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

years ago. He gave me the usual “which is clearer: this-or-that” tests. I also got the peripheral vision test, where I had to spot floating yellow dots. (“Just think of yourself as a pirate,” said his assistant, Lynn, as I put my face against the black eye patch. “The fun Disney pirates. Not the Somali pirates.”) I got the eyedrops that forced me to type my notes onto my computer in movie-poster-size letters. The conclusion: I’m still nearsighted.

I asked Dr. Odell how to have the healthiest eyes and avoid eye diseases. They are alarmingly prevalent. According to The New York Times, eye diseases—mainly glaucoma, cataracts, and macular degeneration—affect 10 percent of America. Twenty-six million people suffer from cataracts alone. And as the population grays, those numbers will climb.

Dr. Odell told me:

• Fruits and vegetables, of course.

• Fish such as salmon and tuna that are high in omega-3s may help prevent macular degeneration.

• Don’t worry if you read in dim light, cross your eyes, or forget to wear your glasses one day. These are mostly harmless in the long term (though dim light can cause eye strain in the short term).

• Wear UV-blocking sunglasses. They are like Coppertone for the eyes.

• If you see floating black spots, flashing lights, or wavy lines while reading, get yourself to a doctor.

I met with another eye specialist, Dr. Paul Finger, and asked him the same question.

“Don’t become a glassblower,” he told me. Glassblowing emits infrared radiation and dust particles that can lead to blindness.

“Helpful.”

“And don’t be a boxer. They have a lot of detached retinas.”

“What about sticking crochet needles into my eyes?”

“Probably avoid that as well.”

Sight Improvements

This is all solid advice on how to keep my eyes from deteriorating. But what about improving my sight? Making it sharper? Can I do that?

One option is Lasik surgery, which I’m still mulling. But I recently met one of the inventors of the Lasik technology, and guess what? He still wears glasses. He’s wary of taking the risk. That gave me pause.

Lasik aside, there are several possible eyesight helpers. Here are the three most promising: cockiness, video games, and eye aerobics.

First, cockiness. In 2010, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an intriguing series of experiments that she wrote about in Psychological Science. Her conclusion is that when you believe you can see better, you do see better. It’s not as odd as it sounds. Scientists have long known that vision isn’t just a matter of the eyes relaying info to the brain. It’s a two-way street. We help construct the world with our brain.

In one of Langer’s experiments, subjects read eye charts. Some were traditional, with the big E at the top. Some were reversed, with the big E at the bottom. The subjects looking at the reversed chart got better scores on the tiny lines than did those looking at the normal chart.

Langer and her team argue, this happened because subjects expected to be able to read the top line.

This experiment could explain the popularity of those quacky eye exercises on the Internet, the ones that promise you’ll be able to ditch your glasses. (Make a figure eight with your eyes! Now focus on your thumb, then the wall, now the thumb!) Maybe these programs don’t improve your eyesight. But they make you believe you’re improving. And that false confidence leads to real gains.

Second, video games. A University of Rochester study showed that playing first-person-shooter video games made subjects 58 percent better at distinguishing contrast, meaning they were more skilled at detecting shades of gray. This improvement has real-world implications. Contrast sensitivity is crucial in night driving, for instance. I added video games to a file I have in my computer called “Healthy Vices,” a list that already includes naps, booze, chocolate, and leaving the bed unmade, since dust mites thrive in the bedspread’s heat and humidity.

And finally, I found a computer class called Vizual Edge. The military and a handful of pro sports teams (the San Diego Padres and the Houston Astros, among others) use this program. The idea is that with practice, you can improve your tracking and focusing and depth perception. Unlike other eye exercise programs, Vizual Edge doesn’t promise to cure your nearsightedness, just to upgrade the speed and accuracy of your sight. They have studies to back up their claims. In a 2010 Texas A&M University study of college baseball players, Vizual Edge trainees were better batters.

“It’s like weight training for the eyes,” says Dr. Barry Seiller, a Chicago-based ophthalmologist who invented the program. The hope is you’ll hit more home runs, catch more Hail Marys. Legend has it, Ted Williams could read the label on a spinning record. That’d be the windmill we’re aiming at.

So I start my regimen of pumping pixels. Three times a week for twenty minutes, I don Vizual Edge’s 3-D glasses—they’re the old-fashioned kind, with one lens blue and one lens red—and try to spot floating arrows and rings on my computer screen.

I’ve also been playing my Top Gun video game, and telling myself I have bionic vision. And I am seeing better. At least according to my highly rigorous tests—the Snellen eye chart I downloaded from the Internet.

I made the mistake of telling Jasper that video games might be good for his vision. Now every time I try to shut down his Super Mario game, he has the predictable response. “But it’s making my eyes stronger!”

I respond that his eyes would be better served by being outside. As Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang write in Welcome to Your Child’s Brain, kids’ eyes need sunlight. Artificial light makes it much more likely they’ll become nearsighted. Jasper responds to that by continuing to play Super Mario.

Checkup: Month 25

     Weight: 158

     Errands run per day: 4

     Chews per mouthful: 11

I’d planned to stop Project Health after two years, but the goal line keeps receding. I still have body parts to revamp and self-experiments to try. The other day, for instance, I saw a Dr. Oz episode that