We’re about an hour into our session at the Russian and Turkish Baths, an old-school bathhouse in New York’s East Village, when my friend Matt closes his eyes, throws his head back, and says, “I’m getting hit.” The two of us are sitting on a tiled ledge. Half-naked people in robes and bikinis mill about. I’m feeling sweaty and, as usual, anxious. But by the time we emerge onto the sidewalk an hour later, I feel immensely refreshed. My hands are wrinkled and pale, and I’m relaxed in ways I haven’t felt in weeks. I got the hit, too. It feels like an accomplishment—a runner’s high minus the running.Ìę

The idea that extreme heat can improve mental healthÌęisn’t new. The Russian and Turkish Baths opened in 1892. Around that time, an Austrian scientist began giving patients fevers to treat psychosis—a technique that eventually earned him the 1927 Nobel Prize in medicine. While deliberately raising the body’s temperature (think sweat lodges and hot yoga) has long been an established practice in the wellness world, medical hyperthermia has seen a slow but steady trickle toward credibility in recent years.Ìę

In 2016, Charles Raison, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, published an intriguing study of 30 patients with clinical depression. Half of them rested on a bed while an infrared heat-lamp array raised their body temperature to 101.3 degrees. The control group was exposed to a sham treatment, which also involved bright lights but less heat. Though the study was small, whole-body warming showed a dramatic antidepressant effect. Raison’s colleagues are now trying to determine if infrared saunas might replicate their fancy medical-grade hot boxes.Ìę

Jari Laukkanen, a Finnish cardiologist who’s fond of taking a daily sauna, has observed a similar pattern among larger groups. In a 2018 study of more than 2,000 Finnish men, he found a correlation between taking a traditional sauna four or more times a week and decreased risk of developing a physician-diagnosed mental-health disorder.Ìę

While these correlations are certainly provocative, findings on the physical benefits of sauna heat are well-documented. Laukkanen’s published studies suggest that frequent sauna goers tend to live longer and have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, compared with those who go once a week. These observations could have physiological underpinnings—saunas mimic the stress and sweating of light exercise with almost none of the physical exertion—but Laukkanen admits there are several possible explanations. As he put it to me, in less than perfect English that I’m paraphrasing: we shouldn’t underestimate the effects of sitting, calming down, and relaxing.Ìę

These studies have sparked considerable debate in the medical community, in part because they involve a relatively passive intervention. But critics contend that these associations could stem from selection bias—fit people who exercise regularly may just happen to sauna more often. Sauna bathing could also serve as an indicator for people who live in affluent societies and have healthier living patterns. And it may be that simply believing saunas are calming acts as a placebo. In short, researchers haven’t teased out definite explanations for why the practice might stabilize the body or mind.Ìę

Earlier this summer, Matt convinced me to buy a punch card to the bathhouse. So while I’m now a dedicated saunagoer, I’m still not entirely sure why our trips feel good. I just know that although an hour of sweating it out is no replacement for exercise, weathering those high temperatures creates low-impact stress and helps me relax afterward. Worst-case scenario: it’s a good excuse to get together with a friend and take a load off.

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These are two of the most talked about substances as potential treatments for stress and anxiety disorders. ÌęHere’s what we know now about their real potential.

Ketamine

Used in medicine as an anesthetic, ketamine has come a long way from its nineties reputation as a club drug that offered a pleasurable disconnection from reality. More recently, it’s been hailed as a wonder treatment for depression. In 2019, federal regulators a purified version that’s now available as a nasal spray to treat depression when other drugs have failed. (The approved version is administered only in controlled settings.) Meanwhile, ketamine clinics are as doctors tout infusions to help with anxiety and other uses that don’t yet have the FDA’s stamp of approval.

Rebecca Brachman, a fellow at Cornell Tech in Manhattan, is advancing another intriguing application for the drug. : because low doses of ketamine appear to act as a prophylactic against stress-induced psychiatric disorders, , then it might be effective at preventing PTSD and improving stress responses. Brachman’s studies have been conducted only on rodents so far, and there’s a lack of consensus about ketamine’s effects on the human brain. Nonetheless, she and her colleagues have found compelling evidence that the drug makes mice better able to manage future stress. “It’s not necessarily about chilling out,” Brachman says. “It’s really about having resilience.”

But Michael Grunebaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, says that in his clinical trials, many patients don’t find that the drug relieves anxiety. “Ketamine is just a really distinct, weird, spacey feeling,” he says.

Brachman doesn’t envision the drug eliminating our feelings of stress altogether, but she’s hopeful that if her hypothesis translates to human subjects, it could open up an entirely new way of fine-tuning the body’s response to the abundance of life’s stressful situations.

CBD

Among the numerous purported benefits of cannabidiol is anxiety relief. Cinnamon Bidwell, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, is conducting . (The trial ends in 2021.) If you’re looking to experiment, here’s her advice.

Be wary if a product claims to cure anything.

While data on laboratory animals suggests that CBD could ameliorate anxiety and reduce inflammation, such benefits are still largely unproven. The FDA has approved only one pharmaceutical-grade CBD product, , to treat certain types of seizures.

Dose size and purity matter.

Make sure the product has been lab tested for the concentration of active ingredients and for impurities like heavy metals. In conducted by Brazilian researchers, a dozen college students reported reduced anxiety when speaking in front of a mock audience after taking a single dose of CBD, compared with a group who took a placebo. The catch is that the study used 600 milligrams of 99.9 percent pure CBD, which far exceeds the 10 to 30 milligrams .

No to vaping.

Vaping cannabis products of unknown origin is a bad idea, given that we still don’t know why .

You might not pass a drug screening.

Some drug tests can’t differentiate CBD from THC. Moreover, CBD oils can have up to 0.3 percent THC and still be called THC-free. Even that small amount can show up as a prohibited substance.

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Fitness tracking took a leap forward in the early 1960s, when the Japanese company Yamasa released a pedometer called Manpo-kei, which roughly translates as “the 10,000-steps system.” This early wearable helped ­establish the myth that there’s an optimal number of steps you should take every day. Decades later, even as GPS and app-based tracking have proliferated, our increasingly sophisticated devices are often little more than counting tools that log activity. The newest innovations, by contrast, promise to adapt with you, using past performance data to craft customized workouts using machine-­learning algorithms. It’s almost like having an automated personal trainer.Ìę

For the uninitiated, artificial intelligenceÌęis the much hyped term for computational systems designed to mimic human reasoning. Wearables that incorporate AI, in addition to logging activity, can replace human decision-making, using algorithms to find patterns and make predictions. In theory, the more data collected, the better the algorithm becomes at customizing your training. (These so-called recommender systems are not unique to the fitness world, of course. They’re also how Netflix turns your viewing habits into a list of suggestions.) Personalized workout algorithms make up a small but growing portion of the fitness-app space, which is expected to eclipse $15 billion by 2026. And there are signs that the trend is going mainstream: even Planet Fitness, the budget-friendly gym chain, has expressed interest in AI to adjust members’ routines according to performance gains and goals.Ìę

This spring, feeling bored with my own routine, I decided to give digital coachingÌęa try. I installed Freeletics, which with 30 million users is one of the more popular apps claiming machine-learning capabilities. Ìęhas a large client base in Europe and last year raised several million dollars to expand its reach in North America.Ìę

The app offers a menu of individual exercises as well as a handful of signature workouts; Prometheus, for example, is a core and lower-body circuit featuring push-ups, mountain climbers, sit-ups, squats, and jumping jacks. There’s also the option to join a premium subscription service that gives the user access to a feature called Coach, which uses an algorithm to devise an individualized training schedule. (Three months costs $35.)

I signed up for the premium version. An initial assessment consisted of timed high-intensity interval exercises—no equipment required. The app cycled through a series of moves (each with a video tutorial) and tracked how long I took to complete each. Afterward it asked me to rate my level of exertion: “I can do even more,”“It was OK,” or “It was too much.” I was prompted to do the same for my form, rating myself on a scale from poor to excellent. Factoring in the time I took to complete these benchmark activities, as well as my subjective self-assessment, Coach built a roughly 30-minute custom workout plan. (The app can put together a series of plans, based on how many days a week you exercise, and allows you to exclude muscle groups if you have an injury or need a rest.) As I sped through squatsÌęand took breaksÌębetween sit-ups, I couldn’t tell how closely the recommended workouts had been geared toward my initial benchmarks. But right off the bat, Coach encouraged me to do exercises, like burpees, that I have trouble motivating myself to do.Ìę

For comparison I downloaded a few similar apps, though I didn’t try anything that required stand-alone hardware such as a Fitbit or smartwatch. Most begin with a baseline assessment or calibration workout and request some general information, such as weight, gender, and fitness goals. Ìę($31 for three months) offers a CrossFit-like challenge that focuses mostly on high-intensity interval training with an optional weight-lifting component. Ìę($60 for a year) is tailored almost exclusively to lifting weights and accounts for available equipment while targeting specific muscle groups. Some apps, such as Kudos ($95 per month), generate personalized regimens but also put you in touch with a human trainer as part of the subscription fee. Still others are geared toward specific activities: ($55 for 14 weeks), for example, helps runners hit a target pace and distance.Ìę

According to Julian McAuley, a professor of computer science at the University of California at San Diego, many of the available options are pretty rudimentary. The algorithms tend to be created from global models; in other words, the recommendations are based on how you compare with people of similar age, weight, and gender, rather than being tailored to fit your specific biometric data. But McAuley says that machine learning has the potential to become far more sophisticated. (And because successful approaches to achieving health and fitness vary widely, personalization could be especially useful in a training context.) McAuley’s team has used tracking data to generate customized running routes, which could tell you what distance and elevation gain might bump up your heart rate to a given level. But, he says, “This isÌęreally cutting-edge stuff that’s a couple years away from being totally practical.”

