Chicago physician Michael Roizen never fancied himself a modern-day Ponce de Leon, scouring medical studies for the secrets of youth.
He simply was seeking a way to persuade a patient, a friend named Simon with severe arterial disease, to give up smoking.
Roizen went so far as to phone Simon every day for a year to ask if he had quit.
Then he did some math for his patient, using research data to calculate the years that smoking shaves off a person’s life. The exercise put 49-year-old Simon’s “RealAge,” as Roizen calls it, at 57. The revelation prompted Simon to stop smoking, begin eating right and exercising. And though 15 years have passed and Simon just celebrated his 65th birthday, his RealAge, according to Roizen’s calculations, now is 53.
As an internist and head of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Chicago, Roizen treated countless people who couldn’t find the motivation to make the right health choices. He suspected what ultimately worked for Simon might hit a nerve for others as well.
“RealAge: Are You As Young as You Can Be?” became an international best-seller, even nudging out a Harry Potter book for the No. 1 spot on the Amazon.com list. His subsequent Web site, RealAge.com, gained more than 1.9 million registered users in less than a year. And his new book “The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger With What You Eat,” co-written with John La Puma, reached best-seller status in markets across the country shortly after its April release, according to Amazon.com.
The self-test in the first RealAge book and Web site identified 127 comprehensive factors–based on a review of 25,000 studies and ranging from daily teeth flossing to frequent monogamous sex–that can add or subtract years from a person’s life. But a common theme began to echo through the 150 or so e-mail letters Roizen began to receive each day.
“Most of them were from people wanting to know how to translate anti-aging nutrients identified in the first book into a diet they would enjoy,” Roizen said.
That’s when Roizen sought out La Puma, a fellow internist who also had spent the last several years of his career devising effective ways for patients to take charge of their health.
Though the most powerful tool in Roizen’s doctor’s bag turned out to be a calculator, La Puma’s was a chef’s knife.
As one of the first physicians in the country to complete a medical-ethics fellowship and also a prolific author on the topic, La Puma was sought by hospitals to help sort through dilemmas surrounding terminally ill patients. Many of these patients faced premature death as a result of diseases such as hypertension and diabetes that research links at least in part to diet. He saw earlier stages of these diseases in patients he treated each day in his Chicago practice.
But, like Roizen, La Puma found that persistent reminders to do the right thing–cut back on burgers and bacon, for example–weren’t enough to change patients’ behavior. He decided he needed to make them crave healthy foods. So La Puma enrolled at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago and began moonlighting as a chef at Topolobampo, award-winning chef Rick Bayless’ River North eatery, to learn professional techniques for developing flavor.
Soon, La Puma, who now directs the Cooking, Healthy Eating and Fitness (CHEF) clinic at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, no longer was using his prescription pad simply to order pills but also to jot down recipes for delicious and healthy dishes he created.
La Puma’s recipes, such as pan-grilled citrus salmon over Asian slaw and Portuguese bean soup, pepper the pages of “The RealAge Diet.”
So do matter-of-fact calculations of the sort Roizen first did for Simon: a single Krispy Kreme doughnut, for example, will age you by more than three days, according to Roizen. But eating 13 ounces of fish a week makes your RealAge 1.6 to 3.4 years younger, and four daily servings of flavonoid-rich foods such as green tea, broccoli and apples peel as many as 6 years off your age.
Roizen and La Puma offer an anti-aging alternative to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines, reshaping the food pyramid into an hourglass. The widest parts of the figure contain foods such as fruits, vegetables, fish, cereal and nuts, which the authors claim retard or reverse aging. The narrow neck of the hourglass represents foods that should be eaten sparingly: red meat and saturated fats; equally unhealthy trans fats found in margarine and other hydrogenated oils; and simple sugars, which age arteries by causing wide fluctuations in blood-sugar levels.
