Robert Huizenga

Robert Huizenga, M.D., also known as Dr. H on the television show The Biggest Loser, is a former team physician for the Los Angeles Raiders. He has made multiple appearances on reality television shows, and is the author of a book that was partial inspiration for Oliver Stone's film Any Given Sunday.

Early life and education

Huizenga grew up in Rochester, New York, and was valedictorian and all-county football, wrestling and track at Penfield High. At the University of Michigan, he was honors math and biology and an NCAA All-American wrestler. While at Harvard Medical School, he was an immunology major and an all-star rugby player. He did his medical residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, focusing on internal medicine and sports medicine, and was appointed Chief Medical Resident, following which he entered a pulmonary fellowship before leaving to serve as a team physician from 1983 to 1989 for the Los Angeles Raiders as well as to be the national medical correspondent for Breakaway (FOX) and later for The Home Show (ABC).

Career

After serving for eight years as LA Raiders team physician and four years as president and president- elect for the NFL Physician's Society, he wrote You’re OK, It’s Just a Bruise—A Doctor’s Sideline Secrets about Pro-Football’s Most Outrageous Team, which provoked a national debate on anabolic steroids and other ergogenic (sport enhancing) aids over a decade before the senate “steroid” hearings.^[1][2] This book was the basis for Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday”; Matthew Modine played Huizenga in the movie.^[3] Huizenga sued Warner Brothers-AOL over screenwriter and source material credit after the movie was released and won an undisclosed settlement.^[4] He continues to be active in the world of professional sports, being called in 2009 as an expert witness by the House Judiciary Committee looking into catastrophic brain injuries in football players.^[5] Huizenga has repeatedly been interviewed as a health expert on CBS, NBC and ABC Evening News, Nightline and Larry King Live as well in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and other national print media. He has also been called as a medical expert in multiple high profile legal cases including the criminal (defense) and civil (prosecution) cases of OJ Simpson, anabolic steroid, and Botox trials. Simpson defense lawyer Robert Shapiro chose to take Simpson to Huizenga for medical examination three days after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and delivered testimony of his findings at trial^[6][7] He has recurring roles as writer, correspondent and advisor on numerous TV shows and movies including most recently The Biggest Loser, Extreme Makeover, Work Out, American Gladiators, Student Body, Dance Your Ass Off, Diagnosis Live, Fourth and Long and Into the Wild. Past consulting jobs include Trapper John, M.D., Nurses, Empty Nest and House of God.

In 2008 Dr. Rob Huizenga authored Where Did All the Fat Go? The Wow! Prescription to Reach Your Ideal Weight and Stay There, about his straightforward obesity treatment based on knowledge gained while working with professional athletes and on five years of research on over 300 overweight applicants to NBC’s The Biggest Loser.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} The WOW! Rx merges cutting edge exercise, nutrition, attention to sleep, and psychology and group dynamics together with old-fashioned hard work. Huizenga also has a private practice.^[13][14]

Personal life

Huizenga has deep sports and science-writer roots; his father, John Robert Huizenga, was an all-star basketball and baseball player before serving as a member of the Manhattan Project and later receiving the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for nuclear physics for his nuclear fusion research (including co-discovery of Einsteinium and Fermium, element numbers 99 and 100). After Drs. Fleischmann and Pons announced they had created sustained nuclear fusion, John Huizenga co-chaired the U.S. President-created Department of Energy panel charged with investigating these claims, then penned Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century, about his experiences.^[15]

References

1. ^ Smith, Shelley "High Cost of Glory." Sports Illustrated, July 8, 1991, accessed 7 December 2010 "Huizenga, an internist practicing in Beverly Hills, was one of the Los Angeles Raiders' team doctors from 1983 until last fall. Sources close to the doctor say that Huizenga quit because the Raiders refused to tell a player that the player had a heart condition. Huizenga says that he resigned because of a 'misunderstanding about the care the players were receiving.'"
2. ^ "High Cost Of Glory". Sports Illustrated, November 14, 1994.
3. ^ Hamburg,E. JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone & Me. Public Affairs Publishing. 305 pages, 2002
4. ^ Freeman, Mike. "Football: Notebook; Stone Seeks Accuracy in ‘Any Given Sunday’". The New York Times section 8 page 2 December 19, 1999
5. ^ Schwartz, Alan. “Congress to Hold Hearing on N.F.L. Head Injuries”. The New York Times page D2 October 2, 2009
6. ^ "Testimony of Dr. Robert Huizenga, July 14, 1995 9:20 A.M." Accessed 7 December 2010
7. ^ Friedman, Roger "O.J. Defense Doctor: 'Some Guilty People Are Set Free'" FOXNews 3 June 2004; accessed 7 December 2010.
8. ^ Huizenga, Rob. Where Did All the Fat Go? The WOW Prescription to Reach Your Ideal Weight and Stay There. Tallfellow Press. 315 pages, 2008
9. ^ Huizenga, R. "Impact of Incentives on Dramatic Weight Loss and CAD Risk Reduction in Sedentary Class II/III Obese Individuals." Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise; Vol 41, No 5, (S563), May 2009
10. ^ H. S. Barden, M. K. Oates and R. Huizenga. "Effect of Diet and Exercise-induced Weight Loss on Regional and Total Body BMD of Obese Subjects." Journal of Bone Minereral Research; 22 Suppl 1:S2-510, (S192), Sept 2007
11. ^ Oates, M and Huizenga, R. "Body composition with iDXA in obese subjects with and without metabolic syndrome." Journal of Clinical Densitometry; Volume 10, Issue 2, (S207-208), 2007
12. ^ Huizenga, R., MD and Oates, MK. “Precision of Lunar IDXA Total Body BMD and Composition Measurements on Obese Subjects”. ISCD Annual Meeting; March 2007, Tampa, FL, USA.
13. ^ Larry King Live Transcript. Retrieved 7 December 2010.
14. ^ Associated Press. "Sylvester Stallone fined, orderd to pay costs for importing banned drugs".The Bryan Times, 18 May 2007]
15. ^ Huizenga, J. Cold Fusion: the Scientific Fiasco of the Century. University of Rochester Press. 259 pages, 1992

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