I’m still using Freeletics, but only once a week at most. Coach keeps pushing me to do a variety of quick, difficult workouts, and I find that the intensity rarely wavers. This is, I suppose, the whole point of setting goals and having someone hold you accountable. For now, though, Coach doesn’t motivate me quite like a personal trainer might.Ìę

Since these apps generally don’t offer much feedback on form or technique, they probably work best as a supplement to advice from a human expert or a group class. And I don’t exactly relish my time with Coach. Freeletics and other apps require you to be plugged in, an obvious downside if, like me, you look forward to your workouts as a respite from screen time. And while these products offer ways to share results on social media (Freeletics also has an in-app leaderboard), in my experience these features pale in comparison with the flesh-and-blood camaraderie I’ve found among fellow gym-goers.Ìę

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Throughout the 1990s, Robert O. Young and his wife, Shelley, sold productsÌęthrough a multilevel marketing company called Innerlight, Inc. Their product line included supplements like Prime pH and Supergreens; both offeringsÌęsupposedly reduced the acidity of water and worked wonders by alkalizing your body. The couple eventuallyÌęlaunched Young Naturals, but,Ìęafter learning that a pornographic website owned that domain name, quickly rebranded as pH Miracle Living. OnlineÌęthey hawked water machines, mini exercise trampolines, books, and theÌę.Ìę

In the early 2000s, Robert YoungÌęopened a clinic in Valley Center, California, called pH Miracle Center, where he offered IV infusions that includedÌębaking soda. He saw several patients who had been diagnosed with cancer. Young, who had no medical training but called himself a doctor, believed that germs did not cause illness, acid did. All sickness and disease, he wrote in the International Journal of Complementary andÌęAlternative Medicine in 2017, was rooted in the overacidification of the blood and tissues. The simplicity of his vision was distilled in the company logo: a jaunty-looking cartoon fish inside a glass bowl, with aÌętagline that read, “When the fish is SICK Change the WATER!”Ìę

Today, as bottled alkaline beverages move into the mainstream, more and more people are treading into these murky waters. The online retailer Boxed recently scored a three-month exclusive on selling Coca-Cola’s Smartwater Alkaline, which is billedÌęas “hydration for daily fitness.” In March, Gwyneth Paltrow announced aÌępartnership with Flow, an alkaline water that promises to “balance your body with healthy minerals” and calls its product “the organic avocado of hydration.” At many supermarkets, you can find brand-name alkaline waters like , Alkawonder, and Essentia. (You can also make your own by adding baking soda to regular water.) Since 2013, alkaline water sales in North America have grown more than 40 percent annually, according to consultancy firm Zenith Global. Market reports project that the category could soon break the $1 billion mark globally.Ìę

Early alkaline evangelists said the stuff could hydrate the body more efficiently,Ìęas well asÌęcure diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer. But even alternative health gurus Andrew Weil and Joseph Mercola, who frequently traffic in unverified claims, warned people on their websites to be wary of the fad. TodayÌęmost bottled-water brands stick with vague declarations about improving hydration and health—or misleading ones, like labeling their products “chemical-free.” (Water is a chemical substance.) Social-media influencers seem to implyÌęthat alkaline water helps no matter what you’re doing, whether that’s hitting the pool or sitting at a desk. (As one athlete to GQ: “Stick to alkaline waters with a higher pH. Trust me.”) But its popularity in wellness circles stands in especially sharp contrast to the fate of one of the trend’s leading proponents.Ìę

In 2017, Robert O. Young was sentenced to more than three years in custody for practicing medicine without a license.ÌęInÌęNovember, a jury awarded a $105 million judgementÌęfor negligence and fraud in a suit brought by Dawn Kali, a former patient diagnosed with breast cancer. Young contested the ruling and received a reduced judgement. He’s also still promoting himself as an expert on cancer, although, as part of his guilty plea, Young admitted that he did not have any post-high school educational degrees from any accredited schools—he was not a trained scientist, microbiologist, hematologist, medical doctor, orÌęeven a naturopathic doctor.ÌęThe headwaters of the trend seemed to flow from a source as vaporous as the fabled Fountain of Youth. Ìę

The concept of alkalinity itself, of course, is grounded in real science. ChemistsÌęand water-quality expertsÌęuse the term alkaline, or basic, to describe substances that have a pH greater than pure water, which is a neutral 7 on the pH scale. Because the scale is logarithmic, a liquid with a pH of 8 is ten times more alkaline than pure water. Tap water frequently contains minerals, making it slightly alkaline. Our blood requires a tightly controlled pH level to survive (a 7.4, suggesting we’re all pretty basic). The pH of our urine and, to a lesser extent, our blood, responds to changes in dietary supplementation. Researchers are still trying to sort out how altering the acid-base balance affects health and disease.Ìę

One notable example of tweaking pH is , or soda loading, which is among the most widely studied supplements in sports, says Lewis Gough, a researcher at Birmingham City University in England who works with Huub Wattbike, a team of some of the world’s fastest track cyclists. Dissolve sodium bicarbonate—200 to 300 milligrams per kilogram of body weight—and the water becomes more alkaline. “In fluid form,” Gough says, “it tastes absolutely disgusting, almost like drinking seawater.” In on , he’s shown that supplementing with large doses of baking soda about 90 minutes prior to competition resulted in faster time trials, probably due to increases in power and decreases in fatigue. Additional research has also led to broader adoption in some athletic circles.

Soda loading appears to be most effective for high-intensity, one-to-ten-minute pushes—“all-out blasts on the bike,” as Gough put it—but he’s seeing positive results on 16K time trials as well. (Due to the unpleasant side effects, supplementation is better suited for sprints, he says, since runningÌęjostles your gut. Among rugby players and others with larger body masses, it also means consuming uncomfortably large doses.)Ìę

For those calling baking soda a miracle cure, Gough says, “There just isn’t really anything there.” However, some credible scientific research suggests that shifting one’sÌępH balance could help treat disease, including and . Gough thinksÌęit’s a shame that so many people are overselling the potential benefits with false or misleading claims. “I think it’s ruined it for everybody in a way,” he says.Ìę

Read the fine printÌęand you’ll find that most commercially available alkaline waters have only modest amounts of sodium bicarbonate and other minerals, and it’s unclear if those doses meet the thresholds for beneficial effect. Alkaline water can also be ionized, lowering the pH without increasing mineral content, which has been shown to have such a marginal effect (in so few studies)Ìęthat it’s practically indistinguishable from regular water. While the recent revival and rebranding of alkaline water seems to have arrived under the banner of science, its marketing and promotion taps into our misguided instinct that rigorous physical activity requires extraordinary forms of fluid replenishment.Ìę

Unless you’re supplementing with high doses, though, there’s little evidence and, so far, that data suggests the effects will likely be minimal or nonexistent.ÌęGough says, “I don’t think everybody jumping out of their chairs and going to buy alkaline water is the answer.” The best advice for hydration? Don’t overthink it, and don’t waste your money: stick with plain old tap water.Ìę

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One afternoon in mid-October, I lugged two boxes, weighing a total of 65 pounds, up three flights of stairs. This was the first sign that my new full-body scanner was anything but an ordinary scale. I unboxed the hardware—a mirror and a flat plastic disc about the size of a turntable—and then downloaded an iPhone app, which instructed me to undress. And so there I was, in a pair of tight-fitting boxer briefs, waiting for a firmware update from Naked Labs.

On a regular bathroom scale, my five-foot-ten frame tips in at a little over 200 pounds. Calculate my body-mass index, and I’m a 29.8—which is considered overweight, almost obese. But the BMI is a bit of statistical snake oil. The formula was designed in the 1800s by a mathematician, not a doctor, and its intended purpose was to study whole populations rather than an individual person.

Naked Labs promises an entirely different way of measuring. Its $1,395 scanner, powered by Intel RealSense depth sensors, is billed as the first in-home product that can track not only fat and lean mass but also body circumferences and progress over time. The company’s proprietary algorithms, which are based on the U.S. Navy’s body-composition formula, make estimates based on age, weight, and height, as well as optical head-to-toe measurements, like a high-tech tailor measuring your body’s surface shape. Part of the device’s eye-popping price is what amounts to a lifetime membership to Naked Labs’ analytics and cloud computing. With no monthly fee, it’s an outlier in the flood of subscription-based fitness technologies. I was eager to see how the device stacked up. Or really, how I did.

For the past year, I’ve done CrossFit twice a week. But in a bid to transform some of my abdominal paunch into muscle, I resolved to hit the gym six days a week for six weeks. To track my progress, I stripped down on Sundays for a weekly Naked Labs scan.

For the first test, I paired the mirror and scale (the plastic disc) over Bluetooth. Then the app instructed me to put down my phone and step on. I gave it a whirl—the plate spins you clockwise. Eventually a gray avatar popped up on my phone’s screen. I looked like the Silver Surfer gone soft around the middle. The algorithms put my body fat at 20.3 percent. That was a slight ego boost, since it’s within the “acceptable” range (18 to 24 percent, according to the American Council on Exercise). With a scanner, though, my hope was that I’d start seeing where I was shedding fat and where I was making gains.

