Scientific Advisory Board

Michael F. Roizen, MD, is the cocreator of the RealAge Test and the cofounder of RealAge, Inc. He currently serves as both the chief wellness officer of the Cleveland Clinic and the chairman of its Wellness Institute. He is board certified in internal medicine and anesthesiology. Dr. Roizen is 64 calendar years old, but his RealAge is only 43.8.

His first general-audience book -- RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be? -- became a New York Times #1 best-seller, was named Best Wellness Book of 1999 by Books for a Better Life Awards, and has been translated into more than 20 languages. It was followed by a series of successful RealAge books coauthored by Dr. Roizen, including The RealAge Diet, Cooking the RealAge Way, and The RealAge Workout. In 2004, he published The RealAge Makeover, an update of the original RealAge book. Dr. Roizen then teamed up with Mehmet Oz, MD, to create their series of best-selling YOU books, which began with YOU: The Owner's Manual and now includes YOU: On a Diet, YOU: Being Beautiful, YOU: The Smart Patient, YOU: Staying Young, and their latest, YOU: Having a Baby.

The always-busy Dr. Roizen is past chairman of a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee and a former editor for 6 medical journals. He has published more than 165 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 100 textbook chapters, 30 editorials, and 4 medical books; he has also received many U.S. and foreign patents. Dr. Roizen has given more than 1,400 lectures to professional medical groups and has been recognized with more than 20 professional lectureships. He is based in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, where he lives with his wife, pediatrician Nancy Roizen, MD. They have two grown children who are also pursuing medical careers.

Mehmet C. Oz, MD, manages multiple lives. He is host of The Dr. Oz Show, vice chair and professor of surgery at Columbia University, a member of the RealAge Scientific Advisory Board, and director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Oz has authored more than 400 original publications, book chapters, and medical books and has received several patents.

Heart surgeon Oz is also the author of the award-winning Healing from the Heart and the coauthor -- with Dr. Roizen, the other half of the "YOU Docs" team -- of a string of New York Times #1 best-sellers, including YOU: The Owner's Manual, YOU: On a Diet, YOU: Staying Young, YOU: The Smart Patient, YOU: Being Beautiful, and their newest, YOU: Having a Baby.

Previously, Dr. Oz was a featured health expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show for many seasons and also served as chief medical consultant to Discovery Communications. His medical work has been honored by Time, Esquire, Harvard (his alma mater), the World Economic Forum, Hippocrates, Castle Connolly, and others. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Lisa, and their four children.

Keith Roach, MD, is chief medical officer of RealAge and a long-standing member of its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr Roach was part of the original scientific team put together by Dr. Roizen that developed and patented the RealAge Test. In addition to his RealAge duties, Dr. Roach is an associate professor of both clinical medicine and of public health/epidemiology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University; he is also an associate attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Dr. Roach, who is board certified in internal medicine, has a deep interest in disease prevention, cost-benefit analysis, and geriatric health care. He has lectured widely, presented and published frequently, received many honors, and contributed to several books. In addition to practicing medicine, he continues to teach one day a week at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where he’s an award-winning physician/professor. Dr. Roach is based in the New York City area, where he lives with his wife and three children. His calendar age is 45, but his RealAge is 37.3, thanks in part to his early-morning triathlon training.

Pediatrician Jennifer Trachtenberg, MD -- known to her patients as Dr. Jen -- serves as chief pediatric officer of RealAge. She is a nationally recognized parenting expert and the author of Good Kids, Bad Habits: The RealAge Guide to Raising Healthy Children. She is completing her second book, The Smart Parent's Guide to Getting Your Kids Through Checkups, Illnesses and Accidents: Expert Answers to the Questions Parents Ask Most, which will be published in March 2010. Dr. Jen has practiced pediatric and adolescent medicine for more than 14 years and maintains a successful private practice in New York City.

She is also an assistant clinical professor in pediatrics at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a mom. Dr. Trachtenberg has appeared on NBC's Today show and CNN's Headline News and has been widely interviewed by magazines and newspapers and on the radio. She has written articles on various health and parenting topics, including child development and childhood obesity. She and her husband live just outside of New York City, where they are raising their three children.

John La Puma, MD, is a long-time member of the RealAge Scientific Advisory Board and author of ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine: A Food Lover’s Road Map to Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Getting Really Healthy. Before writing his first book, he coauthored The RealAge Diet and Cooking the RealAge Way with Dr. Roizen.

A graduate of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Dr. La Puma completed the first postgraduate fellowship in the country in medical ethics and general internal medicine at the University of Chicago. But then -- long fascinated by the relationship between food and health -- Dr. La Puma took a break from his medical career and cooked for 4 years at chef Rick Bayless's famous Topolobampo/Frontera Grill. (He had already completed the professional cooking curriculum at The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, a division of Le Cordon Bleu.) Since then, he has combined his two areas of expertise -- food and medicine -- to found California’s Santa Barbara Institute for Medical Nutrition and Healthy Weight, a division of CHEF Clinic™ (Cooking, Healthy Eating and Fitness Clinic). Now based in Santa Barbara, Dr. La Puma practices preventive internal medicine, directs the institute's executive coaching program for weight loss and health, and shares his healthy-eating recipes at www.drjohnlapuma.com.

Skin specialist Amy Wechsler, MD, has a rare combination of skills: She is board certified in both dermatology and psychiatry. As a result, she brings an unusually insightful approach to the RealAge Scientific Advisory Board and to her dermatology practice in New York City. Intrigued from the start by the mind-body connection, Dr. Wechsler did her undergraduate work at Duke University and earned an MD from Cornell University Medical College. She is affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and she is a member of the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Wechsler wrote her first book, The Mind-Beauty Connection, shortly after joining RealAge’s Scientific Advisory Board. She appears frequently on television and in print, including on the Today show and in the New York Times, Marie Claire, Elle, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She and her husband live in Manhattan, where they are raising two children.