Drop Dead Healthy

by A. J. Jacobs

  “It’s big, too,” says the bearded guy. “You got another body in there in case yours gets tired out?”

  Tony turns to me. “I’m not sure I like this guy’s attitude.”

  Tony, the former parole officer, could lay this bozo flat with one pop to the mouth. But I tell Tony we have to save our energy for the race.

  After disembarking, we know we’ve arrived at the right place. Speakers blare Bruce Springsteen’s anthem to exercise, “Born to Run.” The field is covered with hundreds of bikes propped up on long steel racks. Helmets, towels, packets of blackberry energy gel are scattered everywhere. I hook my bike onto the bar next to a twentyish blond woman zipping up her wet suit.

  “Have you done this triathlon before?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “How’s the water temperature?”

  “Oh, you’ll panic. You’ll hyperventilate.”

  A few minutes later, on the line to the bathroom, I ask another veteran racer, a man with orange goggles perched on his head. “Oh, you’ll panic. You’ll hyperventilate.”

  We line up on the beach nearby, and at the whistle we wade into the dark Raritan Bay.

  The icy water slides down the back of my wet suit and up my sleeve. It’s unpleasant, like swimming in a Slushie. But . . . here’s the strange thing. I don’t panic and I don’t hyperventilate. It’s not that I’m particularly manly, despite my now-average testosterone. It’s just that I had built up the ice swim so much in my mind, the sixty-degree reality seemed manageable.

  Maybe my calming techniques help: I do my stomach breathing. I lie on my back. I curse, since I know that this scientifically cuts down on the pain. I try some Buddhist distancing: “Now, this is an interesting sensation on my skin!”

  I splash along in the choppy water, popping my head up every thirty seconds to get oriented. Eleven minutes later, I curve around a spherical orange buoy and head to the beach. All that angst for eleven minutes.

  I run dripping to my little plot of land to strip off my wet suit. Here’s one thing I didn’t realize: how much of a triathlon involves wardrobe changes. It’s like a strenuous version of a Broadway musical. After I peel off the wet suit, I towel dry, put on bike shorts, socks, shoes, and suntan lotion. It is a ten-minute production.

  “Phase two,” Tony says as we mount our bikes.

  We pedal along a car-less road. It’s been shut down for the race. We pass drugstores, a couple of dentist’s offices, a field with a half-dozen turkeys. We zip through delightfully meaningless red traffic lights. We ride in silence.

  Though the silence is broken by frequent calls of “On your left!” Which means some man or woman hunched with their chin on the handlebars whooshes by.

  Thirty-three minutes and two sugary blackberry energy packs later, we dump our bikes and start jogging on a boardwalk by the beach.

  “I’m not in any hurry,” Tony says. “So don’t feel the need to sprint on my account.”

  “I don’t have plans either,” I say.

  We plod along without a word. I’ve got a rhythm going—one inhalation for every four steps, one exhalation for every four steps. I’m tired, but not exhausted. I think I may make it. I trained enough—overtrained, in fact. As I say, fear of public humiliation is a great motivator.

  I watch the water lapping against the piers. I listen to the cheering bystanders. “Almost there!” says a bald guy who already finished the race and has joined the crowd. I don’t even mind his mild condescension. I’m kind of liking this. I’m finally feeling what Chris McDougall calls the joy of running. I finally have the answer to Tony’s prerace question: “Why?”

  We cross the finish line and give each other a bro hug. We walk down a wooden ramp back to our bikes. Tony turns to me: “We did it.”

  And I say two sentences that, even as I was saying them, sound strange issuing from my mouth: “It was kind of fun, no? I’d do it again.”

  On the ferry back, Tony and I try to figure out whether the triathlon was, on balance, healthy or unhealthy. There were many unhealthy things about it. First of all, there was the postrace pancake breakfast, at which everyone (including me) shoved his or her face full of simple carbs. There was also the lack of sleep, the noise, the three mouthfuls of microbe-filled Staten Island beach water that I swallowed during the swim, and the unknown toxins from the Magic Marker with which our number was scrawled onto our hands and legs.