Of course, this isn’t Silicon Valley’s first shot at self-quantification for fitness obsessives, and these devices come with serious trade-offs. Tech companies harvest far more data than they reveal to their users. They play croupier, and you’re taking a spin at roulette—in my case, by uploading revealing images of myself. Two weeks into my trial, I began having second thoughts about my upcoming scan. Naked Labs anonymizes its data for various purposes (whatever that means) but explicitly warns that it will turn over any user information to law enforcement if necessary. I found no option for blurring out certain body parts, so I pulled a neoprene wetsuit hood over my face before my next go.

After six weeks of an intensive core and rowing circuit, the scanner showed that I reduced four pounds of fat mass and transformed two pounds into lean mass. And the scans proved revealing in other ways: my body is asymmetrical, and I was surprised to discover that my left leg was slightly larger than my right one. By the final scan, my body fat shrank from 20.3 to 18.6 percent, plus or minus the 2.5 percent margin of error.

, a researcher at the University of Hawaii who uses optical scanners to study fat deposition and cancer risk, confirmed my suspicions: my scans showed something that weight-based formulas cannot, and what the BMI treats as excess weight could mostly be attributed to my non-fat mass. Shepherd, who has partnered with Naked Labs, said the data is particularly useful in showing where fat is deposited. For athletes, scan data can also improve estimates of resting metabolic rate, evaluate the effectiveness of training, and compare muscle symmetry. For me, the scans motivated me to do more pistol squats on my right leg.

In the end, I saw more measurable results than I expected. I lost 2.2 pounds. On an ordinary scale, that’s practically meaningless. But combined with the estimated gains in lean mass, and the inch or so I trimmed off my waist and stomach, it felt more significant. If I keep at it, I’ll get these exacting measurements for the foreseeable future, along with access to the company’s analytics and algorithms, which it vows to keep improving. As for the downsides, Naked’s scale and app are useless without Wi-Fi. The hefty mirror and scale combo takes up a lot of real estate in my apartment, and I wonder if it will soon be rendered obsolete as more smartphones come equipped with similar optical-recognition technology.

If looking at yourself in the mirror gets you down, this device probably isn’t for you. And as Shepherd put it, “If you just want weight loss, you can get a scale.” But 3-D scanners calculate fat loss in ways that calipers and tailor’s tape do not, and you can see the changes. “This will measure how much fat you’re losing and can tell you how much muscle you’ve gained, and where you lost and gained.” Which, he said, can prove motivating. At the very least, watching how my avatar shaped up against the Silver Surfer gave me an extra incentive to hit the gym.

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On August 6, 2017, police cruisers raced down blacktopped country roads in Tupper Lake, New York, to HaymeadowÌęRoad, their sirens piercing the tranquil summer day. A medical emergency had been called in from just over the villageÌęline, and the address was immediately recognizable to anyone in local law enforcement: it was the home of an off-duty sergeant and his girlfriend. That day, nearly every officer in the Village of Tupper Lake police department, which employs 11, had been at the station putting together a search warrant. Soon,Ìęclose to a dozen officers—village police, state troopers, and even an officerÌęfrom the environmental-conservation police—swarmed the home and began working on their unresponsive 27-year-old colleague, sergeant Matthew Dana. Despite their efforts, no one could revive him and he was soon pronounced dead. They were all left wondering: What exactly had gone wrong?

Obituaries made brief mention of Dana’s sterling reputation around Tupper, as some locals call the town. In high school, he played on the Lumberjacks football team andÌęworked as a stock boy at the supermarket,Ìęthen as a pharmacy assistant, before setting his sights on law enforcement. (Under a photo in his high school yearbook, hisÌęnickname reads Dana, PD.) Residents I spoke with remembered Dana as a rising star who specialized in anti-narcotics work and some expected him to be the next chief of police. He and his closest friends hunted rabbits, fished for northern pike, and occasionally practiced shooting at the Tupper Lake Rod and Gun Club. The club’s president, Dave McMahon, said that Dana took his job seriously and took an equally serious approach to fitness, which made his sudden death all the more unfathomable. “It was hard to understand what happened, why it happened, and so on,” McMahon said. “It was just a real unfortunate accident.” Some wondered if maybe he’d gone overboard on energy drinks or supplements.

Tupper Lake, a former logging town in the Adirondacks, hugs the eastern shore of a bright blue lake, nestled among a triad of 2,000-foot peaks. The town sits at the crossroads of Route 3 and Route 30. Neighbors keep tabs on where you park your car, and they joke about rolling up the sidewalks after 10 P.M. According to locals, it’s also a place where traffickers of drugsÌęand humans pass through en route from Montreal to New York City. Arriving by way of Lake Placid, about 30 miles to the east, you’ll know you’ve reached the town when you see Sunmount, a state-run institution for the developmentally disabledÌęand one of the town’s primary employers. Farther on, there’s Shaheen’sÌęsupermarket, a grocery store where you’re bound to hear grumblings about Sunmount. Along the road, you’ll see front yards decorated with American flags painted on wood pallets. I spotted several Blue Lives MatterÌęflags fluttering in the mountain air.

Downtown there’s a one-story funeral home, run by Shawn Stuart, who also serves as one of the county’s elected coroners. About a month after Dana died, Stuart ruled his death an accident caused by pulmonary hemorrhage—the presence of blood in the lungs. An independent toxicology lab found extremely high levels of an alkaloid called mitragynine in his postmortem blood sample: 3,500 nanograms per milliliter. Stuart had never heard of mitragynine, but he soon learned that it was one of the two main active ingredients found in , which are primarily composed of a tree that grows in southeast Asia. Star Kratom offers a wide variety of kratom strains from a range of cultivars, including , , , , , , , , , and .

Botanically, kratom is related to the coffee plant. Traditionally its leaves are steeped into a tea or chewed, like coca, and people use kratom’s stimulating effects to endure long hours of manual labor. Over the past two decades, though, kratom has spread across the U.S., often in powder or capsule form, thanks to numerous anecdotal reports that it can counteract fatigue and treat pain. But kratom is also used to manage withdrawal from prescription painkillers and heroin, and it has recently gained widespread attention—and notoriety—for its reputation as a potential cure for opioid addiction.

Officer Jordan Nason was among the first responders who tried to revive Dana, and he took the death particularly hard. Nason is pale andÌęof medium build, with a crew cut, a goatee, and blue eyes. When we met early on aÌęMay morning at the village police station, Nason held a tallboy of NosÌęenergy drink. Nason considered Dana his best friend, and when initial news reportsÌęin the and elsewhereÌęcalled Dana’s death an overdose, he felt hurt by the insinuations about drug use. Nason wasn’t sure he had much to say, butÌęto his mind, labeling Dana as a person who used drugs could not have been further from the truth. Dana had been one year Nason’s senior, his mentor and confidant. The two men lifted weights together in college, andÌęas much as they bulked up, he said they always prided themselves on “being natural.” Nason believed that Dana had been so overqualified for small-town police work that he should have worked for the FBI. And yetÌędespite the long hours they’d spent together—in the squad car, running mock trials with Nason’sÌędrug-detection dog J.D.—Dana never once brought up kratom.

“Whatever this was,” Nason said, “it was a legal substance. He was taking it with the best intentions that he had, whatever they were.” He seemed to be struggling to find the right words. He wasn’t the only one who found it almost inconceivable that a supplement killed an apparentlyÌęhealthy young man.

More than two million Americans consume kratom every year, and its potential lethality is central to a rancorousÌęongoing debate about its use. Between February 2014 and July 2016, according to the International Narcotics Control Board, law-enforcement authorities in the U.S. encountered 55 tons of kratom, which roughly translates to some 50 million individual doses. The plant’s popularity has drawn attention from federal regulatory agencies and international anti-doping officials. Six states have enacted bans. But kratom remains widely available. You can pick it up at gas stations alongside 5-Hour Energy or CBD oil, or order it online. Until 2015, a brand called Vivazen sold liquid shots containing kratom to the Red Bull and beach-volleyball crowd. People who use kratom say it functions as an effective stimulant and a calming sedative. It’s not without risk: anecdotal reports and case studies in the medical literature have documented the . Until recently, the National Institute on Drug Abuse said, “Kratom by itself is not associated with fatal overdose.” Last year, NIDA appeared to have scrubbed that sentence from its website, suggesting that perhaps federal researchers no longer believed products sold as kratom were innocuous. Kratom contaminated with the painkiller tramadol has proven lethal, and the FDAÌęhas reported finding pathogenic strains of salmonella in kratom, but reports of fatal overdoses from eating or drinking the raw plant remain rather uncommon.

Kratom is atypical in several respects: the substance has druglike propertiesÌębut it’s sold as a supplement. This means it doesn’t have to pass through federally mandated testing or clinical trials, and it’s available without a prescription. In 2016, the DEA initiated a formal process to put kratom in the same class of drugs as heroin and LSD—an illegal Schedule I drug with “no currently accepted medical use.” Following a vocal backlash from pain patients, people recovering from addiction, and other kratom supporters that summer, the DEA backed offÌęand the regulatory hot potato landed in the hands ofÌęthe FDA. In early 2018, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the agency determined that kratom was an opioid. Opioids, which have become synonymous with the national crisis, are the class of compounds that either come from or resemble alkaloids found in opium poppies. These include painkillers, like Vicodin and OxyContin, as well heroin and fentanyl. If you look at the chemical structures of mitragynineÌęand all of the other naturally occurring compounds in kratom, chemists see nothing that resembles a typicalÌęopioidÌęsuch as morphine. Rather, kratom is considered an opioid because its active ingredients appear to bind to some of the same receptors in the brain as opioids. (Endorphins, our internal opioids, also bind to these receptors.) At low doses—say, when the fresh leaves are chewed—kratom acts as a stimulant.ÌęAt higher doses—for instance, when taken in a concentrated paste—it can have a sedative or narcotic effect.

