Drop Dead Healthy

The Bladder

The Quest to Figure Out What to Drink

I’VE SPENT A LOT OF time thinking about what to eat but little on what to drink. This month, I’ll change that.

I’ve ordered something called the BluePrintCleanse. This program is the juice fast of the moment, endorsed by a phalanx of women’s magazines and a smattering of B-list celebrities such as Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Julia Stiles.

I ordered it online, and the next day a box arrived with thirty-six bottles, enough for my three-day fast. Actually, enough for both Julie and me. I’ve convinced her to go juice for juice with me.

The bottles come in five colors: light yellow (lemonade with agave nectar and cayenne pepper), white (cashew milk), green for veggie juice (celery, spinach, kale, etc.), red (apple, carrot, and beet, etc.), and dark yellow (pineapple juice, apple juice, and mint).

This juice is, quite possibly, the most expensive in the history of beverages. I’m hoping each one of those lemons in the spicy lemonade was caressed by a shiatsu masseuse while still on the tree because we’re talking two hundred dollars per person.

In the morning, I give Julie her juice, and we tap our plastic bottles together. “Cheers!”

We each take a swig of the green one. Not bad. Sort of a fancy cousin to store-bought vegetable drinks, the pashmina to V8’s cotton.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“It alternates between being refreshing and making me want to gag.”

By 10 a.m., I’m a little hungry, but nothing painful. I go out to run some errands and come back an hour later. I find Julie in our bedroom. She’s . . . chewing?

“What’s in your mouth?”

Julie scurries away, giggling.

I chase after her. “Open your mouth!”

“Ahhhhh.”

It’s clean. Whatever it was, she’d swallowed the evidence. I let her off with a warning.

Time for the spicy lemonade. We tap bottles again, and take a swig. It’s sweet, but with a cayenne pepper kick.

“What do you think?”

“This is so not my thing,” says Julie. “I just really like food.”

I spend the day at the library, reading my health books. I come home at 5 p.m. Julie is sitting in the living room, Lucas on her lap. He is in a postmeltdown stupor. She doesn’t look much happier.

“I have a headache. I got half my work done. I am not happy. Frankly, I’m acting like a bitch.”

I nod as noncommittally as I can.

“I’m having leftover Indian food.”

So that’s it for Julie. She made it nine hours into our three-day fast, not counting the cheating. Julie fasts on Yom Kippur, but that’s her limit. The BluePrint people don’t have thousands of years of guilt-tinged heritage behind them.

I keep on fasting for the next two days. In a dietary version of the Stockholm syndrome, I start to like the juice more and more, especially the almond milk, which is thick and yogurty. I can feel it sloshing around in my otherwise empty stomach.

I keep waiting for an epiphany. Some people say juice fasts clarify their thoughts and give them fresh energy. Unfortunately, for me, it’s having just three effects.

• Hunger. I’m hungry enough that I started to salivate at the sight of lettuce. I repeat: lettuce.

• Crankiness. At one point, I called up BluePrintCleanse customer service because I thought they sent me the “Renovation” cleanse instead of the “Foundation” cleanse I’d ordered. I snapped at them. I turned out to be wrong. Which made me feel terrible for the employees. Can you imagine a grumpier clientele than underfed New Yorkers?

• Spaciness. On the third day, it took me nearly a minute to dial my phone, as I kept losing my train of thought.

When it was over, I craved something solid, something that could break a window if you threw it hard enough. I settled on a potato, which I roasted in our toaster oven, and which was wonderful and nonliquidy—though certainly not optimally healthy (too starchy).

It’s been a week since my juice fast. I do miss that almond milk—that could have been one of the best beverages I’ve ever tasted. But do I feel clear of toxins? Not really.

Maybe I didn’t go into it with an open enough mind. The problem for me, though, is there’s little science supporting juice fasts. There’s a bit of science on the benefits of general, intermittent fasting. According to a 2008 study in the American Journal of Cardiology, fasting is linked to a decrease in heart disease.

But the cleansing claims? As Katherine Zeratsky, a registered dietician with the Mayo Clinic, writes in a cleanse-debunking article, “Most ingested toxins are efficiently and effectively removed by the kidneys and liver and excreted in urine and stool.”

I don’t think I’ll be ordering a second round from BluePrint. Probably a relief to their customer service reps.

The Water Cure

The healthiest liquid, unless you are a newborn in need of colostrum, is, of course, the simplest liquid: water. Sugar-free, vitamin-unenhanced water. We were built to consume it.

