Roizen, Michael F. 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born January 7, 1946, in Buffalo, NY; married Nancy J. Mrazek (a developmental pediatrician), April 15, 1975; children: Jeffrey, Jennifer. Education: Williams College, A.B (with honors), 1967; University of California, San Francisco, M.D., 1971. Hobbies and other interests: Playing squash.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Chicago, IL. Office—The Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH, 44195.

CAREER:

Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA, intern, 1972, resident in medicine, 1973; National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, research associate in pharmacology, 1973-75; University of California, San Francisco, resident in anesthesia, 1977, assistant professor, 1977-81, associate professor of anesthesiology, 1981-85; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, professor of internal medicine and chairman of department; SUNY Upstate, Syracuse, NY, dean and vice president; Biotechnology Research Corporation of Central New York, CEO; Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, chairman, 2005—. Cofounder, RealAge; chairman, RealAge scientific advisory board; former member, Food and Drug Administration.

MEMBER:

American Board of Anesthesiologists, Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, Alpha Omega Alpha, Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Anesthesia for Vascular Surgery, Churchill Livingstone (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Lee A. Fleisher) Essence of Anesthesia Practice, Saunders (Philadelphia, PA), 1997.

(With Elizabeth Anne Stephenson) RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be?, Cliff Street Books (New York, NY), 1999.

(With John La Puma) The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat, Cliff Street Books (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Memhet C. Oz) You: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Mehmet C. Oz) You: The Smart Patient: An Insider's Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment, Free Press (New York, NY), 2006.

(With Mehmet C. Oz) You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management, Thorndike Press (Waterville, ME), 2006.

(With Tracy Hafen and Lawrence A. Armour) The RealAge Workout: Maximum Health, Minimum Work, Collins (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to Anesthesia, third edition, edited by Ronald D. Miller, Churchill Livingstone (New York, NY), 1990. Contributor to periodicals and editor or associate editor of various periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael F. Roizen is an American doctor who is probably best known, at least to the general public, as the developer of RealAge, an index for determining an individual's relative age on the basis of health, lifestyle, and diet. "Calendar age is measured by the number of birthdays you've had," he told a Seniors Today interviewer. "Your RealAge can be years younger or older, depending on how you choose to live your life."

Roizen articulated the RealAge concept in the 1999 publication, RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be? which he wrote with Elizabeth Anne Stephenson. The authors discuss in the book a range of factors that determine the aging process, contending that smoking cigarettes, for example, significantly contributes to aging, as does high blood pressure, stress, and a sedentary lifestyle. The authors add, though, that vitamin intake, lower blood pressure, flossing, regular exercise, and sexual activity can all contribute to the lowering of one's RealAge. Roizen, for example, evaluated himself in 2001, when he was fifty-five, and discovered—on the basis of his eating habits, exercise routines, and health indicators such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels—that his RealAge is thirty-eight. As Julie Cellini observed in Seniors Today: "He practices what he preaches."

Roizen followed RealAge with The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat, in which he advises readers on the health benefits of various foods, including tomato products mixed with a small amount of fat, and warns about more harmful edibles. A Publishers Weekly reviewer stated that The RealAge Diet "does an excellent job of analyzing specific foods and explaining their benefits or risks." The critic added that Roizen's book constitutes "a refreshing and accessible approach to an age-old problem."

Departing from the ‘RealAge’ name, Roizen composed an informative medical self-help book for the general public with Mehmet C. Oz in their 2005 work, You: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger. After the success of their book, Roizen and Oz wrote additional books for the series. In You: The Smart Patient: An Insider's Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment, the authors give advice to patients on how to find the best medical care. Hoping that the book will better inform patients and save time for them and their caregivers, Roizen and Oz include tips and hints like how to find the right doctor. A critic writing in the Saturday Evening Post praised You: The Smart Patient as "a light, humorous, fun, slightly offbeat, and totally useful book."

In another of the sequels to You: The Owner's Manual, Roizen and Oz produced a diet book titled You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management. The book not only provides instruction on losing weight, but also on losing abdominal fat. The book is roughly divided into two halves, the first half provides details about digestion, metabolism, and weight loss, and the second half coaches the reader to apply this information to lose weight. Janice Flahiff, a Library Journal critic, commented that while the book is "less comprehensive" than comparable books on the same topic, it is a "fascinating, informative read."

In addition to his writings for the general public, Roizen has published various works in the field of anesthesiology. In 1990 he served as editor of Anesthesia for Vascular Surgery, which presents articles and essays from individuals described by M. Stanton-Hicks, in his New England Journal of Medicine review, as "authors who represent the established practice at major institutions where high volumes of vascular surgery are performed." Stanton-Hicks called the book "an invaluable resource." Roizen also provided a contribution to the third edition of Anesthesia, a publication edited by Ronald D. Miller. Kenneth L. Blazier and Bucknam McPeek, in another New England Journal of Medicine analysis, acknowledged the book for its "in-depth clinical and scientific scope."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

AORN Journal, October, 2006, Helen Beckwith, review of You: The Smart Patient: An Insider's Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment, p. 687.

Library Journal, September 15, 2006, Janice Flahiff, review of You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management, p. 80.

New England Journal of Medicine, July 5, 1990, M. Stanton-Hicks, review of Anesthesia for Vascular Surgery, pp. 68-69; May 16, 1991, Kenneth L. Blazier and Bucknam McPeek, review of Anesthesia, pp. 1442-1443.

Publishers Weekly, April 16, 2001, review of The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat, p. 57.

Saturday Evening Post May-June 2006, review of You: The Smart Patient, p. 90.

ONLINE

RealAge Home Pagehttp://www.realage.com (January 30, 2006).

Seniors Today,http://www.s-t.com/seniors/ (April 22, 2002), Julie Cellini, "Forget How Old You Are, What's Your Real Age?"