When I visited the New York State Police Troop B headquarters in the nearby hamlet of Ray Brook, which handled the criminal investigation of Dana’s death, I noticed several flyers in the lobby advertising regional symposiums about opioids. One promoted a talk by Richard Jensen, a former wrestler who gives motivational speeches about taking addiction to the mat. Numerous studies have found links between contact sports and substance use. While neither the U.S. or world anti-doping agencies considerÌękratomÌęa performance-enhancing drug, for decades researchers have noted the parallels between manual laborers and athletes who use kratom to increase stamina and offset fatigue in the lead-up to a race or during marathon weight-lifting sessions. According to a researcher writing in the Bulletin of Narcotics in 1975, “Five to ten minutes after kratom consumption, the user described himself as feeling happy, strong and active.”

Testimonials about the benefits of kratom also pop up regularly on bodybuilding forums. People who take kratom say the substance has many uses: to push through the pain of physical exertion, to self-medicate for injury, to transition off painkillers, and to recover from strenuous activity. A , edited by Temple University pharmacology professor Robert Raffa, quotes a manÌęidentified as JonasÌęwho describes a prototypical scenario: “The additional stamina kratom seems to provide allows me to push my workouts harder than with a vitamin/caffeine stack alone,” he wrote. “Quite possibly the mild euphoria helps me push myself. The painkilling effect may also contribute to this, allowing me to work through some of my joint pain.”

All of the self-medication and self-experimentation has come under increasing scrutiny. In 2017, the FDA released reports on 36 deaths that the agency said involved kratom. In response, Raffa and eight other scientific researchers saying “the claims that kratom has caused the deaths of all or even most of the 36 individuals 
 cannot be supported by any reasonable scientific or medical standard.” Most of the deaths attributed to kratom involved some combination of substances, such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. The FDA continues to highlight these deathsÌęand has said that the tally hasÌęclimbed to more than 44. , the head of the FDA singled out another person who, like Dana, reportedly died after taking kratomÌęand had apparently consumed no other substances.

As news of the officer’s death in the Adirondacks spread across the country, it landed the little mountain town squarely in the crossroads of nationwide debateÌęand added another layer to the controversy around kratom—an herbal supplement that built a reputation as being a nonlethalÌęalternative to the illicitly manufacturedÌęopioids that kill tens of thousands of people annually. “What’s happening in the Adirondacks is what’s happening everywhere. It’s just on a smaller scale,” Frank Whitelaw, a coroner in nearby Saranac Lake, told me.ÌęEven though fatal drug overdoses are more common in the suburbs and largerÌęmetropolitan areas, Whitelaw saw firsthand how the secondary trauma hits closeÌęto home in small tight-knit communities.Ìę“It’s like dropping a huge rock into a perfectly calm pond, and it just creates one heck of a huge ripple effect.”ÌęWhitelawÌęfelt that everyone knew everyone aroundÌętown, especially amongÌęlocal law enforcement, and he was shocked by Dana’s death.Ìę“I was kind of blown away, and when the results of the toxicology test came back, that triple blew me away. That wasn’t anything I saw coming.”

But others saw an all-too-perfect story that almost seemed like a scheme cooked up to enact a wholesale ban on kratom. Pete Candland, head of the American Kratom Association, an advocacy organization, accused local investigators of being part of a clandestine DEA “shadow campaign.” Candland said the organization was “deeply concerned that the agency may also be seeking to encourage findings of kratom in death reports from coroners and medical examiners.” (In an accompanyingÌęreport, a San Diego lawyer named Jane K. Babin, who was commissioned by American Kratom Association, specifically called into question the investigation into Dana’s death. “The Coroner and Medical Examiner erred in not analyzing blood for substances other than opioids and narcotics including cocaine and anabolic steroids, which could have caused the death.” However, the local media reported that cocaine and anabolic steroid testsÌęwere in fact conducted.) In another conspiratorial twist, some believe the war against kratom comes at the urging of big pharma, which is eager to cash in on fixes for treating addiction. For his part, county coroner Shawn Stuart claimed he had no agenda and called these allegations “ridiculous.” The death of a 27-year-old cop in his community was anything but routine.ÌęAnd, he told me, “There was no other explanation forÌęhis cause of deathÌęexcept for the substantial amount of kratom in his system. There’s a population that just doesn’t want to accept that.”

Dana’s family has not yet released the full autopsy report or his medical records. In New York, these reports can be made public only at the behest of one’s next of kin or by court order.ÌęState police denied a records request for the full criminal death investigation, saying it would be an “unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of those concerned.” The lack of transparency irks kratom advocates. What’s certain is that the case remains an outlier: it’s one of the few dozen known fatalities in the U.S. that’s been connected to kratom, and one of the only deaths that reportedly did not involve some other substance.

The reported 3,500 nanograms of mitragynine found in Dana’s bloodstream is tremendously high. But the exact concentration of kratom he took, and the redistribution of drug compounds after death in the bloodstream, remains unknown. According to , the routine toxicology test covered 233 chemical compounds, including cocaine, and the coroner reportedly ordered a supplemental assay that was negative for anabolic steroids. But the fact that the tests turned up nothing doesn’t rule out the possibility that something else was at play.

Based on what has been publicly released, Ed Boyer, a toxicologist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said that it would be impossible to definitively ascribe the death to kratom. “In general,” he said, “weightlifters ingest a whole hoard of things, including cardiotoxic substances, which could produce pulmonary edema.” Boyer added that without proper regulation, it’s best to simply avoid dietary supplements. With no assurance of their purity and potency, the controversy aroundÌęsupplements is unlikely to go away any time soon. Neither, it seems, is the routine sale of kratom.

Last May, when I first arrived in the Adirondacks, I spent an afternoon walking around Lake Placid, a two-time host of the winter Olympics. Not far from the bigÌęflat speed-skating oval in the center of town, I happened to notice Up in Smoke, a head shop that was selling various strains of kratom. The woman behind the counter told me several regular customers bought the powders, usually to get off harder drugs. I thought about how people pulled into kratom’s orbit seemed to occupy two distinct camps: those who were trying to treat pain or transition off addictive andÌępotentially lethal opioids, and those who picked up a supplement as yet another way to probe the physical limits of the human body. I wondered what the Olympic coaches or trainers down the road thought of the substance. The World Anti-Doping Agency monitored kratom for “patterns of misuse” between 2014 and 2018 before deciding against a ban on its use in professional sporting events. (A spokesperson for Team USA declined to comment.)

The last morning I was in Tupper, there were a few boats out on the water, fishing in a lake that was still swollen with snowmelt. Up the hill, in the center of town, Mike Demars, Dana’s stepfather, smoked a cigarette outside a gas station and convenience store. He wore wraparound shades and a black cavalry hat. Demars told me that he’d been a police sergeant before taking on a field investigator position at Sunmount. He’d given Dana his badge when he made sergeant. His family struggled to make sense of it all, but ultimately he felt moved by the outpouring of support, which he saw as proof of the town’s resilience. “I know there’s stuff like Red Cross, but around here, honestlyÌęyou almost don’t need it, the way people react.”

Demars didn’t see himself as particularly athletic, but he said he understood what it meant to be a police sergeantÌęand the dedication and drive it takes toÌęreach the next level. That’s what he believed his stepson had been trying to do all along. Dana once posted links about taking supplements on his Facebook page. “When he was bodybuilding, he would take all kinds of supplements,” Demars said. “I think the biggest thing is that you get very tired working these odd shifts and double shifts. I think it was used as a stimulant to keep him going. Even when you’re young, you start doing that long enough and you start wearing out. I know. I did it. You can only do it so long.”

He snuffed out his cigarette. “Speaking of work,” he said, “I need to get back or they’re going to fire me.” Demars hopped into his red Chevy pickup,Ìęand drove off. On his back window was a sticker that read: SGT M DANA. END OF WATCH 8.6.17.

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Tod Cooperman drives the same way he takes nutritional supplements: in a reasonable and prudent manner. It’s a Friday morning in February, and he’s bringing me to his research office, a suite in the hills of New Jersey, about an hour outside New York City, where he has enough vitamins, herbal concoctions, and powdered bone broth to satisfy a doomsday prepper. When we arrive, boxes of green tea are spilling out of overstuffed totes on the floor. The shelves are lined with bottles containing ginkgo, ashwagandha, and CBD. Cooperman grabs some apple cider vinegar pills. “People take it for weight loss,” he says. “But the concentration of acetic acid in this is so high, it should be labeled a poison.”

Cooperman earned his medical degree before founding , which has been vetting dietary supplements for the past 19 years. The day I visit, Mark Anderson, the head of research, pulls up a colorful thin-layer chromatography readout, which shows that all the apple cider vinegars he and his team tested came from real fruit and weren’t just spray-dried acetic acid (an old cost-saving trick of the trade). Recently, however, ConsumerLab outed a brand of turmeric capsules that it found had virtually no curcumin, the ingredient believed to make the bright yellow-orange spice effective.

