How to live well (and maybe longer, but that’s not really the point).
“Remember the first rule of life: We’re all going to die. You can waste all your time trying to extend your life by a few minutes, obsessing over scores of adjustments to your diet or exercise routines, or you can follow six straightforward, smart wellness behaviors and make the time you have healthier and more meaningful,” writes Ezekiel Emanuel in the introduction to his new book, Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life (W. W. Norton)—demonstrating that, in addition to being a prominent bioethicist, oncologist, and health policy expert, Penn’s vice provost for global initiatives is also a fair hand at book marketing. It’s hard to think of a more succinct, direct, and appealing proposal for a culture drowning in confusing and conflicting advice on how to live forever (er, that is, stay physically fit and mentally active).
The book that follows lays out those half-dozen behaviors, from “Don’t Be a Schmuck”—essentially, avoid taking foolish, life- and health-endangering risks—to “Sleep Like a Baby,” on the importance of, and techniques for, getting a good night’s rest. As for “Eat Your Ice Cream,” Emanuel approvingly advances some research suggesting that ice cream may actually be good for you but mostly focuses on what to do to maintain an overall healthy diet without sweating the occasional indulgence.
The other three behaviors include:
“Talk to People,” on the pernicious effects of loneliness and the value of cultivating all manner of social interactions, from casual conversations with passing strangers to shared experiences with colleagues to deeper bonds with friends and family. “Good relationships are the single strongest predictor of both a happy life and a long life,” Emanuel writes. Time away from screens helps, too: “Despite its misleading name, social media is anti-social and thus anti-wellness.”
“Expand Your Mind,” which includes what Emanuel calls “probably my most controversial recommendation,” namely, “to stave off dementia, don’t retire.” But since people can’t work forever,
“to slow cognitive decline, continue to challenge your mind,” by doing things like trying to learn a new language, play an instrument, attempt new recipes in the kitchen, and other “‘novel information activities.’”
“Move It!” lays out the different effects of aerobic exercise, strength training, and balance and flexibility training, but most important, Emanuel emphasizes, “Just get off your ass and move around.” He favors hiking and biking (with others, if possible). But while it’s a good social activity, golf doesn’t cut it as exercise, except maybe if you walk the course and haul your own clubs. And whatever you choose to do, after about 150 minutes of vigorous activity weekly, diminishing returns set in.
In the acknowledgments, Emanuel reveals that Eat Your Ice Cream was born out of his annoyance at a book that displayed all the faults of the “wellness industrial complex,” focusing on exercise and diet at the expense of sociability and mental engagement and offering advice that was both unproven and time-consuming. Fueled by frustration, he finished a first draft in a month and might have left it at that but was encouraged by Penn colleague Adam Grant, the Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management and professor of psychology at Wharton [“Character Over Cognition,” Nov|Dec 2023], and Burn Book author Kara Swisher to finish and publish it “as an antidote to the gym rats and wellness mindset.”
The book references a slew of research studies, and Emanuel is forthright about the limits of what science can bring to the table as well as about his skepticism concerning some medical tests. (He’s very much not a fan of the PSA test for prostate cancer, for example.) But the essential insights come from closer to home, in Emanuel’s own life and that of his wife, as well as stories about his parents and his two famous brothers: politician Rahm and talent agent Ari.
Emanuel’s father Benjamin looms especially large, starring as the exemplar of a robust social life and a good death. “Dad was incorrigibly social—the quintessential ‘people person,’” he writes, recalling how he would invariably strike up conversations wherever he was, which almost always turned out to be positive experiences but did not trouble him on the occasions he was snubbed in response. A pediatrician known as Speedy for how quickly he walked making his rounds, he was later slowed by health issues but managed to turn back weight gain and diabetes before dying at 92, “peacefully, at home in his own bed, of a brain tumor that he did not treat, having seen all of his children and many grandchildren over the previous week.”
A noted Franklinophile [“Franklin’s World,” Jan|Feb 2023], Emanuel also puts Penn’s founder Benjamin Franklin forward as the model of a long life well lived: “He was mentally sharp and engaged right up to the last days of his life. Franklin would tell you to do three things: keep challenging yourself and continually improve, devote yourself to friends and acquaintances, and commit yourself to making the world a better place. Or as he might summarize it, ‘be useful.’” —JP