  On the other hand, it had its healthy parts. It spurred me to exercise every day. And as for the pancakes, at least one of my fellow triathletes offered me sugar-free syrup, which is marginally better than Aunt Jemima’s. It allowed me to socially connect with Tony, and for a few weeks there, I had a purpose, however absurd.

  When I get home, I drop my pink camo bag in the hall and engulf my sons in a hug. “Did you win?” asks Zane.

  “Well, I beat a lot of people,” I say.

  He seems pleased.

  “But I lost to hundreds of others.”

  That he doesn’t like.

  (Note: This was not the last triathlon I signed up for. A couple of months later, I paid a hefty, nonrefundable entry fee for the New York Triathlon. I’d be swimming nearly a mile in the Hudson River, biking twenty-five miles, and running six. Training was going well, I was feeling confident. And then, two weeks before the race, Tony sent me this e-mail:

  Did you see that there was a fire at a sewage plant on 135th Street? Five million gallons of raw sewage spilling into the river every hour until they fix it. The city is urging all New Yorkers to avoid contact with Hudson River water. I beg you to reconsider.

  He didn’t have to beg too hard. There’s the thrill of a challenge, and then there’s 200 million gallons of human waste. I’m currently signed up for next year’s triathlon.

  Chapter 25

  The Eyes

  The Quest to See Better

  I LOVE WATCHING THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL documentaries on the body. They’re so delightfully boosterish, they make me feel proud of this heap of bones and sinew. The narrator sells you on the human body like he’s Ron Popeil hawking the latest vegetable chopper. “The eyes can see one hundred million colors! They can focus from infinity to inches in a fifth of a second! In complete darkness, they can detect the light of a single candle fourteen miles away!”

  Which really are astounding statistics.

  Unfortunately, my eyes aren’t quite as astounding as the ones advertised. They’re flawed. I’m nearsighted and have astigmatism. Which isn’t compatible with my goal of being the healthiest man in the world.

  I’ve been trying to put some positive spin on my eyesight. In the past few weeks, I’ve been scouring the literature in search of the advantages of myopia. One study says glasses wearers are perceived as more intelligent and are thus more likely to get hired. No less than 40 percent of people would wear fake glasses to land a job. So careerwise, I’m in good shape. (The study was conducted by the College of Optometrists. It probably won’t be published in the JAMA anytime soon.)

  I also read that my flawed vision might boost my so-far-nonexistent art career. In A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman writes about how Cézanne’s fuzzy still lifes and landscapes might be partly the result of his poor vision. (His doctor commanded him to wear spectacles, but apparently Cézanne refused, calling them vulgar.) Degas had even more optical woes. He was both nearsighted and extremely sensitive to light, one of the reasons he might have preferred indoor scenes to landscapes. If Degas’s eyes had been stronger, we might have been looking at banal sunsets instead of his wonderful ballerinas.

  So that’s something, right?

  To get a more professional opinion on eye health, I consulted Dr. Peter Odell, affiliated with New York Presbyterian–Cornell Medical Center. My last eye exam was an appalling four years ago. He gave me the usual “which is clearer: this-or-that” tests. I also got the peripheral vision test, where I had to spot floating yellow dots. (“Just think of yourself as a pirate,” said his assistant, Lynn, as I
put my face against the black eye patch. “The fun Disney pirates. Not the Somali pirates.”) I got the eyedrops that forced me to type my notes onto my computer in movie-poster-size letters. The conclusion: I’m still nearsighted.

  I asked Dr. Odell how to have the healthiest eyes and avoid eye diseases. They are alarmingly prevalent. According to The New York Times, eye diseases—mainly glaucoma, cataracts, and macular degeneration—affect 10 percent of America. Twenty-six million people suffer from cataracts alone. And as the population grays, those numbers will climb.

  Dr. Odell told me:

  • Fruits and vegetables, of course.

  • Fish such as salmon and tuna that are high in omega-3s may help prevent macular degeneration.

