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

effect. But as I’ve said before, the placebo effect is a godsend.

Memories of My Grandfather

I go to lunch at my grandfather’s on a chilly Thursday. I open the door and spot him in his usual pose, sunk deep in his recliner, his slippers up, watching CNN. He smiles and gives me his signature raised-fist salute.

With his daughter Jane’s help, my grandfather heaves himself up and shuffles over to the lunch table.

“We went out to dinner last night, didn’t we, Poppy?” Jane says as we settle in.

“Where’d you go?” I ask my grandfather.

He pauses, searching his brain.

“Well, I know I had something to eat, so that’s a start,” he says, then chuckles.

My grandfather’s memory is slipping away. But it’s a selective vanishing—only for recent events. Any story that happened in the fifties and sixties—he knows it cold. This is officially called “Ribot’s Law,” named for the French psychologist who first studied it. The more times we recall a memory, the more encoded it becomes. Recent memories haven’t had time to gel into the brain’s circuitry.

And in my grandfather’s case, Ribot’s Law means that visitors spend a lot of time reminiscing about the distant past. Which is okay by me, even though I’ve heard the same stories a dozen times.

Today, we talk about the time my grandfather bought a pet alligator for my aunt Kate. They kept it in the bathtub until it nipped a guest and had to be given to the Bronx Zoo.

A mention of Egypt leads to his favorite Africa story. I know it so well, I could recite it in stereo with him. In 1959, my grandfather helped organize what’s called the “Airlift to America.” The goal was to get hundreds of Kenyan students to study in United States colleges and then have them return home to lead their country. My grandfather raised money in New York, then, on two days’ notice, he flew to Kenya to conjure up some more.

He didn’t even have time to get his shots, so he took a syringe and a bottle of refrigerated medicine with him on the plane. He later forgot the medicine in the Nairobi hotel fridge. “I think it’s still there today,” he says, every time he tells the story.

He bounced across unpaved roads in a Jeep to spread the word to Kenyan villages. He became the proud owner of a goat in a local auction—which he then donated to the cause.

My grandfather wrote back home that the experience was “as inspiring as anything I have ever seen. Words cannot do justice to the reverence these people showed for education.”

My grandfather and his partners raised enough cash to charter planes that carried eight hundred students from Nairobi to New York. One of those students lived at my grandparents’ house in Riverdale for a year while he studied economics at Columbia.

More students longed to study in America than could fit on the planes. So the foundation provided scholarships to several other Kenyans. One of those students ended up at the University of Hawaii. His name was Barack Obama Sr.

My grandfather—a lifelong Democrat—still gets misty-eyed when Barack Obama Jr. gives a speech on TV. What a feeling that must be, to be so enmeshed in history. In 2009, an author named Tom Shachtman wrote a book called Airlift to America. My grandfather keeps it on the living room coffee table.

It might be pushing it, but I wonder if the Africa trip—and his other charity work—is one secret to my grandfather’s longevity. Several studies argue that charity is good for your health. One MRI study showed that giving to charity lights up the pleasure centers of the brain. It’s been called “helper’s high.” A 2004 Johns Hopkins study concluded that volunteering slows mental and physical aging. You’re more engaged, more challenged physically and cognitively.

After my grandfather finishes the Obama story, I check my cell-phone clock. I have to leave.

“Can you give me a ride?” asks my grandfather.

“Where are you going?” Jane asks him.

He pauses. “Where I was before.”

“You’ve been here all day,” she says. “This is your home.”

“Oh,” my grandfather says. “Right.”

The mist seems to clear, at least momentarily, and he gives me another raised-fist salute.

Checkup: Month 11

I went to EHE for a checkup. I figure I’m about at the halfway point of Project Health—I always pictured it as a two-year venture (my body is a fixer-upper). Here are the results:

     My weight: 157 pounds, down from 171.8. Almost fifteen pounds. Not bad.

     Total cholesterol, dropped from 134 to 129.

     HDL (the so-called good cholesterol) spiked from 41 from 45.

     LDL (bad cholesterol) sank from 77 to 68.

     My iron-binding capacity is down to normal range.

     Blood pressure is down to 98/68 (it was previously at 110/70).

     My body fat percentage took a crazy tumble: down from 18.4 percent to 8.0 percent. Nice.

     Pulse down from 64 to 55.

On the downside, I have a mild hernia, and my doctor—a sweet-natured Indian woman—tells me that I shouldn’t lift heavy weights. A serious problem since I’m trying to bulk up.

Overall, I’m getting healthier, which is good. I’m bucking the pull of gravity and entropy.

But I don’t think I’m the healthiest person alive. Not yet. My body has lost some of its marshmallowness and gained some sharp lines, but it’s still wiry. My pecs wouldn’t measure up at your average beach, even those far from the Jersey Shore.

But more troubling, I have hundreds of things left on my fifty-three-page to-do list—which has now grown to seventy pages. I’m worried I’ll never come close to finishing. Many body parts remain: my back, my feet, my skin.

Not to mention my surroundings. From what I’ve been reading, there’s the distinct possibility that my apartment might be slowly murdering me and my family. Marti’s coming to town. Maybe she can detoxify our living quarters.

Chapter 12

The Endocrine System

The Quest for a Nontoxic Home

I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW WHAT to think about the toxins issue. One day I’ll read books with horrifying titles like Slow Death by Rubber Duck, which argue that toys