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

to-do list. Did I mention it’s got lots of items? This month I was able to check off a big one: I attended a religious ritual, which is, at least arguably, good for the health.

We went to a Purim festival at our synagogue. Purim, as you might know, is the celebration of Queen Esther’s rescue of the Jewish people from the evil King Ahasuerus. But over the centuries, it’s evolved into a kind of Jewish Halloween. You dress up in costumes and eat high-fructose food.

It’s preferable if the costumes have some sort of Jewish connection. My kids wore a Superman costume, a Batman costume, and a Flash costume.

I consoled myself that Superman is kind of Jewish. Like many Jews, he was an immigrant who changed his name. (Jules Feiffer calls Superman the “ultimate assimilationist fantasy.”) Plus, he works in the media, which is a good Jewish thing to do.

In any case, we’re off to temple.

“Come on, superheroes!” said Julie. “Let’s get on those sneakers.”

Let me take this moment to say that—as long as I don’t eat the simple-carb-filled hamantaschen—this ritual is probably good for my health.

Numerous studies have shown that religion and health are linked. A study by the University of Texas’s Population Research Center found that those who made weekly visits to a house of worship lived, on average, seven years longer than those who never visit.

As Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky writes in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, religion is thought to be healthy for several reasons, including:

• It provides a close-knit community.

• It gives a sense of purpose to life. You believe that events happen for a reason—a worldview that lowers stress. If your child gets sick, you can say that God gave you this challenge because He knew you could handle it.

But before you go out and buy a stack of Bibles, let me toss in a whole bunch of caveats. As Sapolsky points out, studying religion’s impact on health is tricky. There are tons of complicating factors. For one thing, some religious people might be less likely to smoke or drink heavily. Plus, he says, “Religion can be very good at reducing stressors, but it is often the inventor of those stressors in the first place.” If you believe that masturbation will land you in hell, your cortisol will rise.

In any case, there’s at least some correlation between religion and health. Which isn’t exactly why we joined the synagogue. Julie and I joined this synagogue after my year of living biblically because we wanted to give our sons a taste of their heritage, even if they decide to ignore it later.

I won’t, unfortunately, get the stress-reducing benefit of believing that everything was meant to happen for a divine reason. I’m agnostic. Or more precisely, after my year of living biblically, I’m an agnostic with a veneration for rituals. As a pastor friend calls it, I’m a “reverent agnostic.” Whether or not there’s a God, I feel there’s room for the sacred in my life. Prayers of thanksgiving can be sacred. Time with the family can be sacred. Dressing up as Superman—definitely sacred.

And the Sabbath—that can be sacred as well. I still try to observe the Sabbath. I don’t do the full Orthodox no-pressing-elevator-buttons Shabbat. I just try not to answer my e-mails or do Facebook updates, and try to spend the day with my family.

This year, I’ve had to grapple with whether to exercise on the Sabbath, since for me, exercise is work. I figure running after my kids as they zoom down the sidewalk on their Razor scooters? That’s okay. Going to the gym? I try to avoid it.

There haven’t been a lot of rigorous studies on whether the Sabbath reduces stress, but I do know that I get a feeling of release on Friday night, a school’s-out-for-summer wave of relief.

On Purim, we arrived at the synagogue and went downstairs. Dozens of Spider-Mans and princesses and a couple of Scooby-Doos scampered around the synagogue basement. The kids flipped the stuffed frogs into the holes in a carnival game. Zane got a smiley face painted on his cheek by a middle school volunteer. He’ll later cry about spilled toothpaste, and his tears will smear the smiley face, an irony that even he, a four-year-old, had to admit was kind of amusing. But overall, it’s good to be a part of this community, any community, and my cortisol levels recede.

Chapter 14

The Feet

The Quest to Run Right

I AM IN A CHAIN of sixty people, a sort of conga line without the Gloria Estefan music. Hands on one another’s shoulders, we are snaking our way through a park in Harlem.

About half of the human chain wears no shoes. Many other feet are encased snugly in red or yellow or black Vibram FiveFingers shoes—those gloves for the feet that my kids call “monkey shoes.” Others have fashioned their own footwear. Two college-age guys have taken flat rubber soles, attached leather straps, and entwined them gladiator-style around their calves.

I’m here at the meeting place for the first annual Barefoot Run in New York, led by the high priest of shoeless jogging, Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run.

We will soon set out across Manhattan, but first we are warming up by pattering around Marcus Garvey Park. The organizers have hired two guys in tracksuits to thump African drums to get us in the barefoot-running mood before we head downtown. Not that this herd of runners needs it, really. They are already converts.

The conversations revolve around the time they saw the light. That moment they revolted against the footwear industry, and threw off their well-padded, overengineered lace-up chains. “I just said F it, and took off my shoes!” recounts a woman in red shorts. They talk about their freedom from plantar warts and aching arches.

I’m working on my feet this month because they are a huge, and often overlooked, health hazard. Americans suffer an estimated nine million foot injuries a year. And as I get older, I