Such findings aren’t uncommon. ConsumerLab exists in large part because the Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency charged with regulating the $30 billion dietary-supplement industry, doesn’t have the authority to oversee supplements in the same way it does over-the-counter medicines. This means the feds spot-check for compliance but allow supplement manufacturers to self-regulate unless some serious problem arises. As a result, quality varies widely and consumers are often flying blind.

In January, the Office of Dietary Supplements, a division of the National Institutes of Health, released the “” fact sheet. But while it does tell you which supplements can potentially improve your performance, it doesn’t tell you which whey-protein product comes loaded with cholesterol, or which pea powder has way more sodium than the label claims. As Cooperman puts it, independent testers aim to answer consumers’ most pressing product questions. “Is it safe? Is it going to interact with anything I’m taking? Am I even taking it properly, in the right dose? Should I take it at certain times of the day? Does this product even have what it claims?” he says. “We address everything that we can along that whole spectrum of questioning in our reports.” ConsumerLab has published reviews of more than 100 product types, from vitamin C to powdered bone broth, and adds around 16 new categories each year.

As supplements continue to flood the market, there’s been an uptick in independent testing companies. Another is , a startup founded in 2012 in San Francisco, which ranks various supplements on a 100-point scale for label accuracy, purity, nutritional value, efficacy, and safety. Neil Thanedar, its founder and CEO, says the company’s tests routinely verify highly rated products. “There are great protein powders, great fish oils, great vitamin D.” But there’s so much variation in quality and in price, he says, consumers often can’t tell from the label which products are worth the money. “You just assume, ‘Oh, they’re all protein powders. They’re all vitamin D,’ ” Thanedar says. “But some of the biggest differences out of any category in a store are in the supplements aisle.”

Not all testing services take the same approach. Nonprofits like and give seals to certified supplements. Labdoor makes money selling products through click referrals, but its evaluations are available for free; ConsumerLab has a subscription model, charging users a fee to access its reports. But there are definite overlaps in the findings. Surprisingly, if you buy products from multilevel marketers such as Amway and Herbalife, or if you order from InfoWars, the conspiracy-mongering media empire, you’ll probably end up with quality ingredients in roughly the quantities that are listed on the label. The catch is that you’ll pay considerably more than for the brands typically found at GNC or in supermarkets. The largest variation in quality comes with herbal products and complex formulations, like multivitamins and prenatal supplements. With most single-ingredient vitamins and minerals, cost rather than quality tends to be the distinguishing factor.

As most of us have heard by now, it’s both possible and advisable to get all your essential vitamins and minerals from whole foods. Still, people who work at these testing services aren’t above taking supplements. Thanedar, who is 30, uses B vitamins, fish oil, and protein powder. Cooperman, 55, opts for B12, vitamin D in the winter, and iron after donating blood. In general, these types of single-ingredient vitamins and minerals usually check out as free of contaminants and containing the dose claimed on the label. But while you’ll find the recommended daily allowance listed, the “tolerable upper limits”—the point after which a potentially beneficial supplement runs the risk of doing harm—are not something you’ll find on labels. (The Office of Dietary Supplements, ConsumerLab, and Labdoor provide these numbers.)

Over lunch, I ask the ConsumerLab staff about the worst products they’ve come across. Liquid creatine usually falls short, Cooperman says. “Don’t buy gummies,” Anderson adds, saying that they don’t always provide the iron and vitamin D they claim. Cooperman tells me he submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the FDA and learned that the agency’s audits turned up quality control issues and a lack of protocols, among other problems, at 62 percent of supplement manufacturers in 2016. Which is to say, it’s probably smart to look beyond the label.

Athlete’s Cheat Sheet

According to the latest recommendations from the Office of Dietary Supplements, these boosts may be worth your bucks.

Research suggests that beet juice may improve performance and endurance, but skip the beetroot powder for now—it’s not known if it provides the same effects.

Caffeine can help you exercise longer, and it’s reasonably safe up to 400 or 500 milligrams—about four cups of coffee.

Creatine loading, or taking a high dose followed by smaller “maintenance” amounts, helps supply muscles with energy, but only for short periods of exertion. Think high-intensity interval training, not a long-distance swim.

Correcting any deficiencies in iron can improve your workout, although there’s considerable debate and conflicting evidence surrounding what exactly qualifies as “deficient.”

Most athletes already eat adequate amounts of high-quality protein, but supplemental protein appears safe in moderation. (That’s about 136 grams per day for someone weighing 150 pounds.)

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I slammed the aluminum bat into the laptop. Pieces of the shattered screen bounced on the metal table. Whack! Whack! Whack! The keys popped off. The display detached. Each time the bat landed, a satisfying crack echoed throughout the room like gunfire. I felt a surge of adrenaline. My heart raced and sweat pooled in my gloves. I lunged at a mannequin lying on the table, but one of my feet slipped and my legs splayed out into a split. The view from the floor was one of busted concrete, plastic shards, and broken glass.

It was just another Friday night at the , a “rage room” in Midtown Man­hattan, where patrons pay to demolish all sorts of things. My friend Annegret Falkner, a neuroscientist who studies aggression at New York University, had agreed to join me. We took an elevator down to the basement and met our destruction waiter (his actual title) for the evening. On the menu: large-screen TVs, computers, a load of dishes, and a half-dozen other items. We chose a standard package—two laptops and a bucket of plates—for $60. Suited up with helmets, safety goggles, and tactical jackets, we entered one of the Wrecking Club’s small, windowless rooms. In less than 15 minutes, we’d reduced the devices and dishes to tiny bits. I ordered a second round.

The place had a decidedly nineties vibe. Atop a piano in the hallway was a framed still from the 1999 movie —the scene where three coworkers give a printer a slow-motion beatdown. Loosely inspired by the cult film, rage rooms started popping up ten years later; among the first to open, in 2008, was the Anger Room in Dallas. At least a dozen similar facilities now dot the globe: there’s the in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a in Toronto, and the near Melbourne, Australia. At the Wrecking Club, the atmosphere felt less like a gym than a designated location for behavior you can’t get away with in public.

Windmilling with bats or crowbars for 30 minutes might qualify as aerobic exercise. But is there any credible evidence for destructo-therapy? That’s why I invited Falk­­ner along. She has examined the activity of single neurons in mice when they attack each other, and she told me about the hydraulic model, a theory popular in the 1960s, which posits that the drive to be aggressive accumulates over time. Her findings were consistent: something builds up, almost like a hunger, and the neural activity associated with releasing it may leave you feeling sated.

No doubt some humans find aggression rewarding, even pleasurable, just as some of us derive satisfaction from carbs or cardio. But rage rooms appear to be tapping an even broader demographic, designed to appeal to almost anyone.

While pummeling inanimate objects might serve as an escape valve, little evidence supports the notion that the controlled violence we engaged in is useful therapy. “It’s a cycle,” Falkner told me. “You get sated. But it reinforces your desire, which is why I think it isn’t therapeutic. Even exercise hasn’t been shown to be a therapy for aggression.”

Brad Bushman, a psychology researcher at Ohio State University, told me that using a rage room to reduce anger is “like using gasoline to put out a fire.” Angry people love to vent, Bushman said, and while that catharsis feels good, it’s not the best coping strategy for someone prone to flying into a fury. But Christie Rizzo, an associate professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University, argues that for most of us, decompressing in this manner is probably harmless. “It’s just designed to be something fun,” she said. “Though I wouldn’t want people thinking, This is going to help me with that problem I’ve been having with my anger. You’re going to be wasting your money.”

I hadn’t gone to the Wrecking Club to cure pent-up aggression. I was drawn to the transgressive novelty of rage rooms—the same reason I suspect most of its customers pay to pound on electronics. It’s an escape. And if nothing else, I had a blast while it lasted.

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The inaugural in Miami, Florida, convened in mid-March inside the Ice Palace Film Studios, a 1923 fortresslike building surrounded by high hedges and palm trees. Its white walls seemed to glow under the sun. Inside, there was a darkened speaker area, a bazaar with vendors, and a lot of balloons—green ones made up the trees in a massive indoor park, and white balloons hung from the ceiling to simulate cumulonimbus clouds. Giant block letters spelled out #WOHASU, the summit’s hashtag-friendly nickname. You could recline in the letter U, which sat slightly askew, and take a selfie.

The summit attracted 1,200 attendees, but one of them, a creative director told me, was the happiest of them all. I first met her as she walked toward a bank of brightlights and a video camera. As she stood in front of the lights and the camera, a live video selfie projected onto the screen. The video was being fed into a real-time facial recognition software that transformed any unsmiling faces into yellow orbs with two black zeros for eyes and a neutral, flat-line mouth. Anyone wearing a grin or a not-so-happy grimace was instantly transformed into a big green smiley face.

The live experiment was called , and the woman had yet to give it a try. “I haven’t done it.” Her voice squeaked. “Can I get into my subconscious thoughts, though? There’s some shit up in there.”

“Go for it,” the creative director replied.

“Really, should I do it? How do you do it?”

