Drop Dead Healthy

by A. J. Jacobs

  Hearing loss is bad enough, but it’s not even the most pressing problem. Noise has a surprisingly potent effect on our stress level, cardiovascular system, and concentration. Just go back to our Paleo ancestor for a minute. In caveman times, a loud noise signaled a threat—an angry mastodon, perhaps. So noise activates the infamous fight-or-flight response: high adrenaline and high blood pressure. Nowadays, we’re bombarded by loud noises almost all day long, meaning our fight-or-flight instinct gets little downtime. One review found that people who work noisy jobs suffered two to three times the heart problems as those who work in quiet settings. In his book In Pursuit of Silence, George Prochnik cites a former World Health Organization official who estimates—with perhaps a bit of alarmism—that “45,000 fatal heart attacks per year may be attributable to noise-related cardiovascular strain.”

  Something starts whirring in Bronzaft’s kitchen.

  “What’s that sound?” I ask.

  “The refrigerator,” she says. “When I found out it made that noise, I was shocked.”

  Noise harms the ears and the heart—but it also wreaks havoc on the brain.

  Our wise founding fathers knew this back in the 1700s. “When they wrote the Constitution in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, they realized noise was going to disrupt them because the horses and wagons would clatter over the cobblestones,” Bronzaft says. “So they packed dirt on the cobblestones to lessen the noise of passing traffic.”

  That’s right. Noise is unpatriotic. (And quite possibly fascist. I read a quote from Hitler that he “couldn’t have won Germany without a bullhorn.”)

  Bronzaft was one of the first to show scientifically that noise messes with the mind. In 1970, she was working as a transportation adviser to the mayor of New York, helping to design the subway map. She wasn’t even focused on noise pollution. (And oddly, she says that she isn’t overly sensitive to noise; she became interested in it as a public health problem.)

  She conducted a landmark study at a public school in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Some of the classrooms faced directly out on an elevated subway track. Every five minutes the students heard a train rattle by. Other classrooms were tucked on the opposite side of the building, away from the noise. The difference? By the sixth grade, the kids in the quiet classrooms were about one year ahead in reading.

  Her conclusions have since been backed up by a pile of other studies, both on students and adults. As George Prochnik writes, even “moderate noise from white-noise machines, air conditioners and background television, for example, can still undermine children’s language acquisition.”

  When Bronzaft started, the antinoise movement was seen somewhere between organic foods and mandatory clothes for Greek sculpture on the kookiness scale. Nowadays, it’s edging ever closer to the mainstream. There are more noise-reducing ceilings, altered flight patterns, and warning labels on products. There are activists all over the country tilting at wind turbines, motocross raceways, and leaf blowers. “This is not just a big-city problem,” says Bronzaft.

  It’s been almost two hours. Bronzaft may be antinoise, but she’s not the quiet type. She’s a talker.

  She tells me the plot of her unpublished novel about an old lady killed by her loud neighbors. It’s called For Dying Out Loud.

  “Did my novel have sex in it? Yes, it did. A lot. My daughter couldn’t read it. Did it depict noise? Yes. It had murder, it had mystery, but it didn’t have a novelist’s touch. I’m too academic.”

  I interrupt Bronzaft to tell her that I have to pick up my kids from school. I say good-bye, catch the bus, and ride home trying to ignore the rumbles and squeaks of traffic.

  Listening Carefully

  That evening, I pledge to turn down the volume on my life. I start in my kids’ room. I dig out all their beeping, screeching, yammering electronic toys, and spend half an hour putting masking tape over the plastic speakers.

  “What are you doing, Daddy?” asks Lucas.

  “Just fixing the broken toys,” I half lie.

  It was a smashing success, at least from my point of view. You can still hear “Chicken Dance Elmo” demand that we “flap our wings,” but he sounds like he’s submerged in a bathtub, which is what I’d really like to do to him.

  Next up, ear protection. I ordered reusable orange silicone SilentEar earplugs at the Ear Plug Superstore. They worked for a week or so. But they kept dropping out of my ear canals, and I was leaving behind a wake of plugs wherever I traveled. So I shelled out for a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones. They cost a stress-inducing three hundred dollars.

