I might have preferred that.

  They’ve been tooting their horns since we left the gymnastics-themed party, so I feel like I’ve been followed around by my own private South African soccer game. Right before the appetizers come, we finally pry the ghastly things from their hands.<
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  My goodness, it’s a loud world. I’ve started to become aware of this more and more during my health project. Just spend an hour listening. The chirping text messages, the droning airplanes, the flatulent trucks, the howling cable pundits, the chiming MacBooks, the crunching orange foodlike snacks.

  Thanks to my reading, I know that noise is not a minor nuisance. No, noise is one of the great underappreciated health hazards of our time, damaging not just our hearing, but our brain and heart. It’s the secondhand smoke of our ears. Some say even worse, like aural mustard gas.

  Noise pollution doesn’t get the attention of A-list diseases. There are no parades or ribbons or celebrity spokespeople. But there are a handful of brave, slightly eccentric crusaders raising their voices against the onslaught of noise. One of them—the Mother Jones of the movement—is a psychology professor at the City University of New York named Arline Bronzaft. She agrees to let me visit at her Upper East Side apartment.

  A petite woman with short brown hair, Bronzaft lives in an apartment that is, appropriately, shielded from most traffic noise. It’s filled with photos of her beloved Yankees and her equally beloved grandson, who recently had a nice, restrained five-piece band at his bar mitzvah. “My daughter said to the musicians, ‘If you make it too loud, my mother will disinherit me,’” says Bronzaft.

  We sit in her kitchen to talk noise.

  What’s the problem with this high-decibel world?

  “The most obvious one is hearing loss,” she says.

  Around 26 million adults are walking around with noise-induced hearing loss. And with our omnipresent earbuds, that number is bound to rise.

  Even without earbuds, we naturally lose hearing as we age, as the sensory hair cells inside the cochlea erode. Babies can hear sounds that are twenty thousand cycles per second, while the average adult can hear at sixteen thousand cycles per second. Our ability to hear higher registers goes first, which means that the voices of women and children are silenced sooner, as if God were W. C. Fields.