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

at home, using a pole as a very light barbell. No improvement so far. Julie gives me a massage every night as she reads her historical novels, which is somewhat helpful.

I’ve tried a makeshift Buddhist approach—instead of fleeing from the pain, I concentrate on it with a Zen, nonpartisan mind-set. I say to myself, “Now that’s an interesting sensation. The burning. The throbbing.” I overthink the pain. But this strategy works better with short-term pain—a thumb jammed in a drawer, for instance—than it does with my lingering shoulder ache.

So today, I’m trying out new strategy: acupuncture. I find a place a block away—in New York, an acupuncturist is never more than a five-minute walk from your house.

And now I’m in the waiting room in the basement of a building. The door to the waiting room is propped open with a watermelon-size Buddha. I’m getting a whiff of that unmistakable Alterna Health scent. I can’t pinpoint it—jasmine? frankincense? spilled kale juice?—but I always smell it at non-Western medical practices.

I fill out my forms and browse the pamphlets, which are clearly targeted at another gender. Example: a gluten-free tonic called Zenopause.

The acupuncturist calls me into her office. She introduces herself as Galina. She’s a solid Russian woman in her sixties with bangs, a thick accent, and a white robe covered with words such as “Calm” and “Relax” in both English and Chinese.

“What brings you here?” she asks.

I explain the pain in my shoulder. She nods, jots down a note. Then she asks me questions for ten minutes straight, scribbling more notes.

“Do you sweat?”

“Yes.”

“Which places?”

“Armpits and face.”

I look around the office. It’s dark, more like a Viennese café than an eye-squintingly fluorescent Western doctor’s office. Asian fans and anatomy posters cover the walls.

After quizzing me on my sleep, bathroom, and eating habits, Galina gets up from her chair.

“You ready?”

“I’m ready. Except for the head. I don’t want it on the head.”

“Well, I’m doing the head.”

Apparently, the customer-is-always-right philosophy wasn’t taught in Galina’s native Russia.

I groan. I have some long-standing neuroses about anything touching my head, much less piercing my skull. I’m irrationally afraid of brain damage. When I was a kid, it was even worse: The skull was off-limits. No friendly pats on the head. No soccer, with its insane practice of bonking the ball on your pate. And if Grandma came in for a kiss on the forehead, I would dart my head like Manny Pacquiao. Nowadays, I let Julie tousle my hair, but I’m still careful.

“The head actually has the least nerve endings,” Galina assures me. “So it’ll be the least painful.”

I give a weak smile.

“One in a hundred people pass out. Maybe not even that. Usually it’s the big guys.” She laughs. She leads me to another chair in the center of the room.

“Which is more sensitive, one, two, three, or four?” She presses her fingers down hard on different areas near my bald spot.

“Three,” I say.

“You know, acupuncture probably started in Russia,” she says as she rubs alcohol-soaked cotton on my head. “The first corpse that had markings of acupuncture was found in Siberia. It was mummified.”

I’m not going to argue with a woman who is about to insert sharp objects into my exposed skull. She takes out a matchstick-size needle and pulls off its blue plastic cap. Then I feel a prick. Then a slide. There’s a faint but distinct sound of the needle gliding through the various layers of skin. It’s not too painful—about twice as bad as a mosquito bite—but the sound makes my stomach turn.

“You can look in the mirror if you want,” she says.

I get up and walk carefully across the room. There it is, sticking out of my head like a tiny antenna.

As she presses on my skull again, Galina gives me a crash course in acupuncture theory. “It’s about energy pathways. They are like roads in the body. And the energy can build up behind one part and cause the other parts not to have enough energy.”

The acupuncture is like a tow truck that clears up the traffic jam. The chi (energy) can flow smoothly through the body’s channels or meridians.

The channels are linked to different body parts. Today, she’s working on the lung channel, which is linked to my sore shoulder.

Galina slides another needle into my head, and one into my left leg. She flicks the needle in my leg. It boings like a cartoon arrow going into a target.

After my acupuncture session, I head straight to the gym for a workout with Tony. “How many needles did she put in?” Tony asks.

“Three,” I say.

“Three?” He laughs. “You got ripped off, my friend. On a per-needle basis, you got ripped off big-time.”

Tony tells me his acupuncturist puts in forty needles, minimum. Even when he does acupuncture on dogs, which is his sideline business.

That’s annoying. I didn’t even get as many needles as your average Scottish terrier. Did Galina not think I was virile enough to take more than three needles? I could have at least hit double digits.

But here’s the weird thing. Even though I was poked only three times, I notice something: My shoulder feels better. Not totally better. But a lot better.

For the first time in months, I can raise my arms in the air without a twinge. For the first time in months, I do shoulder presses with dumbbells bigger than hot dogs.

“This is amazing,” I say. “The voodoo worked. It really worked.”

So what happened?

To figure this out, here’s a quick summary of science’s view of acupuncture.

Studies are a frustrating mix. Some show it works, while just as many show it doesn’t. The studies display cultural bias as well: Chinese studies generally come out more pro-acupuncture than American ones.

A couple of recent studies show that acupuncture works better than doing nothing. But so does “sham acupuncture,” which consists of inserting needles in random places around the body.

So here are four possibilities of what happened today:

1. Chinese medicine is correct, and the needles restored my energy balance along