About drDave And LLAW
Welcome to LiveLongAgeWell.com! My name is David Harsany, and I am an M.D. (Board Certified and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons) who authors this blog as drDave. My goal is to offer hints, news, ideas, and opinions that will help you age better, no matter how old you are now.
To summarize my background, I’ll relate three of my great lifelong passions: writing, medicine, and a fascination with those people who seem to grow better as they get older.
In my early school years, I struggled to write coherently. Whatever papers I turned in were disorganized messes. Then in sixth grade, inspired by a brilliant TV commentator, I realized if I could just write the way this man spoke—simply and clearly—then I could be understood and succeed. Writing became my best skill, but then I fell in love with biology and medicine.
At 16, wanting to be close to doctors and hospitals, I wrangled a summer job in a hospital laundry. My inglorious work was packing dirty linen into huge industrial washing machines. Fortunately I was promoted to delivering clean linens to the nursing stations, and I met some doctors who invited me to watch surgeries. Most every day then after work, I jumped into my “greens” and observed whatever cases I could get in to.
People in my family have always been “age mavericks”, and following that tradition, I entered medical school while still a teenager. At Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, I was fascinated with the early studies on anti-oxidants, and I was fortunate to graduate near the top of my class (Alpha Omega Alpha), and be accepted for an internship and residency at Stanford University.
I practiced otolaryngology and head and neck surgery for twenty years in Santa Cruz, California, and I again focused much interest on my patients who seemed to defy aging; not through plastic surgery, but through how they lived their lives.
During my practice years, I held on to a naïve idealism, and while I thoroughly enjoyed my patients and a great practice, I gradually became disenchanted with how insurance companies were slowly perverting the beauty of medicine into something quite alarming. It seemed like we doctors were pushed into advocating more for the profits of insurance and drug companies than the interests of our patients. So flush in the technology bubble of the times and giddy with the millennium, I left active practice at the end of 2000 (keeping my medical license for future work), and moved to New York City. Open to even more new adventures, in 2003 I moved to (appearance and plastic surgery obsessed!) Brazil and now live between the south of Brazil and metro New York City.
Joining my loves of writing, medicine, and aging well, I am deep into writing How To Drop Dead Dancing In Your 90s: Live Long Age Well, and as part of that, this blog. My early influences are more detailed in the book, but I lived in a family where everyone seemed to have “good genes”; I never heard anyone say “you’re too old to do that!”…. they just did what they felt they could, at any age, and I think that is the best way to live.
One advantage of LiveLongAgeWell.com is that (besides occasionally referring to my book) I am not selling any vitamins, skin creams, or anything else, and I’m not trying to advance any company or commerical agenda. No one is censoring what I write, so my hope is to give you pure and unbiased information. That said, I am not infallible, and especially as new information becomes available, some things written here will be proven wrong in the future; such is the way of science and medical writing.
And please note that this blog is for informational purposes only, and nothing in this blog substitutes for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your own medical doctor or qualified health provider. Don’t start, stop, or change any treatment without talking to your physician. I provide no specific medical advice, and no doctor-patient relationship is ever created or implied. For full terms of use information, read this Terms of Use page.
I hope you enjoy LiveLongAgeWell (LLAW) and visit here several times per week, not only for the posts but also for the blogroll (links) which can be a valuable resource. Bookmark and subscribe to the LLAW RSS feed. Become an active contributor! Leave comments (and/or contact me) with your ideas and stimulate discussion. I try to keep the length of my posts reasonable, so I can’t cover all points about any subject (the book will have much more information), so please add your own thoughts in the comments!
Every author writes from a core set of beliefs or principles. So you can see my basic working assumptions, visit the LLAW Core Principles page. Thank you for your attention and interest! Best wishes to all of us so that together we get into our 90s, dancing, feeling, and looking good!
All Content On This Site And Blog Copyright 2009, David Harsany, M.D.