Her name was Ariana Gleckman, and like many attendees, she had been drawn to the summit because, as she put it, she’d “been trying figure out how to cultivate self-love and figure out her stuff.” She’d surfed the scripture and verse of TED, the technology-conference-turned-viral-idea industry, and hoped to land somewhere with “positive-ass vibes” after graduating college. Ideally that meant working somewhere like , an applied research consulting firm in Lewisville, Texas, run by Shawn Achor, a positive psychologist and one of the morning’s speakers. Achor had previously spoken at the White House and mentioned something about how a new political regime, as well as things like climate change, were the types of circumstances outside our control as individuals. But, he said, you could still control your reaction.

Ariana kept what she called a “low-key blog” on —she called it “Confessions of an Apprehensive Optimist”—and, somehow, her impassioned plea on social media to attend this summit had reached the organizers’ attention, and they agreed to pay for her ticket. Which made her an atypical attendee and only partly explained her enthusiasm.

“It’s my spring break!” she said. “In Miami!”

The happiness summit was open to anyone, with the exception of a few invite-only events. Tickets cost $169 for students and $1,699 for VIP access to speakers in the Gratitude Lounge. (Disclosure: I received complimentary media access to the WOHASU event, along with a tote bag and several coconut waters.) Many of the business owners, scientists, coaches, and individuals in attendance came in search of some scientific respectability—or, at the very least, a veneer of it.

Javier Hernandez, 33, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the MIT Mood Meter’s developers, said emotional recognition technology and affective computing was bound to become routine in market research—for example, to gauge whether an ad intended to be funny elicited the desired response from consumers. For now, however, the meter was simply designed to bring people joy. Hernandez said he often presented at scientific seminars. The mix of Zumba and yoga at the summit was a little outside his comfort zone, and he was intrigued by the range of scientific rigor. “Many of these studies say, ‘Oh, we can measure your stress levels. We can do these things.’ They usually oversell it,” Hernandez said. “Happiness is difficult to quantify.”

The pursuit of happiness has become a multibillion-dollar industry. Americans spend an estimated $11 billion a year in search of a blissful happy-ever-after, according to Ruth Whippman, the author of . In 1999, the Gallup Organization hosted the first Positive Psychology Summit. The WOHASU organizers cited a that described Miami as the happiest place to work, but a nagging misery hung about the travelers headed there on an overbooked plane from New York. When I told a flight attendant I was headed to a summit on happiness, she said, without hesitation, “You never would have guessed with this crowd.”

The United States could certainly be a happier place. In a 2013 poll, that American businesses lost around $500 billion in revenue because of unhappy employees. The United States currently ranks 14th in global happiness, behind countries like Denmark and New Zealand, according to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s . In the past decade, private businesses and governments around the world have been combating what positive psychologists call an epidemic of depression by nudging employees and citizens toward things that clinical psychiatry had once overlooked: personal strength, hope, joy, compassion, love. Tal Ben-Shahar—who spoke at the summit and whose Harvard class, Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology, is said to have broken attendance records—kicked off barnstorming tours around the world. A stable of academic experts laymanized their scholarly work for mainstream audiences on the big-ideas lecture circuit—all of them intent on convincing people that the bold, and mostly unproven, claims of positive psychology were not merely pseudoscience and wishful thinking. It seemed to be working.

The movement seemed to have reached its zenith with the World Happiness Summit, which convened more than 50 so-called thought leaders in one place. The first event was held in March, with the hope of creating, as one of its founders put it, “a Davos for happiness.” But unlike the World Economic Forum, WOHASU focused on people and “on happiness as a life choice, as a human right, and as an enabler of human development and social innovation.” Karen Guggenheim, CEO of WOHASU, said that after losing her husband of 21 years to the flu, she didn’t want to be pigeonholed, at 46, as a young widow. After working with the Miami Herald, she had gone back for an MBA at Georgetown University, and often told people she “chose happiness.” The phrase served as a kind of mission statement and a call to action. Near the entrance to the speaker area, Lululemon, one of the event’s sponsors, installed swings and a mural with large cursive letters that read, “Choose Happiness.” Everyone at the summit received a tote bag with the phrase “I Choose Happiness” in neon-pink lettering.

The program freely combined the statistical rigor of economists and psychologists with the business acumen of brand ambassadors and at least one Chief Happiness Officer, alongside those practicing a “sacred science” with a New Age or magical bent. Late on Saturday morning, a loud whoop went up from the Keynote Area, the darkened room where attendees sat in folding chairs and reclined on plush cushions under white teepee-like structures, massaging each other’s necks and stretching. The speakers on the nearby stage led a panel discussion on the “Practice of Happiness.” They talked about “the millions of people on your platform.” Of “building a movement.” Of “getting into your tribes and broadcasting happiness.”

Meanwhile, in the WOHASU Bazaar, a group sat, eyes closed, with brain-sensing wrapped around their temples. The device contained a compact electroencephalography (EEG) system and was designed to be a “personal meditation assistant.” Two men from Spain touted a , which offered exposure therapy by way of VR goggles and software. Nearby, Gary Cook sat behind a table and sold books. “This is not my type of event, let’s just put it that way,” he told me. “Feel like I need some Zen tea—two booths down.” The day’s bestsellers, Gary said, included Before Happiness, the Happiness șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, The How of Happiness, and Even Happier.

On Saturday afternoon, a woman named climbed on the keynote stage. Described in the program as a “consciousness lecturer” and an “award-winning author of seven books,” she presented results from an “intention experiment” that had been performed on Friday afternoon. A Russian man, who she claimed was a physicist, had set up something called a gas discharge visualization machine that was allegedly capable of measuring the “energetic properties” of water. Because human emotions affect the nervous system, which change the body’s overall electrical conductivity, Lynne claimed that a room full of people in Miami—all focused on making water more alkaline, like a mountain stream—had a perceptible influence on the physical properties of the world. She put up a graph depicting what she said was a decrease in the electrical charge of the entire room housing the physicist’s bottle of water in St. Petersburg, Russia. “Your beautiful spirit radiated over to an environment thousands and thousands of miles away,” she said. “You changed the world.”

Most attendees seemed to be chasing a sort of inner change. I asked everyone I met, “Who’s the happiest person here?”

Many pointed to themselves and said, “Me.”

If nothing else, the summit seemed to substantiate the idea that that happiness begets happiness. According to self-reported data collected from attendees by Plasticity, a platform that measures workplace morale and one of the summit’s sponsors, the average daily happiness rose from 86 percent (of the self-reporting participants) on Thursday to 91 percent on Saturday. There are many activities that make people happy, subjectively, and as difficult as it is to quantify objectively, governments and companies were nonetheless finding ways to measure happiness and increase it. Individuals, too.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, vendors sold bowls of pokĂ©, tempeh sandwiches, and green coconuts with long drinking straws. Vita Coca handed out complimentary coconut waters. Aisha Bin-Bishr, director general of the Smart Dubai Office—which had recently installed “happiness meters” that allow people interacting with some government services to rate their experience—had spoken about sharing best happiness practices globally. She admitted that she was unsure who was the happiest person in attendance. She then raised a piña colada–flavored popsicle and said, “But when I’m eating ice cream, I’m so happy.”

A couple hours before sundown on Saturday, as attendees gathered outside, Ariana—quite possibly the happiest girl in the crowd—held her hands up as if she were dancing to deep house music. Then she saw Shawn Achor, CEO of GoodThink Inc., walking around and ran up to him. He admitted that he was ordinarily hired to speak to audiences unfamiliar with his line of research, but he felt recharged knowing he wasn’t a lone voice. Ariana told him she loved his talks and had written a letter to attend the summit.

“I love this stuff,” she said.

“I love your passion. You’re like living proof of this research, right?”

“I try.”

“I think people around you would pick up from that. It’s contagious.”

Their conversation turned to coaching. It was possible, Achor said, to be an amazing coach without feeling like you were all that amazing yourself. “I’ve learned to be happy from people who were miserable,” he said. I took their photo, and Ariana posted it on Instagram: GUYS I JUST MET MY FREAKIN’ INSPIRATION/HAPPINESS GURU/ROCKSTAR/ROLE MODEL

I’ll admit, I was one of those people who left the summit happier than I arrived. This was almost certainlyÌęin part because it was sunnier in Miami than whatever dregs of winter were being served up back home in Brooklyn. But mostly I think it had to do with asking other people, “What are you doing here?” and genuinely wondering why. If I had set out to find the One True Thing That Will Make Everyone Happy Forever, I certainly would have left unsatisfied. There’s no surefire recipe for happiness. But what do I know is this: There are only so many factors within our control. Our government is not among them. Nor, unfortunately, are the effects of climate change. But just imagine a world where your intention mattered. Keep moving forward, the self-help gurus like to say. Keep moving forward in the face of adversity. Express gratitude.

Late on Saturday afternoon, dozens of people—their posture erect, their movement purposeful—formed a circle on the grass. Inside, attendees placed their heads down, palms pressed firmly into yoga mats. On Sunday morning, a man employed by GoogleX gave an engineer’s perspective about solving for happiness. There was dancing in a park downtown. Seventy miles north of Miami, the president of the United States of America played golf. Out on the white-sand beaches, which were all slowly washing away, the sun beat down and a Hitchcockian swarm of black insects stormed the shore. It was alarming. The first wave of insects , and they came to feast on dead foliage. The infestation felt like an omen—as if to say, “The world is dying, and so are we.” But this wasn’t the end-of-the-world summit; this was the happiness summit. Everyone here decided to call them “lovebugs.”

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The bloodletting began at my kitchen table.

