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

a car, touring Central Park. He’s more stooped than his 1979 self, less stooped than his 2010 version, but he still has the ever-present childlike wonder: “Wow. Wow. Wow,” he says as they pass by The Gates.

My 2010 grandfather smiles and says, “It only took twenty-six years.” It really is a remarkable statistic. It’s a real lesson in fortitude, optimism, and persistence. The Little Conceptual Art Project That Could.

I’ve often wondered if my grandfather’s unflagging determination and optimism is a key to his longevity. Some studies point to yes: A fifteen-year-long Duke study found that optimistic heart patients had a 30 percent higher chance of survival. Another fifteen-year study of three thousand heart disease sufferers showed that the optimistic patients lived 20 percent longer. Other studies say there’s no difference. The evidence is especially weak linking optimism and recovery from cancer. Despite the claims of pop psychologists and books like The Secret, you can’t think your way out of cancer with a positive attitude (more on that later).

Just as important, overoptimism is probably harmful. You have to be neurotic and realistic enough to go for regular checkups and take your meds. You need enough determination to attend to the details. A ninety-year longevity study by Howard Friedman, a University of California–Riverside psychology professor, found that a low but persistent level of worry about your health is correlated with longer lives.

So that’s what I’ll adopt: moderate optimism with a soupçon of anxiety. I can handle that.

As I leave, my grandfather plants his hands on the arms of his recliner and hoists himself up, over my protestations. He grabs Jane’s shoulder to steady himself. He’s bent over, his spine at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, his legs wobbly. “We will see you soon?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” I say.

Checkup: Month 4

     Weight: 165

     Miles walked writing this book thus far: 85 (My goal is to make this a thousand-mile book.)

     Number of walnuts eaten this month: 790

     Pounds lifted on squat machine (3 sets, 15 reps): 40

     Glasses of goat’s milk drunk: 10 (Many of the longest-lived civilizations drink goat’s milk, according to The Blue Zones.)

Overall health: not good. I got a cold. Despite devoting most of my waking hours to being healthy, I got a cold.

Jennifer Ackerman’s book Ah-Choo!, a history of colds, has a great quote about colds from the nineteenth-century poet Charles Lamb. “If you told me the world will be at an end tomorrow, I should just say, ‘Will it?’ . . . My skull is a Grub Street attic to let.”

My skull is definitely atticlike. I can’t find any coherent thoughts in there. But unlike Lamb, I’m more annoyed than apathetic. How could my body betray me?

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. My immune system has always been overly welcoming of germs. It’s far too polite, the biological equivalent of a southern hostess inviting y’all nice microbes to stay awhile and have some artichoke dip. I get a half-dozen colds per year. Julie, on the other hand, rarely gets sick. My kids should thank me for marrying up the immune system ladder.

For this cold, I’ve tried all the cures and treatments with any half-reliable evidence behind them. Zinc supplements, gargling with salt water, sleep, and using a neti pot. (All the others—echinacea, Airborne, megadoses of vitamin C, hot-water bottles on your head—have, sadly, little scientific support.)

The neti pot was the one that surprised me most. In case you’ve never seen it, it looks like a teapot, but instead of pouring raspberry zinger into a cup, you pour salt water into your nostril. The water gushes up to the sinus, splashes around a bit, then streams out the other nostril. The idea behind it is nasal irrigation, which thins the mucus, making it easier to expel.

It’s a profoundly unnatural feeling, this meandering river inside the cranium. I coughed. I sputtered. I suppressed terror. I tilted my head in anatomically unsound angles. But in the end, it was far better than expected. It opened up my sinuses and cleared out the gunk. The inside of my head felt big and clear, a skull-size version of Montana. I plan to use my neti pot every day.

Julie used it, too. The next morning, not knowing what it was, she used it as a holder for Lucas’s soft-boiled egg. I was horrified. She shrugged. Which brings me to . . .

Chapter 5

The Immune System

The Quest to Conquer Germs

THANKS TO MY COLD, I’ve decided to devote this month to germs. It’s a topic of great passion for me.

For years, I’ve been a huge consumer of germ porn. Perhaps you’re familiar with the genre. I’m talking about those news segments that warn you that there are more germs on your remote control than on your toilet seat. Your sponge is a hot zone, and your wallet should be handled with a biohazard suit.

The news will cut to footage of unwashed hands under black light, all Jackson Pollocked with glowing purple germ splotches.

I love the elaborate metaphors they use to convey the unimaginable number of germs. You have more germs in your gut right now than humans that ever lived on earth. (This is true.) If the germs on your hand were turned into drops of water, they’d fill an Olympic swimming pool (also true). If the germs in your door handle were turned into letters on a page, the resulting document would be longer than the collected works of Joyce Carol Oates, and that includes her young adult fiction and boxing essays (probably true).

I love when they do a close-up on a particularly menacing-looking Aspergillus or a Clostridium. Check out those flagella! So titillating.

Germ porn probably isn’t good for me, but it provides a perverse masochistic pleasure. It feeds into my germaphobia, a condition I’ve been struggling with for years, long before it became a familiar trope for TV detectives. (A couple of random examples: I prefer the air shake to the handshake. I don’t like to clink wineglasses during a toast, unless I can