Robert Huizenga

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 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. This book was the basis for Oliver Stone’s "Any Given Sunday"; Matthew Modine played Huizenga in the movie. Huizenga sued Warner Brothers-AOL over screenwriter and source material credit after the movie was released and won an undisclosed settlement. 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. 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.

Huezinga was also 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 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,Joan and Melissa; Joan knows Best, Taboo, Dale Con Ganas, STRONG (NBC 2016) Into the Wild, Gone Girl and The Chilean Mining Disaster. 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. 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.

In January 2013, Dr. Huizenga will open The Clinic by Dr. Huizenga, a combination resort, spa, and medical facility that will focus on body optimization as well as the treatment of obesity and obesity-related illness. Joining Dr. Huizenga at The Clinic, will be Dr. Jennifer Kerns, a former Biggest Loser contestant who is also a physician specializing in diagnosing and treating obesity, and Dr. Michael Dansinger, a nutritionist and expert in weight loss

Personal life

Huizenga has deep sports and science-writer roots; his 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, his father 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. Robert Huizenga was married to former playboy bunny and model, Wanda Huizenga. They have three children Ashley, Troy, Hayley.