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

least in part—to allow us to manipulate our fingers. Meanwhile, philosopher/motorcycle-repair-shop-owner Matthew Crawford—the author of Shop Class as Soulcraft—says that modernity’s alienation can be blamed on manual incompetence. When we lost our ability to replace a light switch and whittle a block of wood, we lost our souls.

If you want the healthiest hands, you have to talk to a man named Greg Irwin. He calls himself “the Richard Simmons of hands, but without the shorts.” An Ohio-based musician and businessman, Irwin has a blond goatee and a wide, friendly face. He is the inventor of a grueling aerobic workout for the hands called “Finger Fitness.” You can find his videos on YouTube. If you watch them, please don’t be offended. In the intro to one, Irwin warns: “I do not feel that social gestures should restrict the smooth flow of the gestures in this video. Therefore, none of the positions you see in this video are meant to have any social meaning.”

And then he flips you the bird.

Thanks to Napier, I know that the middle finger—or “obscenus”—got its naughty rep because “the longest digit is ideally disposed to carry out indelicate scratching operations.”

But as Irwin says, giving the bird in his video is nothing personal. It’s just part of a workout in which you extend and stretch all the fingers. Irwin’s handwork is remarkable to watch. His hands blur as the fingers cross, weave, pop, do the Vulcan salute and the heavy-metal devil horns. It’s a digital ballet.

I set up a private video lesson with Greg on Skype. Several weeks ago, Greg had sent me a starter kit that included two DVDs and a pair of apricot-size silver Chinese therapy balls. I’d been meaning to practice, but I’ve been too busy washing vegetables, running laps, and sniffing my spice rack. “Let’s start with the basics,” he says. “Bend, fold, tap, press.”

I put my hands in the prayer position, bend them right, bend them left. Then I stumble. Which way do I fold them again?

Greg isn’t impressed. “You’ve had my video for weeks and you can’t do the bend, fold, tap, press?”

I sheepishly admit that’s true.

“Well”—Greg softens—“you’re probably a little nervous doing it in front of me.”

Also true.

I love Greg’s passion. He eats, sleeps, and dreams hands—and sits in them as well. His home has four hand-shaped chairs. In fact, Greg’s house is packed with the world’s largest collection of hand paraphernalia—hand-shaped cups, hand-shaped flashlights, hand-shaped jewelry—not to mention the purple handprints that decorate his bathroom walls.

He invented Finger Fitness nearly thirty years ago. He was studying music at college (incidentally, he helped develop the first electronic xylophone) and working as a dishwasher. During a break at his job, he started playing the air piano. Inspiration hit.

Skeptics often ask him why it is so important to exercise the hands. His answer: to avoid injuries, to prevent arthritis, and to allow us to live our lives in peak condition. “We’re all small muscle athletes,” says Greg. “Think of how this world would change if we all did Finger Fitness. People would type faster. Surgeons would do operations better. McDonald’s clerks would make change quicker. Older people could button their shirts.”

Greg has sold thousands of DVDs—many to musicians and athletes. He’s even appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

But he’s frustrated. “I’m dumbfounded this hasn’t caught on more. I’ve been doing this for years. I feel like I have the next peanut-butter-and-chocolate. And I can’t even get my own mom to do the exercises.”

The exception, he says, is China, which he visits several times a year. “They get it over there. Healthy hands, healthy mind.”

I feel for Greg. I was about to type “My heart goes out to Greg” but realized that’s just another instance of cardiofetishism. No, my hands go out to Greg. I promise him I’ll spread the news about Finger Fitness in my book. I pledge to do five or ten minutes a day while waiting at red lights or watching TV. Greg says he will let me know about the results of an upcoming Finger Fitness study at Winston-Salem State University.

“The hand is really devalued in Western society,” he says. When he shows his hand tricks at parties, snooty intellectuals often dismiss it as a mere gimmick. “This might sound out there, but I almost think the mind is threatened by the hands,” says Greg. Or as comedian Emo Philips once said, “I used to think the brain was the most wonderful organ in the body. Then I realized who was telling me that.”

Holding Hands

I’ve made another discovery: I shouldn’t keep my hands to myself. Holding hands is healthy. A study by James Coan, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Virginia, brought sixteen married couples into his lab and subjected them to the threat of electric shock while he studied their brains on an fMRI machine. He found that wives who were holding their husbands’ hands experienced less stress. Even holding a stranger’s hand calmed the women’s brains, though not as much.

I’ve been on a mission to hold Julie’s hand as much as possible to reduce my stress level. (Strangers’ hands, not so much. To me, the health benefits are outweighed by my fear of microbes and of getting punched in the face.) I’ve been clasping Julie’s hand a lot: as we walk, as we talk, as we watch TV.

I’m surprised how much I like it. I’d forgotten how good human contact can be, even if that contact isn’t in bed and goal-oriented. When we lock fingers, I visualize an fMRI glowing in my brain’s happiness nooks and crannies.

At first, Julie liked it, too. I even got a few “Awwws.” But she has limits. When I tried to hold her hand during a fight over how to discipline our kids, she pulled away like I was a patch of poison oak.

“It’ll lower our stress level during the fight,” I said.

“I want to be stressed during the fight. That’s the whole point.”

My sons are less