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

top-of-their-field doctors and from fitness trainers with biceps like cantaloupes. My aunt Marti will weigh in. She is the single most health-minded person in America, and has a mail-order business that sells powdered blue-green algae supplements and organic hand sanitizers. She lives in Berkeley and will be giving me a distinctly Californian point of view.

When I called her to tell her about the project, she was thrilled at first, then appalled. “You’re doing a project on health and you’re calling me from your cell phone?” She went on to lecture me on its brain-frying dangers. And for calling too late, since staying up at night disrupts my circadian rhythm.

I’ve been devouring health books and magazines and blogs. I’ve read at least fourteen articles on the benefits of blueberries. I’m steeped in my omega-3s and flavonoids. I know a lat from a delt, fructose from sucrose, HDL from LDL. I know that you should eat a lot of the Indian spice turmeric, as it fights cancer. Also that you should avoid the Indian spice turmeric, as it might contain dangerous levels of lead. One or the other.

The research so far has been fascinating, often confusing—but heartening overall. Admittedly, I’m saddled with twenty-three pairs of chromosomes I can’t change, at least not yet. But there’s so much I can control. An estimated 50 percent of our health is determined by behavior. Our well-being is an accumulation of hundreds of little choices we make every day—what to eat, drink, breathe, wear, think, say, watch, lift, and smear on our skin.

My timing is lucky as well. This is a good era in which to pursue total health. We’ve had more medical advances in the last thirty years than, arguably, in the last millennium.

But I also have to be careful. I’ve spotted an astonishing amount of what even I—with my currently limited expertise—can tell is quackery. You’d think that with the steady march of science, the dubious health advice would have faded since the days of “Dr. Hammond’s Nerve Medicine and Opium Blend.” Not so.

Thanks to the Internet, just about any quarter-baked idea ever conceived still gets traction. Case in point: trepanning, a practice that dates back to 6500 BCE and involves drilling a hole in the skull to let out evil spirits.

I did an Internet search. And guess what? It’s still around. Check out the International Trepanation Advocacy Group. Its website features images of green-tinted brain scans next to doctors in white lab coats writing complicated math equations on boards. Apparently, this is not your caveman’s trepanation. No, this is totally scientifical drilling of holes in your skull.

Now, quackery can be interesting and even important. (For instance, one of the leaders of the 1773 Boston Tea Party riled up the protesters by claiming that tea was hazardous to the health; so our very country is founded on absurd medical claims.)

But I want this project to be an evidence-based makeover. I want to separate the hard science from the squishy claims. I’ve got to be wary of the Latest Study Syndrome. Our brains are unduly drawn to whatever yesterday’s study revealed—Look at that! Bacon IS healthy—especially if the conclusion is surprising and counterintuitive and delicious. Each study needs to be weighed against the mountain of existing data. I want to focus on the meta-analyses. Or better yet, meta-analyses of meta-analyses. I’ll be seeking second opinions, but also third, fourth, and eighth opinions. I’ll be consulting the Cochrane Collaboration, which sounds like a shady international conspiracy but is actually a nonpartisan group that reviews medical studies.

The trick, though, is to avoid quackery at the same time as maintaining childlike enthusiasm for innovation. Because cutting-edge medical science veers into the surreal. It’s a world where mice live twice as long when they’re on the verge of starvation, and where electromagnetic pulses to the brain can temporarily improve memory and creativity.

I read a quote from Carl Sagan that I printed out and put on the wall above my computer. It will be my guide:

What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas.

The Battle Plan

What does it mean to be maximally healthy? Courtesy of the World Health Organization’s definition of health, I’ve broken it down into three parts:

1. Longevity

2. Freedom from disease and pain

3. A sense of emotional, mental, and physical well-being

If I can have those three, I’ll be ecstatic. It’d be nice to get a six-pack, but it’s not my top priority—unless I decide I need shredded abs for emotional well-being, as many magazines seem to imply.

I’m going to quantify my progress as best I can. Granted, the longevity part will be tough to measure, unless I happen to die during my project. Which would be embarrassing but would certainly provide some closure. But the other two, thankfully, are testable.

To quantify how badly off I am at the project’s start, I visited a clinic in Rockefeller Center called EHE, short for Executive Health Enterprises.

The website boasts of the company’s illustrious history: EHE has been doing preventive medicine since 1913. The founding chairman of its board? Former president William Howard Taft. Which, frankly, isn’t the first name that comes to mind when you think of healthy living. This is a man who got stuck in the White House bathtub and had to be lifted out by four government employees.

But still, EHE is a classy joint filled with reputable doctors, free fruit salad, and fancy clientele from law firms and banks. It offers a top-to-bottom physical and a full report card on your body. I went one morning, and it took three hours and involved six vials of blood, forty-two tests, six nurses, and eleven horrific minutes on a treadmill.

Here’s what they found:

Height: 5'11”. Weight: 172 pounds. Body fat percentage: 18. Total cholesterol: 134 (it used to be over 200, but I’ve been taking Lipitor for three years). I’m