How much per day? I’m sure you’ve heard we should be drinking eight eight-ounce glasses a day. It’s a handy mnemonic, but turns out, it’s based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence. The Mayo Clinic puts it this way: “If you drink enough fluid so that you rarely feel thirsty and produce between one and two liters or more of colorless or slightly yellow urine a day, your fluid intake is probably adequate.” Which is good. I don’t have to count ounces, one fewer item on my ever-expanding list of daily tasks.

Unfortunately, another question—what kind of water is healthiest?—turns out to be a surprisingly complex problem that took me on an unexpected quest.

First I learned that it’s probably not the stuff that flows out of our faucets. My friend Charles Duhigg did a massive investigation of drinking-water safety for The New York Times in 2009. It was a disturbing series. “As many as 19 million Americans may become ill each year due to just the parasites, viruses, and bacteria in drinking water.” Nineteen million. And that’s just the germs. There’s also carcinogens. “Some types of cancer—such as breast and prostate cancer—have risen over the past 30 years, and research indicates they are likely tied to pollutants like those found in drinking water.” Even if the water passes EPA standards, it could still be problematic. Your water could be within legal limits for arsenic but still pose the equivalent danger of 1,664 X-rays.

Dear Lord. I’d mindlessly drunk tap water all my life. I figured the government wouldn’t let poison flow from the taps. But in general, I’m too trusting of the government. I’m the polar opposite of the Tea Partiers. I have no problem with a nanny state. But in this case, the nanny state has been chatting on the cell phone and ignoring the baby as it plays with matches.

Another option: bottled water. Global bottled water is a $60 billion business, as Elizabeth Royte wrote in her book Bottlemania. It’s a decent alternative—but not necessarily safer than tap.

The regulations for bottled water are just as imperfect as those for tap. In 2006, Fiji ran an ad that said, “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.” Don’t mess with Cleveland. The city had its water tested, and found no measurable arsenic. Fiji had 6.3 micrograms of arsenic per liter—below the legal limit, but still.

The other problem with bottled water—at least on the liberal Upper West Side—is the glares you get from neighbors. Carrying nonreusable bottled water is an environmental crime. As my friend told me, only half jokingly: “If you open an Aquafina water and listen carefully, you can hear the earth weeping.”

So for my stress level, I’m looking beyond bottled water. I asked Duhigg to point me toward the healthiest glass of water in New York City. “Go to Pure raw food restaurant,” he says. “It’s the only restaurant that boasts its filtration system on the menu.”

I enlist Julie to come with me to the downtown vegan restaurant. She’s more than a bit skeptical about trekking forty-five minutes for a glass of water.

“This better be one hell of a glass of water.”

“I hear that it’s like the dew from God’s front lawn,” I assure her.

When we get there, the owner, Sarma Melngailis, a stunning blonde, former Wall Street trader, tells me about the Tensui Water Filtration System. “Everything in the restaurant is from this water. The vegetables are washed in it. Even the toilets have it.”

Julie suggests a slogan: “Pure Food and Wine—where you can drink the toilet water.”

Sarma laughs, though demurs. She does say she likes the water so much, she has her pitbull drink it as well.

The waiter pours us our glasses. I swish it around in my mouth. I chew it like an oenophile.

Julie takes a sip as well. Her eyebrows rise.

“It’s actually really good.”

“Really good,” I agree.

I’d always thought drinking water tasted like drinking water. About as interchangeable as aspirin brands or Michael Bay movies. I was wrong. This glass of water was particularly smooth, like drinking velvet or riding in a Bentley. This was damn tasty water.

The Tensui system claims to suck out the contaminants (chlorine, fertilizers, pesticides) while at the same time “enhancing” your water with minerals (calcium, magnesium, zinc, potassium, negative ions, etc.). Though I should mention there has been little research on whether mineral-enhanced water is better for you.

I’d love to install the Tensui system in my home. The only problem? It’s fifteen thousand dollars.

I ask Duhigg what to do. He says the best brand that won’t force me to take out a second mortgage is called PUR. They make plastic pitchers with effective and replaceable carbon filters. New York has pretty decent water, Duhigg adds. “If you lived in New Jersey, you’d need a more sophisticated system, like a reverse osmosis one.”

I buy my PUR filter. To make sure it works, I hire a lab to test my tap water versus my PUR water. Sure enough, the PUR filter has lower levels of rat excrement and fingernails. Of course, there’s a catch. If I forget to change my PUR filter after two months, it’ll start to leach chemicals into the water and poison my family.

Cold Comfort

One final water dilemma: What’s the healthiest temperature of water?

