I've 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 decided to try to get smarter by reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z -- or, more precisely, from "a-ak" to "Zywiec." And here's a little image of that. And this was an amazing year. It was really a fascinating journey. It was painful at times, especially for those around me. My wife started to fine me one dollar for every irrelevant fact I inserted into conversation. So it had its downsides.
Zadnje desetletje sem se predajal bolečini in ponižanju, upam, da v dober namen, kar je izboljšanje samega sebe. In to sem napravil v treh delih. Začel sem z umom. In odločil sem se, da postanem pametnejši, tako da preberem celotno Enciklopedijo Britannica od A do Ž, ali, bolj natančno, od "a-ak" do "Zywiec". Tule je majhna ponazoritev. To je bilo neverjetno leto. Res je bilo krasno potovanje. Včasih je bilo boleče, posebej za tiste okoli mene. Moja žena me je oglobila za en dolar vsakič, ko sem v pogovor vstavil kakšno nepomembno dejstvo. Imelo je torej svoje slabosti.
But after that, I decided to work on the spirit. As I mentioned last year, I grew up with no religion at all. I'm Jewish, but I'm Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is Italian. (Laughter) 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. (Laughter) I look a little like Moses, or Ted Kaczynski. I got both of them. So there was the topiary there. And there's the sheep.
Ampak zatem sem se odločil za delo na duhu. Kot sem lani omenil, sem odrasel brez vsake vere. Žid sem, ampak v taki meri kot je prehranska veriga Olive Garden italijanska. (Smeh) Niti ne. A odločil sem se, da se poučim o Bibliji in svoji dediščini, tako da bi dejansko padel noter in poskušal to živeti, se vtopiti v to. Odločil sem se slediti vsem pravilom iz Biblije. Od desetih zapovedi, do puščanja brade -- saj Knjiga Levitov pravi, da se ne smeš briti. Tako sem torej izgledal na koncu. Hvala za tole reakcijo. (Smeh) Izgledam nekako kot Mojzes ali kot Ted Kaczynski. Oba sem ujel. Tole je moj oblikovani grm. In tule je ovca.
Now 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. (Laughter) 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 advisers. 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, and it took me about a thousand miles to write the book. I had to put on sunscreen. This was no small feat, 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 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.
Zadnji del trilogije je bilo osredotočenje na telo in poskus biti najbolj zdrav človek, kar sem lahko, najbolj zdrav živeči človek. To sem torej počel zadnja leta. Končalo se je komaj pred nekaj meseci. In moram reči -- hvala Bogu. Kajti tako zdravo življenje me je ubijalo. (Smeh) Bilo je tako vseobsežno, zaradi količine stvari, ki sem jih moral narediti, čisto me je prevzelo. Poslušal sem vse strokovnjake in govoril z nekakšnim svetom zdravstvenih svetovalcev. In oni so mi naročali, kaj vse moram narediti. Moral sem prav jesti, se ukvarjati s športom, meditirati, ljubkovati pse, ker to znižuje krvni tlak. Knjigo sem napisal na tekalni stezi in potreboval sem kakih tisoč milj, da sem jo dokončal. Moral sem nanašati kremo za sončenje. To ni bila mala malica, kajti če poslušate dermatologe, pravijo, da morate nanesti za poln kozarček kreme. In to morate ponoviti vsaki dve do štiri ure. Mislim, da je pol mojega predujma za knjigo šlo za kremo za sončenje. Večino leta sem bil kot glaziran krof. Treba si je bilo umivati roke. In to pravilno. Moj imunolog mi je naročil, naj obrišem tudi vse daljince in iPhone v hiši, saj so to orgije mikrobov. To je vzelo veliko časa.
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 there they're shopping with their helmets. (Laughter) Well 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've had a couple.
Skušal sem biti tudi najvarnejša možna oseba, saj je to del zdravja. Navdihnil me je Danski svet za zdravje. Začeli so z javno kampanjo, ki pravi: "Hodeča čelada je dobra čelada." Verjamejo, da bi morali nositi čelado ne samo med kolesarjenjem, ampak tudi med hojo. In tu lahko vidite, da nakupujejo s čeladami. (Smeh) Ja, poskusil sem. Je pa malo skrajno, priznam. A če razmislite, to je v bistvu -- in avtorji Freakonomike so pisali o tem -- več ljudi, merjeno na miljo, umre med hojo v stanju opitosti kot med vožnjo v opitem stanju. Nekaj, o čemer velja razmisliti, če boste nocoj spili kozarec ali dva.
So I finished, and it was a success in a sense. All of the markers went in the right direction. My cholesterol went down, I lost weight, my wife 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 as Dan Buettner can tell you, having a strong social network is so crucial to our health.
