Drop Dead Healthy A. Jacobs (good novels to read .TXT) 📖

what? Thirty years to get lung cancer. And by the time I get cancer, they’ll just give you a gene-coated nano-robot pill and it’ll fix it in five minutes.”

I think about this point often, because medicine is moving at mach speeds: By the time I’m morbidly obese, they’ll probably have a weight-control pill or pineapple-flavored shake to cure me. By the time my teeth have become rotten yellow nubs, you’ll be able to grow flawless new bicuspids from stem cells.

In 2010, a Harvard lab headed by Dr. Ronald DePinho actually reversed aging in mice. They did it with an enzyme called “telomerase,” which acts like little protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. The caps stop the chromosomes from wearing out, a major cause of aging. In ten years, who knows, they might have a human version. Health saints and health sinners might have equal life spans.

Argument 3: Gyms are germ-saturated disease vectors.

As a mild OCD sufferer, I’m a sucker for the microbial argument. Do I want to pick up a dumbbell that has been pawed by a thousand sweaty palms before me? The National Athletic Trainers’ Association addresses this topic in a delightfully nauseating paper. It says skin infections from gyms and sports are common, and account for half of the infectious diseases suffered by athletes. They list such unpleasantries as MRSA, athlete’s foot, jock itch, boils, impetigo, herpes simplex, and ringworm. As The New York Times warned in a headline, BE SURE EXERCISE IS ALL YOU GET AT THE GYM.

So these have been my excuses, the lard-assed devils on my shoulder. And they are somewhat compelling arguments.

But this year, I’m going to have to ignore this thinking. Or shoot the arguments down in my head. Which I can do. After all, Jim Fixx is just one data point, right? Exercise increases life span in general. And being in shape is pleasurable in its own right, so if I eat deep-fried Mars bars and wait around for medical advances, I’m depriving myself of feeling good. Exercise also increases efficiency in everyday life, so I’ll be able to plant more crops, think more clearly, and do more community service.

Plus, almost every reputable source recommends regular exercise. Exercise, exercise, exercise. I’ve read it a thousand times. It cuts down on heart disease and cancer. It soothes stress and improves concentration. It’s like Prozac and Lipitor and Adderall combined. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to do much for weight loss, partly because a good workout makes us hungry, and we end up bingeing.

But the other benefits? Well documented.

The big debate is over how much and what kind of exercise. And that turns out to be a heated debate indeed.

The Institute of Medicine—an arm of the National Academy of Sciences devoted to evidence-based medicine—recommends “60 minutes of daily moderate intensity physical activity (e.g., walking/jogging at 3 to 4 miles/hour) or shorter periods of more vigorous exertion (e.g., jogging for 30 minutes at 5.5 miles/hour).”

Dr. Oz in his book You: An Owner’s Manual lets us off easier: To stay young, he suggests twenty minutes of aerobic exercise three times a week, plus a bit of weight lifting. Too much more, he writes, and exercise starts to raise your age, because of the wear and tear on the body. Twenty minutes three times a week. For this, I love Dr. Oz.

There are studies in favor of long-distance running. And there are other studies that say distance running scars the heart.

There’s also a growing number of researchers who recommend interval training—lots of walking sprinkled with quick sprints. And still others who dismiss aerobic exercise altogether and say we should focus exclusively on weight training until we reach excruciating muscle failure. But I’ll get to that later.

For starters, I’m going to try the Institute of Medicine’s daily exercise regimen, blending aerobics and weights. And I’ll be confronting my demons and joining the 45 million Americans who belong to a gym.

Losing My Gym Virginity

I choose a gym called Crunch because it is two blocks away from my apartment. Laziness—not a healthy mind-set, I know.

It’s a basic, bare-bones gym. The only gimmick is that it’s known for its kooky classes, such as pole dancing. (Incidentally, the word “gymnasium” comes from the ancient Greek for “place to be naked,” so you could argue pole dancing is actually quite true to gym’s roots.)

I’m assigned a trainer named Tony Willging. He’s a big man with a shaved head and a tribal tattoo on his arm. He wears a tight black T-shirt that shows off his chest. I tell him I’m writing a book on being superhealthy, and I need to bulk up. I want pecs that would fill a set of B-cups. (Not the manliest way to put it, I suppose.)

“I can do that,” says Tony. “But that’s not necessarily the same thing as being in shape.”

He says healthiness isn’t about size. It’s overall body condition.

“The thing is,” I tell him, “I want before-and-after photos. Like the ones you see in ads for protein shakes.”

“Let me tell you something,” says Tony. “Those aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

At this point, Tony lets me in on a fitness industry secret. Those glossy time-lapse photos are often snapped not months apart, not weeks apart, but . . . on the exact same day. Shave the chest, slather oil on the pecs, suck in the gut, and ta-da, you have a brand-new body. You don’t even need Photoshop. Or better yet, the ad company scours the local gyms till they find the most shredded guy around. They snap his photo. They pay him ten thousand dollars to get fat. And then snap his photo a month later. When they print the ad, they simply reverse the “before” and “after” pictures. Point is, it’s a lot easier to get out of shape than into it.

This is good information. It takes the pressure off. And if all else fails, I can shave my chest and bathe myself in sesame oil.

On paper, Tony should be