Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

Vlad approaches Erwan.

“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