Končal sem torej, in v nekem smislu uspešno. Vsi znaki so kazali v pravo smer. Moj holesterol se je znižal, shujšal sem, moja žena mi je nehala govoriti, da izgledam kot nosečnica. To je bilo lepo. In v splošnem je bilo uspešno. Ampak spoznal sem tudi, da sem bil preveč zdrav in da to ni bilo zdravo. Tako sem bil osredotočen na vse te stvari, da sem zapostavil prijatelje in družino. Kot vam lahko pove Dan Buettner, je močno socialno omrežje bistveno za zdravje.
So I finished. And I kind of went overboard on 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. (Laughter) Without the sex part. Because I have three young kids, so that wasn't happening. But the over-eating and over-drinking, definitely. And I finally have stabilized. So now I'm back to adopting many -- not all; I don't wear a helmet anymore -- but dozens of 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 two really quickly.
Zato sem nehal. In teden po končanem projektu sem nekako pretiraval. Šel sem na temno stran in enostavno užival. Bilo je kot nekaj iz Kaligule. (Smeh) Brez dela o seksu. Kajti imam tri majhne otroke, zato se to ni dogajalo. Prenajedanje in pretirano pitje pa definitivno. In končno sem se stabiliziral. Zdaj spet živim po mnogih -- ne vseh, čelade ne nosim več -- ampak na ducate zdravih pristopov, po katerih sem živel v tem letu. Projekt mi je res spremenil življenje. In seveda ne morem iti v podrobnosti o vseh stvareh. Naj vam na hitro povem samo dve.
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. There's trains and planes and cars and Bill O'Reilly, he's very noisy. (Laughter) And this is a real underestimated, under-appreciated 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, cardiovascular damage. The World Health Organization just did a big study that they published this year. And 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. So they think it's actually very deadly.
Prva -- in to me je presenetilo, nisem pričakoval tega rezultata -- ampak zdaj živim veliko bolj tiho. Kajti živimo v tako hrupnem svetu. Vlaki in letala in avtomobili in Bill O'Reilly, on je zelo glasen. (Smeh) To je res podcenjena in neupoštevana grožnja za zdravje -- ne samo zato, ker škoduje sluhu, kar je seveda res, ampak ker dejansko sproža reakcijo boj-ali-beg. Velik hrup sproži vašo reakcijo boj-ali-beg. In to skozi leta lahko povzroči pravo škodo, srčno-žilne težave. Svetovna zdravstvena organizacija je ravno letos objavila veliko študijo. In naredili so jo v Evropi. Ocenili so, da v Evropi vsako leto izgubijo 1,6 milijona let zdravega življenja, in to zaradi onesnaženja s hrupom. Mislijo torej, da je pravzaprav dokaj morilsko.
And by the way, it's also terrible for your brain. It really impairs cognition. And our Founding Fathers knew about this. When they wrote the Constitution, they put 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 it was important to -- I wear all the earplugs and the earphones, and it's really improved my life in a surprising and unexpected way.
In poleg tega je tudi strašno za možgane. Res omejuje kognicijo. Tudi naši ustanovni očetje so to vedeli. Ko so pisali ustavo, so po vseh kamnitih pločnikih zunaj dvorane posuli prst, da bi se lahko koncentrirali. Brez tehnologije omejevanja hrupa naša država torej ne bi obstajala. Kot patriot sem menil, da je bilo pomembno -- nosim čepke za ušesa in slušalke in to je res izboljšalo moje življenje na presenetljiv in nepričakovan način.
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 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. The junk food industry is really great 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 basically have 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. (Laughter) And it has made me a healthier person.
Druga stvar, zadnja, ki bi jo rad omenil, pa je -- in to je že bila tema TEDMED -- da je veselje tako pomembno za zdravje, da bo zelo malo vzorcev obnašanja ostalo v mojem življenju, če v njih ne bo neke mere užitka in veselja. Naj vam dam samo en primer: hrana. Industrija nezdrave hrane je res odlična pri zadovoljevanju naših potreb po užitku in ugotavljanju, v čem najbolj uživamo. A mislim, da lahko njihove tehnike uporabimo tudi pri zdravi hrani. En sam primer, uživamo v hrustljavosti, polnosti. Hrustljavost tako skušam vključiti v veliko svojih receptov -- dodam jim malo sončničnih semen. Skoraj se lahko prepričam, da jem čips. (Smeh) In postal sem bolj zdrav.
So that is it. The book about it comes out in April. It's called "Drop Dead Healthy." And I hope that I don't get sick during the book tour. That's my greatest hope.
To je to. Knjiga izide aprila. Imenuje se "Crkni zdrav." Upam, da med turnejo ne bom zbolel. To je moje največje upanje.
So thank you very much.
Hvala vam lepa.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)