  I try them out on a plane to Atlanta, where I’m going on a business trip. I slip them over my ears, click the power switch, and . . . well, the world didn’t go silent. I can still hear the dinging seat-belt sign. But the headphones do turn the volume down from a ten to a seven. Life takes on a sort of a dreamy, uterine feel.

  In the next few weeks, I start to wear my headphones more and more. They’re on my head right now, these big silver-and-black earmuffs. I resemble a baggage handler on the tarmac at JFK.

  I wear them while working, while picking up my sons from school, while brushing my teeth. People ask, “What are you listening to?” Just the lovely sounds of silence, I say.

  Julie has taken to calling me Lionel Richie, because I look like I just walked out of the recording studio for “We Are the World.” At least I’m 95 percent sure that’s what she calls me. I tend to miss a word here or there, like a bad Skype connection to Ecuador. I’m usually able to cover it up with nods and smiles. Never underestimate the power of the nod and smile.

  The headphones aren’t foolproof. I recently wore them to a playdate at my friend John’s apartment.

  “Please take them off,” Julie said as we waited for the elevator.

  “Why?”

  “They’re dorky.”

  “They’re the same as sunglasses. They’re protecting my ears. Sunglasses protect my eyes. Same idea. Blocking out harmful stimuli. Why are sunglasses cool and earphones dorky?”

  “Please take them off.”

  I acceded.

  But this just spurs me to prove to Julie how perilously loud our lives are, so I order a decibel meter on the Internet. It looks like a rectal thermometer. I carry mine around everywhere, surreptitiously taking it out and testing the air whenever possible.

  Here’s a sample of my findings. And remember, decibel levels above eighty-five—about the sound of a leaf blower—can cause permanent hearing loss.

  Dave & Buster’s restaurant/video arcade in Times Square: 102 decibels

  New York’s C-line subway entering the station: 110

  Zane’s tantrum about missing the last five minutes of Bubble Guppies: 91

  Julie in an argument about whether or not I misplaced her Time magazine: Unknown. Whenever I put the decibel meter near her mouth, she refuses to talk. As Werner Heisenberg knew, taking measurements can mess with reality.

  Checkup: Month 3

  Weight: 168

  Push-ups till exhaustion: 34

  Walks in the park: 8

  Blood pressure: 115/75

  According to a University of Manchester study, my headphones might make my food taste better. The study found that background noise dampens our taste buds, which is part of the reason most airline lasagna tastes like AstroTurf.

  This finding is good, as I need more incentive to eat healthy food. I’m trying to eat right, but only succeeding in fits and starts.

  I downloaded a list of superfoods from Dr. Oz’s website, and I go on nutritional binges. I’m on a mission to break my own record for the most superfoods eaten in one sitting. My record so far is eight. Yesterday, I spent half an hour making a lunch salad of mango (vitamin C helps prevent periodontal disease), fennel (anti-inflammatory), blueberries (antioxidants, of course), avocados (monounsaturated fat), pomegranate seeds (ellagic acid that preserves collagen in skin), dark chocolate shavings, ground kelp, and lentils (good source of zinc)
. I like this idea of competition as an incentive to healthy eating, even if it’s just a competition to break my own record. Maybe games are the way to change our habits. Perhaps the competitive eating circuit could substitute kale for Coney Island hot dogs.

  Meanwhile, I’m trying to exercise every day, though I only manage about four times a week. To boost that number, I decided to buy a treadmill off Craigslist for three hundred dollars.

  “Where are we going to fit it?” asked Julie.

  “The bedroom?” I said.

  She paused. “Normally I’m against big machinery in the apartment. But if it’ll help you get in shape . . .”

  And it was helping for a while. I was running two or three miles at 5 mph almost every day. Then we got a call from our downstairs neighbor, Lloyd. Apparently, everyone on the entire fourth floor is in a tizzy. The pounding from my treadmill reverberates from one end of the building to the other. One neighbor wants to know why, every night, the paintings on his walls bounce.

