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