At 8 a.m., a nurse named Kristy waved an infrared thermometer over my forehead and checked my pulse and blood pressure. Then she slipped on a pair of gloves, rubbed alcohol on the inside of my arm, and guided a 23-gauge needle into my vein. The needle was short and appeared to be wearing a pair of plastic butterfly wings—which was cute and all, but as dark red liquid curled down the attached tube and burbled into a vial, I felt a rush of wooziness.Ìę

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For reasons I’ll soon explain, my goal was to experience firsthand the new wave of blood tests that claim to optimize athletic performance, improve overall well-being, and increase lifespan. Diagnostic testing is a $75-billion-a-year industry, but it’s one that traditionally was used to diagnose disease. That’s changing, and over the past five years, the wellness-oriented order-it-yourself market has expanded nearly tenfold, to $131 million in 2015, with vast implications for athletes. In many states, it’s now possible to walk into a strip-mall clinic and measure your levels of sex-hormone-binding globulin, believed to be an indicator of overtraining.Ìę

Or you can request a house call, which in my case tacked $80 onto my $299 blood panel. Kristy worked part-time for a Manhattan startup that dispatches nurses, and she filled four vials in less than 15 minutes. Afterward, I sat down to work, and she went to her office, spun my blood down in a centrifuge, and packed off the serum to a clinical lab in Boston. The measurements then went to InsideTracker, a Web-based blood-analysis service, which compiled 20 biomarkers, or signs of biological health, into 20 colorful pie charts. These tools, according to the e-mails I soon began receiving, would put me “in the driver’s seat,” and armed with all my new data, I’d be hurtling down the road “toward greater vitality.”

At this point, I should disclose that I’m hardly a paragon of athleticism. I have what might charitably be described as cubicle bod, and the idea of measuring biomarkers had never crossed my mind until my editor called on a Friday in late May. I was sitting at my desk drinking a can of Centennial IPA. I’d eaten a package of instant ramen for lunch and, before that, slurped down some yogurt, oatmeal, and four fiber pills for breakfast. My phone informed me that I’d walked about 557 steps that morning and run either one mile (according to an app called ) or 1.36 miles (according to ). I’m not grossly out of shape, but I’ve gained about 20 pounds over the past three years. Perhaps it was stress. Drinking a few pints of carbs every week hasn’t helped.

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Could frequent blood testing encourage me to lose weight, change my habits, and live a better life? There was only one way to find out.Ìę

For years, blood draws worked like this: if you were worried about low iron levels from training at altitude or overdue for routine cholesterol testing, you had to get an appointment with a doctor, which could take two or three weeks, only to have your physician order a panel you knew you needed. Laws in 20 states prohibited patients from seeing their own test results without a doctor’s permission until 2014, when the Department of Health and Human Services revised the rules governing diagnostic labs, granting patients across the country full access to their data. (In several states, regulations designed to prevent healthy people from misinterpreting their results still require physicians to order the lab work.)

As we entered the Era of Quantified Self, blood draws became a popular new tool to track fitness and health. Startups claimed to measure three times as many biomarkers as the panels doctors typically ordered during a physical. Salespeople pitched the services as fully customizable: these tests could unlock the valuable information stored in your blood, enabling you to tweak your diet or personalize training. If doctors once proved reluctant to extract performance-based insights from panels (aside from, say, ruling out serious illness as the cause of fatigue), athletes could now access actionable results via e-mail.

So began the blood-analysis boom. , a Silicon Valley startup, climbed to a $9 billion valuation on the promise of less invasive testing before faltering under regulatory scrutiny. , a service offered by Quest Diagnostics, one of two major companies that dominate lab testing, partnered with the New York Giants to reduce injuries and improve performance. teamed up with Google and Square to use blood analysis to increase employee productivity.Ìę

Then, in 2015, introduced InnerAge, a metric that combines self-reported activity and diet information with five key biomarkers—glucose, vitamin D, testosterone (DHEAS for women), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and alanine aminotransferase (ALT)—to create an easy-to-understand estimate of your biological age. The premise was simple and highly marketable: take a blood test, learn your InnerAge, and then, by targeting your weaknesses to lower it, possibly increase your life span.Ìę

As InsideTracker’s terms and conditions make clear, “THE SITE DOES NOT OFFER MEDICAL ADVICE AND NOTHING CONTAINED IN THE CONTENT IS INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE PROFESSIONAL ADVICE FOR MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS.” It’s a legal disclaimer that doubles as a statement of purpose. If the company judges any biomarkers to be “out of range”—either too high or too low for someone of a certain gender, age, and ethnicity— InsideTracker urges you to consult with your primary-care physician. The service is not a disease detector; it functions more as a coach. For each biomarker, it sets a target range by drawing on a database of 100,000 healthy people and offers blanket recommendations about which lifestyle changes could bring you into the optimal zone. The vast majority of suggestions are dietary (the company provides a staff of nutritionists to answer questions), but some recommendations involve physical activity, such as running at altitude to improve hemoglobin. You could, of course, take the data to a doctor or trainer.Ìę

That’s what 41-year-old Matt Hart did. A former software engineer in Colorado, Hart, who was preparing to run the 484-mile Colorado Trail when I reached him by phone, had been looking for “next-level insights” into overtraining, which was not something his doctor could provide. InsideTracker offered him complimentary tests.

“I’ve been seeing sports doctors my whole life, but this panel was better than any I’ve gotten,” Hart says. If the tests were easy to take and the results were clear, the critical gap was in figuring out what to do with all the data. Foremost, Hart learned that he had extremely low white-blood-cell counts. “It freaked me out,” he said, “until I talked to some experts, who told me, ‘You need to figure this out, but you’re probably not going to die tomorrow.’ ” InsideTracker provided commonsense nudges—eat clean, sleep well—but if the old adage held that you can’t manage what you don’t measure, he was struggling to manage all the things it was now possible to measure.Ìę

Blood testing and analysis may look like a radically different type of training tool, but it works like any feedback loop: you measure yourself, add in variables such as diet and exercise, and then modify your behavior according to the results. Feedback loops break down if the data is unreliable or it becomes impossible to extract any meaningful signal from the statistical noise. So blood tests need to be sophisticated enough to detect subtle lifestyle changes without getting tripped up by natural day-to-day variations.

To see if InsideTracker’s test could thread this needle, I decided on an unconventional experiment: I’d take a baseline panel and then spend at least one week on each of three diet and training plans. At the end of each week, I’d check my biomarkers to see if the tests were filtering out the noise to provide takeaways. First off was the Stress-Free Vacation, with as many swim and sauna sessions as I could handle; then the Old-Man Plan, which involved loading up on high-fiber foods and limiting exercise to long, non-strenuous walks around my neighborhood; and finally, in an attempt to relive my twenties, the Wreck-My-Health Plan, including lots of tequila and takeout, and a raucous wedding in the Catskills. Following that period of variable behavior, I would spend about a month using InsideTracker’s nutrition and exercise recommendations to lower my biological age as much as possible. Gil Blander, the chief scientific officer of InsideTracker, recommends scheduling blood draws quarterly. He also cautioned that, within the time frame of our experiment, some biomarkers could be slow to respond, while others might not show any significant change at all.Ìę

For help interpreting the tests, I enlisted two experts. is a physiologist at the Mayo Clinic whose deep bark of a voice lends extra authority to his advice. When I called, Joyner challenged me to find evidence supporting the idea that long-term testing improves health outcomes. He also cautioned against over-interpreting results. “Some of that stuff can change really rapidly, but it doesn’t mean anything,” he explained. Testosterone might vary if I exercised but also if I watched a violent movie, browsed some porn, or loaded up on alcohol.Ìę

I also called on Eric Topol, founding director of the in La Jolla, California, thinking he might offer a radically different opinion based on his reputation as a patient advocate. But when I peppered him with questions about specific biomarkers, such as iron and C-reactive protein, he told me that the panels being marketed toward athletes have little or no value.Ìę

“What about testosterone?” I asked.Ìę

“No, that’s predatory” he said, referring to how hormone testing is often used to sell drugs.Ìę

“Vitamin D?”

“That’s a grossly overused test.”Ìę

It wasn’t just that the blood analysis was useless, he explained; in Topol’s view, it had the potential to cause real harm in that it sometimes results in false positives. At best that means more tests. At worst you could end up taking medications you don’t need. He sounded pretty convinced. “Don’t do it,” Topol said. “Don’t go there.”Ìę

When I explained that I would probably be proceeding anyway, Topol agreed to respect my wishes and guide me through the process. After all, he said, “Once you have data, you can’t ignore it.”