  If I were in Bronzaft’s novel, I’d be murdered in my sleep. I’ve had to abandon my treadmill. It sits in my bedroom, a silent reminder of a wasted three hundred dollars.

  Back to the gym it is. I can’t say that I relish it, but I don’t dread it as much as I once did.

  There are parts of the gym ritual I find comforting. I like nodding at my fellow regulars, such as the guy who reads the Talmud while on the stationary bike. Or the guy who does biceps curls and then thumps his chest like Tarzan. Or the guy whose workout getup—tube socks and a white headband—makes him look like he stepped out of the 1985 Jamie Lee Curtis movie Perfect.

  And thank God for Tony. He’s supportive, always saying how much improvement I’m making, even if I’ve been stuck on the fifteen-pound biceps curls for three weeks. He’s an understanding mentor, and happy to give me tips on gym etiquette. “You can’t let the weights clank down,” he says. “It draws negative attention. People think you’re weak. On the other hand, if you do a lot of grunting and then clank, that’s okay. But you got to plan for it.”

  So overall, I feel decent. Even good. Perhaps the best I’ve felt since high school.

  But every time I start to edge toward smugness, I read something that stresses me out. The latest study that’s obsessing me: It might not matter if I’m exercising for an hour a day. If I’m sitting down for the other sixteen waking hours, I’m almost as unhealthy as ever.

  Chapter 4

  The Butt

  The Quest to Avoid Sedentary Life

  FOUR MONTHS IN, I’VE DECIDED it’s time to declare war on Sedentary Life. It’s not a war I want to fight. I’ve never had anything against the Sedentary Life. It suits me just fine. Before Project Health, I sat happily for ten to twelve hours a day. My Aeron chair and my butt were soul mates. I remember complaining to Julie once about the idea of the standing ovation. Is it really necessary? Can’t we express our approval for Wicked while comfortably seated? Maybe we could raise our arms or bow our heads or stomp our feet.

  But the more I read, the more I realize an unfortunate truth: Sitting and staring at screens all day is bad for you. Really bad, like smoking-unfiltered-menthols-while-eating-cheese-coated-lard-and-screaming-at-your-spouse bad. Michelle Obama is right. We need to move. Chairs are the enemy. Sitting puts you at risk for heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and some types of cancer, including colon and ovarian.

  We weren’t built to sit. Never before in history have we been so immobile. According to Harvard professor John Ratey, our Paleolithic forefathers walked eight to ten miles a day. Our grandparents expended an average of eight hundred calories a day more than we do. According to the book The Blue Zones, the cultures with the longest life spans—such as those in Okinawa and Sardinia—move all the time, lugging food up steep hills. (For the first time in my life, I wish New York had more hills. It’s dangerously flat.)

  The problem for Americans is that we’ve Balkanized our lives. We go to the gym for an hour (if we’re dutiful) and then sit for the rest of the day. Movement is sealed into an airtight container. When I was twelve, I had a strange fantasy about isolating all of life’s activities and batching them together. I wished I could brush my teeth for a month, then be finished with that for the rest of my earthly existence. I’d go to the bathroom for two years. Perhaps have sex for six weeks. We live in a less extreme version of my scenario. We sit and sit and sit, then have a burst of movement.

  Studies show that even regular gym-going can’t fully undo the harm of sitting. So my plan is to tear down the wall between exercise and life. I’ve started doing what I call guerrilla exercise—or what my friend calls contextual exercise. I squeeze physical activity into every nook in my day.

  I climb the four flights of stairs to our apartment. “Meet you up there,” Julie will say as she hops in the elevator. Once in a while, I’ll beat her to our front door and wait there, tapping my watch, looking impatient and trying not to hyperventilate. “Good one,” she says as she walks by.

  I avoid the People Movers at airports. Yes, I move my own person. I actually roll my suitcase over the stationary ground. I know! Heroic.

  I read one health article that recommended doing pull-ups from the “Don’t Walk” sign when waiting at the corner. I tried that. Even my five-year-old was embarrassed for me. So I stopped.