Making changes outlined in the book is fairly easy, even when someone else is doing the cooking, the authors say. When eating out, they explain, request simple substitutions when needed. Meeting for lunch at a restaurant one recent afternoon, Roizen and La Puma demonstrated: In place of the fried tortilla chips that usually arrive with the guacamole dip, they asked for soft corn tortillas, which happen to be fat-free. The waiter readily obliged.
“It doesn’t take any more time to do this sort of thing, like asking for olive oil on the table rather than butter or filling your candy bowl at home with cherry tomatoes instead of leftover Easter candy. But it’s amazing how small changes can make huge differences in your life,” said La Puma, who is 44 and said his RealAge is 31.
Diane Mielnikowski realized a couple of years ago that she needed to make changes in her diet and lifestyle. “I was only 38, but I felt like I was 65,” she said. “I was always feeling sluggish and having a hard time keeping weight off.”
One night Mielnikowski ducked into a downtown bookstore after work, waiting for traffic to die down before commuting home to the western suburbs. There she heard Roizen talk about his RealAge concepts at an author event. Afterward, she made an appointment and, as his patient, began practicing RealAge Diet concepts a year before the book came out.
Turning back the clock
Mielnikowski soon was exercising regularly, beginning with a weight-lifting regimen that alone allowed her to subtract nearly two years off her RealAge. In addition, she stopped taking nutritional supplements that Roizen and La Puma deem unnecessary and potentially harmful, such as iron and vitamin A and certain herbs, and instead focused on anti-aging essentials: vitamins C, D, folate and calcium.
The marketing professional also upped her intake of fruits and vegetables and employed RealAge tips, such as eating small amounts of healthy fats–peanut butter on whole-wheat toast, for example–early in the day and before meals to curb her appetite and to aid absorption of fat-soluble antioxidant nutrients in other foods.
Today at age 40, Mielnikowski said, she feels better and more energetic than ever. She lost 20 pounds and said her RealAge is 32 and counting–backward.
“I don’t jump in and do five [RealAge recommendations] at once; I do one thing now and again, and I’ve found the behavior sticks because I’m not stressing myself.”
Reaching benefit boundaries
There are limits, of course, to how far back the RealAge regimen can turn back the hands of time, a point Roizen realized he had to make clear after sending draft chapters of “RealAge” to his father, a retired English teacher.
“One day he called me and said, `Mike, I’m doing the following things; now I’m minus 10 and waiting to be born.’ And it obviously doesn’t work that way,” said Roizen, who has a chronological age of 55 and a RealAge of 39. “The numbers represent the optimal benefit of a given factor and the median for everything else. The more you do, the less credit you get for any one thing, but the more overall credit you get.”
Food choices alone can make your RealAge as much as 13 years older than the average person of your calendar age, the authors point out. But making wiser choices can reduce your RealAge as many as 14 years. The maximum RealAge reduction is about 25 years, depending on a person’s calendar age.
Dr. David Schiedermayer, a general internist and professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, said he is not interested in the anti-aging component of the RealAge Diet. And he stifled a yawn when he first got a copy, even though he admires Roizen and La Puma’s work and has even done some medical-ethics writing with La Puma in the past.
“I looked at it and thought, `Oh, another diet book,'” Schiedermayer said of his initial reaction. “But it’s more than that; it’s really a way to shift the American palate.”
Improving on popular diets
Schiedermayer, who incorporated some changes himself and lost 10 pounds, said he likes the idea that the book offers ways to improve several “best-seller” diets that are popular with patients. These include the high-protein, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, which Roizen and La Puma say can make your RealAge 4.7 years older. The authors suggest replacing beef jerky and other fatty foods recommended in Atkins with fish, nuts and soy foods and adding four low-carbohydrate fruits to the daily diet.
Schiedermayer now “prescribes” the book to some of his patients, not only those who are dieting but also those diagnosed with diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, in hopes that they start to think of food as a form of medicine.
Roizen and La Puma said they are heartened to receive positive feedback from fellow physicians, who they note as a group are malnourished on nutrition information and hungry for more. But Roizen said some academic colleagues expressed disbelief over the RealAge concept’s success.