  • Don’t worry if you read in dim light, cross your eyes, or forget to wear your glasses one day. These are mostly harmless in the long term (though dim light can cause eye strain in the short term).

  • Wear UV-blocking sunglasses. They are like Coppertone for the eyes.

  • If you see floating black spots, flashing lights, or wavy lines while reading, get yourself to a doctor.

  I met with another eye specialist, Dr. Paul Finger, and asked him the same question.

  “Don’t become a glassblower,” he told me. Glassblowing emits infrared radiation and dust particles that can lead to blindness.

  “Helpful.”

  “And don’t be a boxer. They have a lot of detached retinas.”

  “What about sticking crochet needles into my eyes?”

  “Probably avoid that as well.”

  Sight Improvements

  This is all solid advice on how to keep my eyes from deteriorating. But what about improving my sight? Making it sharper? Can I do that?

  One option is Lasik surgery, which I’m still mulling. But I recently met one of the inventors of the Lasik technology, and guess what? He still wears glasses. He’s wary of taking the risk. That gave me pause.

  Lasik aside, there are several possible eyesight helpers. Here are the three most promising: cockiness, video games, and eye aerobics.

  First, cockiness. In 2010, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an intriguing series of experiments that she wrote about in Psychological Science. Her conclusion is that when you believe you can see better, you do see better. It’s not as odd as it sounds. Scientists have long known that vision isn’t just a matter of the eyes relaying info to the brain. It’s a two-way street. We help construct the world with our brain.

  In one of Langer’s experiments, subjects read eye charts. Some were traditional, with the big E at the top. Some were reversed, with the big E at the bottom. The subjects looking at the reversed chart got better scores on the tiny lines than did those looking at the normal chart.

  Langer and her team argue, this happened because subjects expected to be able to read the top line.

  This experiment could explain the popularity of those quacky eye exercises on the Internet, the ones that promise you’ll be able to ditch your glasses. (Make a figure eight with your eyes! Now focus on your thumb, then the wall, now the thumb!) Maybe these programs don’t improve your eyesight. But they make you believe you’re improving. And that false confidence leads to real gains.

  Second, video games. A University of Rochester study showed that playing first-person-shooter video games made subjects 58 percent better at distinguishing contrast, meaning they were more skilled at detecting shades of gray. This improvement has real-world implications. Contrast sensitivity is crucial in night driving, for instance. I added video games to a file I have in my computer called “Healthy Vices,” a list that already includes naps, booze, chocolate, and leaving the bed unmade, since dust mites thrive in the bedspread’s heat and humidity.

  And finally, I found a computer class called Vizual Edge. The military and a handful of pro sports teams (the San Diego Padres and the Houston Astros, among others) use this program. The idea is that with practice, you can improve your tracking and focusing and depth perception. Unlike other eye exercise programs, Vizual Edge doesn’t promise to cure your nearsightedness, just to upgrade the speed and accuracy of your sight. They have studies to back up their claims. In a 2010 Texas A&M University study of college baseball players, Vizual Edge trainees were better batters.

  “It’s like weight training for the eyes,” says Dr. Barry Seiller, a Chicago-based ophthalmologist who invented the program. The hope is you’ll hit more home runs, catch more Hail Marys. Legend has it, Ted Williams could read the label on a spinning record. That’d be the windmill we’re aiming at.

  So I start my regimen of pumping pixels. Three times a week for twenty minutes, I don Vizual Edge’s 3-D glasses—they’re the old-fashioned kind, with one lens blue and one lens red—and try to spot floating arrows and rings on my computer screen.

  I’ve also been playing my Top Gun video game, and telling myself I have bionic vision. And I am seeing better. At least according to my highly rigorous tests—the Snellen eye chart I downloaded from the Internet.

  I made the mistake of telling Jasper that video games might be good for his vision. Now every time I try to shut down his Super Mario game, he has the predictable response. “But it’s making my eyes stronger!”

  I respond that his eyes would be better served by being outside. As Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang write in Welcome to Your Child’s Brain, kids’ eyes need sunlight. Artificial light makes it much more likely they’ll become nearsighted. Jasper responds to that by continuing to play Super Mario.