The Stress-Free VacationÌę

Starting InnerAge: 46.5
Ending InnerAge: 43.2Ìę

I began my relaxing time off by alternating between the hot sauna and an ice-cold shower until it felt like I was floating. Then I paused for a six-pack and some salty popcorn. InsideTracker had e-mailed me to say that the results from my baseline test were in, so I cracked a beer and began poring over the data. The algorithm pegged me at 46.5—a full 12 years older than I am. My vitamin D was low enough, it said, to warrant a doctor visit, and my triglycerides appeared quite high. So did my total cholesterol. I felt a flush of embarrassment. But as I scrolled down, I saw that most biomarkers—testosterone, hemoglobin, sodium—were marked green. I seemed mostly optimized, and the only real surprise was that ALT, a proxy for liver function, appeared totally normal. Maybe they were someone else’s results.Ìę

At three the next morning another e-mail arrived, imploring me to share my results with a doctor. Perhaps it was a legal precaution; the urgency seemed unnecessary for someone with low vitamin D (36 percent of InsideTracker’s users have that) and out-of-whack cholesterol.Ìę

I spent the next several days biking to the beach, and upon returning to Brooklyn, I went to yoga and scheduled my next blood draw. The results showed that a relaxing week in the sun had only slightly improved my vitamin D. My triglyceride levels were nearly halved, however, and my cholesterol was down. High-sensitivity c-reactive protein had climbed outside the optimal range, which can come from banging your shins, suffering from heart disease, or, probably in my case, riding some forty-plus cumulative miles to the water. I’d made a point of loading up on salty snacks, but my sodium levels verged on low. Overall my biological age had dropped three years to a youthful 43.2. No real surprise: vacations are good and never long enough.Ìę

The Old-Man Plan

Starting InnerAge: 43.2Ìę
Ending InnerAge: 44.8

Next on my list of strategies was an attempt to test InsideTracker’s algorithm by temporarily acting as if I were a centenarian. Every day, my lunch included mackerel or sardines, which are oily fish high in fatty acids that are supposed to be really good for you—and, I should add, delicious. I upped my fiber intake and bought a massive bag of wet, wrinkled prunes. Without going into too much detail, the diet made me exceedingly regular, and my bowel movements‚ like all the physical activity I performed that week, were non-strenuous in the extreme.Ìę

Then another nurse arrived for a blood draw, and the results revealed that adding fiber to my diet resulted in a fairly dramatic drop in cholesterol. But my InnerAge had increased 1.6 years. This was shocking—exactly the opposite of what I’d expected—until I learned that the algorithm weighs blood glucose heavily and my results showed a nearly imperceptible three-milligram (2.7 percent) increase.Ìę

When I called Joyner, I asked whether he could also estimate my biological age based on these results.

“I don’t have a guess really,” he said. Joyner was far more curious about my weight, my height, my body-mass index, and the waist size of my jeans. What he was getting at, it seemed, was how much abdominal fat I was carrying around. More so than overall weight, belly fat increases your risk of premature death.Ìę

His advice boiled down to the straightforward and altogether unsurprising: lose some weight. In a way, taking the blood tests felt like I’d paid a mechanic for a comprehensive evaluation, only to discover that the fix involved nothing more than regular oil changes. They largely confirmed something I could have learned from stepping on a bathroom scale. But knowing what I needed to do wasn’t enough, and if there was one thing periodic testing did, it was provide continual updates and reminders.

The Wreck-My-Health Plan

Starting InnerAge: 44.8
Ending InnerAge: 41.8

First came the tequila palomas, and the week progressed into spicy takeout noodles and sausage pizza. My parents visited and treated me to a half-pound of barbecued beef brisket. Then I went to a wedding upstate, drank too much rye whiskey, and passed out with an unsmoked Parliament cigarette in my shirt pocket. I woke up feeling slightly hungover but happy to be around friends, one of whom compared my dancing on the previous night to someone being electrocuted.Ìę

The following day, I had my fourth scheduled blood draw. The results arrived, followed by a feeling of bewilderment. Probably because of the drinking, my testosterone levels were up slightly and my blood glucose remained out of the optimal zone. But somehow the net effect was a more youthful biological age: 41.8. Perhaps I had subconsciously started to change my behavior. It all made little sense in terms of overall energy intake and expenditure. But if I took into account the unquantifiable benefit of surrounding myself with fresh air and sunshine and blazing bonfires, was it just the feeling of being young again that made me so? It struck me as both obvious and peculiar.Ìę

I pulled up the line graph that showed the slow, plodding descent of my InnerAge. It was reassuring. But it also filled me with doubt: Were these signs of actual change or just a comforting illusion—a fancy way of converting vague impressions into seemingly incontrovertible proof?

For Amelia Boone, a 32-year-old Spartan Race star who took complimentary tests with InsideTracker, it was a mix of both. Boone’s initial results showed dangerously high levels of the liver enzyme aspartate transaminase. (At one point, she admitted to me that it had caused her InnerAge to climb to 51.) She could not recall having any alcohol in the two weeks leading up to her blood draw, but it soon dawned on her: she was taking a lot of ibuprofen to compete with a bum hip. Then she switched from pills to turmeric and her readings normalized. Otherwise, it wasn’t clear that any of this had improved her performance. “This is going to sound terrible,” she says, “but I was winning races before, and I am winning races after.”

The Young-Blood Plan

Starting InnerAge: 41.8
Ending InnerAge: 48.6Ìę

The final strategy to lower my biological age began with a vegan diet. I even gave up the milk in my coffee. But it wasn’t long before I felt too exhausted to think, or run, straight. Almost a week went by before I logged on to InsideTracker and looked at my Food Basket, a tool that generates an entire day’s worth of dietary recommendations tailored, for instance, to someone like me with high levels of triglycerides and cholesterol. A single day included four cups of fiber-rich breakfast cereals, along with prunes, adzuki beans, edamame, and chickpeas.

It wasn’t exactly a meal plan, but the overall message seemed clear. I settled on a fairly monotonous diet, intending to forgo legged creatures and eat more fibrous whole-grain cereals and beans.Ìę

This optimization phase involved some things I never thought possible: I went to ImaxShift, an indoor spin class under the Brooklyn Bridge that plays thumping house music and projects videos of majestic coastlines, scantily clad women, and an urban obstacle course. And sure enough, when I left the class, my bathroom scale registered a change: I was lighter than usual, though it was probably due to dehydration. Then I signed up for some CrossFit classes and practiced my butterfly sit-ups.

About the only beer I had during the first seven days of my killjoy plan was at the New York premiere of Personal Gold. The film follows the U.S. women’s track-cycling team in the lead-up to the London Olympics. I sat next to , who was one of the team’s coaches and also the film’s producer. It was the 50th public screening, but he still whisper-shouted “Girl power!” excitedly at key moments. Christopherson, who at 19 was a track-cycling prodigy, never medaled and was so fed up with widespread doping in the sport that he quit competing in 2000 and took an office job working 60-hour weeks. One day he felt chest pains, and as he rode in the back of an ambulance on the way to the emergency room, he wondered how he’d gone from an Olympic athlete with 25-inch quadriceps to a guy who suddenly felt like he was due for open-heart surgery. Fortunately, the pains turned out to be stress related, but Christopherson was shocked when the doctor prescribed him a pharmaceutical fix. Drugs were a superficial shortcut, he thought, and exactly why he’d dropped out of competitive cycling.Ìę

Christopherson returned to racing. In the buildup to the 2012 Games, he signed on with the U.S. track-cycling team’s coaching staff. He outfitted three members of the women’s pursuit squad with glucose monitors, kept close tabs on their sleep schedules, and gave them InsideTracker’s blood tests. Then he tweaked their routines based on the results. In the end, the Americans managed to shave a remarkable six seconds off their time and placed second.

After the screening, many audience members (myself included) wondered if data tracking was the reason these cyclists had gone from underdogs to silver medalists. After all, athletes of every ability face an array of confusing variables. How do you track multiple interventions and decide what really works? As Christopherson pointed out, however, the bigger challenge is what doctors call compliance—figuring out what drives people to take action and transforming discrete bits of data into a concrete, long-term plan. “Most people don’t think in terms of like, ‘I want to extend my life by ten years, so I’m going to spend money on this test and use this device,’” he said. “They think, ‘I want to look hot in a swimsuit next month at the beach.’ ”

Eventually, after about a month on the Young-Blood Plan, I managed to lose eight pounds and to make some commonsense changes I had long been aware would improve my well-being. By some measures—vitamin D, hemoglobin, testosterone—my health improved. But the limitations of our experiment made other results difficult to analyze. For instance, my blood glucose remained high, but that can take months or even years to lower. And the substantial increase of a key blood biomarker indicating inflammation was probably a result of overdoing it with deadlifts and box jumps, as well as a stewing ear infection the day I had my blood drawn. The net effect: my InnerAge skyrocketed to a whopping 48.6.

Conclusions

What did I learn? You can skip these tests and still pay attention to your body. Don’t get me wrong: I was impressed with the ease of the process and the crystal-clear presentation of analysis and data. I was even convinced by much of the science underpinning InsideTracker’s algorithms. Athletic training is clouded with folklore, and blood tests enable you to cut through the haze. But I think it’s premature to recommend the currently available services.

I might have seen more substantial results had I tested less frequently over a greater time period. In a statement, InsideTracker said that while biology is complex, blood analysis can lead to big improvements over the long haul: “We have seen the power of science and data turned into simplicity and clarity so each person knows exactly how they need to eat, sleep, and move in order to take their body to the next level. And we want to give them the motivation and expert guidance they need to feel empowered and in control.”

Still, I began to wonder if these tests create problems where none existed before. Once you identify an issue that no one knows exactly how to address, you might even make the situation worse by tinkering with it. There’s a great Yiddish word that seems to encapsulate this idea: farpotshket, which roughly translates as “all fucked up because you tried to fix it.” That’s what Topol was getting at when he attempted to steer me away from testing in the first place. He encouraged me instead to pick up a decidedly low-tech alternative: a book published in 1932 called . “Your body is wise,” Topol said, “these tests are not.” Ìę Ìę

Peter Andrey Smith () writes for the New York Times Magazine. This is his first story for șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.

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