Many of my books and advisers made a strong argument that tepid water is healthier. There are several alleged reasons: Tepid water soothes the stomach. It might even prevent cancer.

This was welcome news. For years, I’ve had an outsize aversion to ice water. I’ve always found it jarring and headache inducing.

So passionate was I about tepid water, I wrote a college essay about the man who foisted iced drinks on the world: Frederic Tudor, a nineteenth-century Bostonian known as the “Ice King.” Tudor was a genius. He bought up eleven New England ponds, and during the winter, he chopped them into enormous chunks and shipped them south. Even smarter, Tudor created a demand where none existed. A wily PR man, he whipped up a vogue for iced drinks, promoting them in Cuba, Martinique, and the southern United States.

Tudor even makes a cameo in Walden. Henry David Thoreau was innocently trying to commune with nature and avoid paying taxes when Tudor’s ice cutters descended on Walden Pond to carve it up. I resent Tudor and his misbegotten legacy of ice.

So I was delighted to hear that ice was dangerous. Until I researched it further. Unfortunately, evidence-based science gives little support to tepid-water claims. Most hard-nosed physiologists dismiss them as hogwash.

To my dismay, I’ve learned the opposite is true. Ice-cold water is probably healthier. Why? Cold water might help you lose weight. It has negative calories. Here’s how Cornell psychology professor Brian Wansink explains it in Mindless Eating: “Since your body has to use energy to heat up an iced beverage, you actually burn about one calorie for every ice-cold ounce you drink. So that 32-ounce drink will take you 35 calories to warm up. No big deal? If you drink the recommended eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day, and if you fill those 64 ounces with ice, you’ll burn an extra 70 calories a day.”

Seventy calories. That’s nearly the equivalent of walking a mile. Or according to my Fitbit, having passive sexual activity. So in the interest of my waistline, I’ve started putting ice in my portable BPA-free charcoal-filtered water bottle.

Checkup: Month 20

Weight: 158

Average grams of sugar per day: 25

Cups of coffee per day: 1.5

Times unsuccessfully attempted to switch to green tea: 7

Number of yoga instructors who have been surprisingly rude to me and other students: 3

Turns out fear of failure is a wonderful thing. It has inspired me to train for my triathlon every day. I alternate biking, running, and swimming.

I’ve convinced myself I know what I’m doing, thanks to my copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Triathlon Training.

When I pedal my bike around Central Park’s Great Lawn, I don’t just push down with each leg. I do the full-circle pedal, keeping the pressure in all directions, down, up, forward, back. You know, like a triathlete.

When I swim in the Jewish Community Center pool, I roll my body from side to side. I slide my arm into the water like I’m putting on a coat—as opposed to slapping the water, which is what I used to do. Again, like a triathlete.

When I run, I do my grueling High-Intensity Interval Training, which is more efficient, but still takes time.

In fact, training is eating away at my schedule. This Sunday, I came back to the apartment from a run. My face was red; a half-moon of sweat soaked the bill of my baseball cap.

“Welcome back,” Julie says. “You missed a great show.”

Lately, the twins have been staging the occasional off-off-off-Broadway show for Julie and me. They usually choose an improvised version of a fairy tale, like “Three Billy Goats Gruff.” But the play itself is almost incidental. The important part of the production is the preshow announcements—that’s what gives them the biggest thrill. Lucas will step in front of the couch and announce with great pride, “Ladies and gentlemen. Please turn off your cell phones.”

Zane will add, “And no flash photography because it disturbs the actors.”

Then they’ll congratulate each other on a job well done, giddy from the glamour of theater management.

But today, I missed both the preshow announcements and the show itself.

“Can I see an encore performance?” I ask.

The twins shake their heads. They’re not in the mood.

I hate missing these historic events. I’ll live. I’ll see another one of their plays, no doubt. But this underlines something that’s become increasingly clear: The health project is taking time away from my family. Which is probably not healthy.

I recently read an article in The Wall Street Journal called “A Workout Ate My Marriage” about exercise widows and widowers. There are quotes from therapists who counsel couples in which one spouse’s fitness addiction drives them apart. The men skip breakfast with the family for an early-morning trip to the gym. The women miss romantic dates in favor of doing laps at the Y.

The bottom line: Health obsession can turn you into a selfish bastard.

There are half solutions. Whenever I can, I try to exercise with my family. I run errands with Zane on my shoulders, or jog behind Lucas as he rides his Razor scooter.

And then there’s this rationale: I’m exercising so I can be around for my kids when they get older. Maybe you need to be selfish in the name of selflessness.