  And, in my biggest change yet, I’ve started to run errands. Literally run them. In normal usage, “running errands” is one of the most euphemistic phrases in the English language. We don’t run errands. We walk errands. Or, more often, we drive errands.

  But for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been on a mission of literalness. I run to the drugstore, buy a toothbrush, then run home. I run to the grocery, to the barber, to pick up my kids at school.

  Granted, running errands has its downsides. I sweated through my shirt on my way to an Esquire meeting. (I now carry a stick of deodorant in my bag). It can take longer than doing an errand in a car or bus—though not always, especially if it’s a ten-block-or-under errand.

  Also, it freaks people out. Grown men in street clothes aren’t supposed to run in public. The other day, I was running down the street—dressed in jeans and a big puffy coat—and a woman pushing a stroller stopped and shouted after me, “Is everything okay?” She probably thought a dirty bomb had just detonated.

  Running errands takes an act of will. I have to force my recalcitrant legs to start pumping with a ten-nine-eight countdown. But oh, the upsides. For one thing, it eases the guilt if I skip the gym one day. The world is my gym, I tell myself. And the bags of cereal and orange juice are my dumbbells. And there’s a glorious feeling of efficiency—you’re multitasking, but in a low-tech and beneficial way that won’t frazzle your brain or cause four-car pileups. Running errands also burns more calories than walking the same distance. (Running a mile erases 124 calories for men, while walking a mile takes only 88, according to the studies.)

  So that’s my new thing, telling Julie “I’m off to run some errands.”

  Even if I’m not running, I try to avoid sitting. All this antisedentary research has had a weird and unpleasant effect on my psyche. I can no longer rest in peace. The longer I’m seated, the guiltier I feel. After half an hour, I have that same queasy sensation I get from bingeing on half a box of Chips Ahoy.

  The problem with sitting, as biologist and author Olivia Judson explains, is twofold. The first part is obvious: We burn fewer calories when we’re sitting. The second part is more subtle but perhaps more profound: marathon sitting sessions change our body’s metabolism. A molecule called lipase is crucial to helping muscles absorb fat. When we sit, we don’t produce lipase, allowing the fat to go off and do naughty things like deposit itself as body fat or clog the arteries.

  There are plenty of studies on sitting. To take just one: The University of South Carolina and Pennington Biomedical Research Center compared heart problems in men who spent more than twenty-three hours a week sitting, and those who sat for less than eleven hours. The b
ig sitters had a 64 percent higher chance of fatal heart disease. And the bad news doesn’t end there. The sitters weren’t slackers. A lot of them went to the gym when they weren’t sitting. But their workouts couldn’t fully overcome the damage from their desk chair.

  So when I’m not moving, I try to stand, which is at least something. As Judson writes, “Compared to sitting, standing in one place is hard work. To stand, you have to tense your leg muscles, and engage the muscles of your back and shoulders; while standing, you often shift from leg to leg. All of this burns energy.”

  Julie and I went to see Star Trek last night, and after forty minutes, I excused myself to stand in the back of the theater.

  I felt righteous. Sitting during entertainment? That’s for the effete and the weak. I convinced myself I was a descendant of the hardy groundlings, the folks who paid a penny to stand in the dirt pit at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

  “There are plenty of seats,” the usher whispered to me.

  “Thanks, I’m good.”

  I listened to the soothing whir of the projector as he kept a wary eye on me.

  Speed Writing

  And then . . . there’s the desk. The desk is where most of the Crimes of Excessive Sedentary Behavior occur.

  Something needed to be done. For a week, I switched to working while standing. I raised my laptop by loading up three cardboard boxes onto my desk. Then I’d stand and peck out e-mails. I heard once that Nabokov wrote his novels standing up, so I was hoping my e-mails would have a Pale Fire quality to them.

  It didn’t go badly. I shifted and rocked a lot. I kind of looked like an Orthodox Jew praying at the Western Wall, but with a MacBook instead of a Torah. I kept a stack of two encyclopedias at my feet so that I could rest one foot on it at a time, a key to comfortable long-term standing.

  But the real breakthrough came when I combined the desk and movement.