  Checkup: Month 25

  Weight: 158

  Errands run per day: 4

  Chews per mouthful: 11

  I’d planned to stop Project Health after two years, but the goal line keeps receding. I still have body parts to revamp and self-experiments to try. The other day, for instance, I saw a Dr. Oz episode that recommended konjac root for suppressing appetite, and I added that to my monstrous to-do list. It’s like when I want my sons to eat their dinner. “Just one more bite. Okay, one last bite. Now, last, last, superfinal bite.”

  I have to stop, or I’ll go to my death trying to be the healthiest human. Next month is my last, last superfinal month.

  I’m glad I didn’t finish yet, though. Because a few days ago, being in good shape—and maybe having improved vision—came in terrifyingly handy.

  Julie, the kids, and I were walking in the park on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Well, Julie and I were walking. The kids were zipping around on their scooters.

  I got a cell-phone call from my dad. He wanted to meet us at a playground. I was giving him directions—I couldn’t have been distracted for longer than twenty seconds—and then I look up. Zane and Jasper had vanished.

  We were near the Great Lawn, a huge field filled with baseball diamonds and sunbathers. The path forked in front of us.

  “You go that way, I’ll go this,” said Julie. She and Lucas hurried off to the left. I dropped the canvas bag with Jasper’s baseball bat—I’d pick it up later—and started running to the right. Sprinting.

  I was devouring that road. I shot by strollers and carts selling Popsicles and Gatorade. I jumped over puddles and dodged waddling toddlers. “Jasper!” I shouted. “Zane!” My newly strengthened eyes scanned for their orange scooters. “JASPER! ZANE!”

  My adrenaline was pumping so high, I could have run across Manhattan, over the bridge, and into New Jersey. I understood the old legend of the woman gaining superhuman strength to hoist the car from her pinned children.

  “Jasper! Zane!”

  Then the magical thinking started kicking in. I started to conjure up all the horrible scenarios. The secret dungeons they would end up in, the screeching tires of a taxi that was about to run them over . . . and then I reined in my thoughts.

  The fear was overwhelming. I was being sucked in. I chose anger instead. I could deal with anger. I was angry that my sons took off without looking back. I was angry at myself for being momentarily distracted. I was angry that there’s not yet an affordable
LoJack system for locating kids. We have the technology!

  I sprinted around the entire Great Lawn at what I swear was Usain Bolt speed, no thought of slowing. “Jasper! Zane!” Four minutes and still no sign. I kept running.

  And there, at the bottom of a path, near a statue of Shakespeare, I spotted their orange scooters and their cute, worried little faces. They’d gone up to a police officer to tell her they got lost. Thank God, thank God, thank God.

  I want to borrow the cops’ handcuffs and latch my kids to my wrists until they are fifty-four years old.

  Chapter 26

  The Skull

  The Quest to Not Be Killed in an Accident

  I JUST SPENT A TRULY harrowing half hour reading the CDC’s index of ways you can die and get injured. It’s a mind-blowing document. Thousands of categories. They list the classics, like car accidents, of course. But also balloon, snowmobile, and animal-drawn vehicle accidents. They list dog bites, but also unpleasant contact with sea lions, macaws, and giraffes. There’s accidental gunshots, but also rogue sewing machines and can openers.

  It all makes you want to curl up in your bed. Except that your bed could kill you in any number of ways.

  • entanglement in bed linen, causing suffocation (category T71)

  • falling while climbing into bed (W13.0)

  • burns from highly flammable sheets, spreads, pillows, or mattress (X05)

  • drowning involving bed (W17.0)

  I’m not sure how the mechanics of bed-drowning work, even with a water bed, but that’s what’s fascinating about this list. Half of the causes I wouldn’t have conceived of on my most paranoid day. Like Y35.312: hitting a bystander with a baton.

  The point is, you can eat your Brazil nuts, meditate like a champ, and run five miles a day, but it won’t help you if you trip on the sidewalk and crack your skull.