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

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 associated 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