“They’d ask, `Why did this become a best-seller? You didn’t do any original research.’ And they’re absolutely right. All we did was summarize available data. But we did it in a way that is meaningful and motivating for people.”
For that, Roizen and La Puma make no apologies. But Roizen does express regret over having to leave Chicago–the RealAge concept’s birthplace and his home for 16 years–to take over in late June as dean of the medical school at State University of New York in Syracuse. From this post, he plans to push for more nutrition training in medical education and to conduct large-scale population studies to determine if following RealAge concepts lower health-care costs in a given region.
Roizen will continue to return to the Windy City one day a month to see patients and will continue his RealAge collaboration with La Puma.
With all that on his plate, Roizen’s 80- to 100-hour-a-week workload shows no sign of getting lighter. He said his wife, Nancy, a pediatrician who along with Roizen perennially appears on the esteemed Woodward-White “Best Physicians in the United States” list, once asked him why he wanted to add RealAge work.
He thought of Simon–a nation filled with Simons.
“I learned a technique that can help change the health of a nation,” he said.
10 youthful ideas
Amid a cornucopia of anti-aging tips that Michael Roizen and John La Puma offer in their new book “The RealAge Diet,” the physicians cite the following “quick fixes.”
1. Eat an ounce of nuts five days a week. Starting meals with a little healthy fat like the kind in nuts takes the edge off your appetite and reduces arterial aging. RealAge benefit: as many as 4.4 years younger.
2. Get at least 1,200 milligrams of vitamin C daily through diet or supplements and spread it out so you consume at least 400 mg in any 12-hour period. Take 400 IU of vitamin E a day along with a little monounsaturated fat to aid absorption. RealAge benefit: as many as 3 years younger.
3. To keep their bones young, women should get 1,200 mg of calcium daily in food or supplements, and men should get 1,000 mg a day. Add another 200 mg for each hour you are physically active and for each six cans of diet soda you drink; both of those factors increase the body’s demand for the mineral. RealAge benefit: 1.3 years younger.
4. Take fat-soluble nutrients and vitamins, such as D and E, with a half-ounce of healthy fat to help absorption. If you don’t, you’ll lose the extra years those substances can give your RealAge: 1.3 years for vitamin D, 2 years for vitamin E and 3.1 years for the fat-soluble antioxidant nutrients such as flavonoids and carotenoids.
5. Consume 700 mg of folate (folic acid) daily to reduce your level of homocysteine and help reduce artery and immune-system aging. RealAge benefit: 1.4 years younger.
6. Take 4 mg of vitamin B6 daily to help keep your blood vessels young.
7. Take a daily multivitamin containing necessary vitamins and minerals–especially C, D and E, folate and calcium, in correct amounts–but not iron and not more than 8,000 IU of vitamin A (unless under a doctor’s supervision). Taking needless supplements such as iron and vitamin A can increase your RealAge by 1.7 years.
8. Floss and brush your teeth regularly, and see a dental professional to prevent dental problems such as gingivitis. Periodontal conditions can ruin the pleasure of eating and can affect immune system and arterial function. RealAge benefit: subtract as many as 6.4 years.
9. Eat 13 ounces of fish a week and you can subtract as many as 3.4 years from your RealAge.
10. Develop an age-reduction program. This can make the RealAge of a 70-year-old as much as 29 years younger.
— Laura Milani
RealAge calculations at a glance
The RealAge Diet applies a formula for subtracting or adding years to biological age based on good or bad eating habits.
Example: 40 year old
Eat an ounce of nuts five days a week. Starting meals with a healthy fat like nuts makes your RealAge benefit 4.4 years younger.
Eating 13 ounces of fish a week makes your RealAge benefit as much as 3.4 years younger.
Four daily servings of flavonoid-rich foods such as green tea, broccoli and apples. RealAge benefit 6 years younger.
RealAge = 26.2 years
