Robert Huizenga

Dr. Robert Huizenga, also known as "Dr. H" on 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.

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 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 the Los Angeles Raiders' team physician and for 4 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 reportedly served as 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 was a defense witness in the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial. 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 had recurring roles as writer, correspondent and advisor on numerous TV shows and movies, including, most recently, The Biggest Loser, Extreme Makeover, American Gladiators, Student Body, Dance Your Ass Off, Fourth and Long, Into the Wild, and Gone Girl. Past consulting jobs include Trapper John, M.D., Nurses, Empty Nest and House of God.

In 2008, 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 NBC's The Biggest Loser.[8][9][10][11][12]

In January 2013, he opened "The Clinic",[13][14] a combination resort, spa, and medical facility focusing on body optimization as well as the treatment of obesity and obesity-related illness.[15][16]

In 2019, Huizenga released Sex, Lies and STDs: The Must Read Before You Swipe Right. The initial chapters chronicle Huizenga's intern days when he cared for one of the first individuals diagnosed with HIV. It later chronicles the November 2015 events surrounding Charlie Sheen's announcement of his HIV status on The Today Show. The book ends with a summary section about STD prevention, presentation, and treatment.

Personal life

Huizenga's father, John R. 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.[17]

Robert Huizenga and his former wife, Wanda, have three children.

References
  1. Smith, Shelley "High Cost of Glory." Sports Illustrated, July 8, 1991, accessed December 7, 2010
    "Huizenga, an internist practicing in Beverly Hills, was one of the Los Angeles Raiders' team doctors. 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 December 7, 2010.
  7. Friedman, Roger "O.J. Defense Doctor: 'Some Guilty People Are Set Free'", FOXNews.com June 3, 2004; accessed December 7, 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./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, Florida, USA.
  13. "The Clinic by Dr. H | Weight Loss Program, Weight Loss and Wellness Clinic". theclinicbydrh.com.
  15. The Biggest Loser - All Bios, NBC.com; accessed June 14, 2020.
  16. The Biggest Loser - All Bios - Newest, NBC.com; accessed June 14, 2020.
  17. Huizenga, J. Cold Fusion: the Scientific Fiasco of the Century. University of Rochester Press, 1992.
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