How healthy living nearly killed me A.J. Jacobs

I spent the last decade subjecting

myself to pain and humiliation hopefully

for a good cause which is

self-improvement and I’ve done this in

three parts so first I started with the

mind and I I decided to try to get

smarter by reading the entire

Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z or

more precisely from AK to zippy itch and

here’s a little image of that and this

was an amazing year it was really a

fascinating journey it was it was

painful at times especially for those

around me if my wife started to find me

one dollar for every irrelevant fact I

inserted into conversation so it was it

had its downsides

but after that I decided to work on the

spirit I as I mentioned last year I I

grew up with no religion at all I’m

Jewish but I’m Jewish in the same way

the Olive Garden is Italian so not

really but I decided to learn about the

Bible and my heritage by actually diving

in and trying to live it and immerse

myself in it so I decided to follow all

the rules of the Bible and from the ten

commandments to growing my beard because

Leviticus says you cannot shave so this

is what I looked like by the end thank

you for that reaction yeah I look a

little like Moses or Ted Kaczynski I got

them I got both of them so there was the

the topiary there and yeah there’s the

Sheep it was the final part of the

trilogy was I wanted to focus on the

body and try to be the healthiest person

I could be the healthiest person alive

so that’s what I’ve been doing the last

couple of years and I just finished a

couple of months ago and I have to say

thank God because living so healthily

was killing me

it was

it was so overwhelming because the

amount of things you have to do it’s

just mind-boggling I was listening to

all the experts and talking to sort of a

board of medical advisors and they were

telling me all the things I had to do I

had to eat right exercise meditate pet

dogs because that lowers the blood

pressure I wrote the book on a treadmill

it took me about a thousand miles to

write the book I had to put on sunscreen

this was no small fee because if you

listen to dermatologists they say that

you should have a shot glass full of

sunscreen and you have to reapply it

every two to four hours so I think half

of my book advance went into sunscreen I

was like a glazed doughnut for most of

the year there was the washing of hands

I had to do that properly and my

immunologist told me that I should also

I have to wipe down all of the remote

controls and iPhones in my house because

those are just orgies of germs so that

took a lot of time I also tried to be

the safest person I could be because

that’s a part of health I was inspired

by the Danish Safety Council they

started a public campaign that says a

walking helmet is a good helmet so they

believe you should not just wear helmets

for biking but also for walking around

and you can see you can see there the

their shopping with their helmets

yeah I tried that now it’s a little

extreme I admit but if you think about

this this is actually the freakonomics

authors wrote about this that more

people die on a per mile basis from

drunk walking than from drunk driving so

something to think about tonight if you

had a couple’s so I finished and and it

was a success in a sense all of the

markers went in the right direction I I

lost my cholesterol went down I lost

weight my wife started and stopped

telling me that I looked pregnant so

that was nice and it was successful

overall but I also learned that I was

too healthy and that was unhealthy I was

so focused on doing all these things

that I was neglecting my friends and

family and and as Dan Buettner can tell

you having a strong social network is so

crucial to our health

so I finished and I I kind of went

overboard on the the week after the

project was over I went to the dark side

and I just indulged myself it was like

something out of Caligula but without

the sex part because I have three young

kids so that wasn’t happening but but

the overeating and the over drinking

definitely and I finally have stabilized

so now I’m back to adopting many of not

all I don’t wear a helmet anymore but a

lot of the dozens of the healthy

behaviors that I adopted during my year

it was really a life changing project

and I of course don’t have time to go

into all of them let me just tell you to

really quickly the first is and this was

surprising to me I didn’t expect this to

come out but I live a much quieter life

now because we live in such a noisy

world you know that’s so annoying

there’s trains and planes and cars and

Bill O’Reilly he’s very noisy

and this is a real underestimated

underappreciated health hazard not just

because it harms our hearing which it

obviously does but it actually initiates

the fight-or-flight response a loud

noise will get your fight-or-flight

response going and this over the years

can cause real damage car neovascular

damage the World Health Organization

just did a big study that they published

this year and it said it was done in

Europe and they estimated that 1.6

million years of healthy living are lost

every year in Europe because of noise

pollution which is so they would think

it’s actually very deadly so I have and

by the way it’s also terrible for your

brain the you know it really impairs

cognition and our founding fathers knew

about this when they wrote the

Constitution they put a dirt all over

the cobblestones outside the hall so

that they could concentrate so without

noise reduction technology our country

would not exist so as a patriot I felt

you know it was important to I wear all

the ear plugs and the ear phones and

it’s really improved my life in in a

surprising and unexpected way and the

second point I want to make the final

point is that and it’s actually been a

theme of TEDMED that joy is so important

to your health that that you cannot none

of these behaviors where very few of

these behaviors will stick with me

unless there’s some sense of pleasure

and joy in them and just to give you one

instance of this food you know the junk

food industry is really great at at

pressing our pleasure buttons and

figuring out what’s the most pleasurable

but I think we can use their techniques

and apply them to healthy food to give

just one example

we love crunchiness mouthfeel so I’ve

basically I’ve tried to incorporate

crunchiness into a lot of my recipes

throw in some sunflower seeds and you

can almost trick yourself into thinking

you’re eating Doritos and it has made me

a healthier person so that is it the

book about it comes out in April

it’s called drop dead healthy and and I

hope that I don’t get sick during the

book tour that’s my greatest hope so

thank you very much