My Announcement: Project 49
Title: Project 49
On August 2, 2023, I turned 49.
​
That day, I made a decision it’s now or never. It’s time to move forward in a unique way on my lifelong passion for healthy longevity. This is my personal Carpe Diem moment: “Seize the Day!”
​
My vision: Creating a platform that will enable me to engage one-on-one with a handful of clients towards a healthy and vibrant purpose-filled life. This would be personally fulfilling and allow me to expand to coaching and consulting around broader themes of health, wellbeing, and purpose. While no physician-patient relationship is formed and I will not be providing services as a physician, serving as a coach and consultant gives me the opportunity to leverage evidence-based best practices, practical tools and personal experiences to help a wider audience.
​
Why coaching and consulting? My fascination with aging, longevity, life extension and higher quality healthspan have been with me since childhood. Although I currently work in an unrelated subspecialty, which gives me joy, it does not utilize my knowledge and skills related to geroscience, lifestyle medicine and optimizing personal and holistic healthy longevity.
My Twitter account has been a (mostly!) fun way to give back by sharing interesting and topical publications for critique/debate, as well as to keep health influencers and scientists “in the know,” so they can stay informed, and thus better educate their audiences (the media & general public) on the good and bad of what is out there. I also continue to be passionate about the synergy of bringing together different communities (from aging biologists to biotech, media, thought leaders, health influencers, and avid biohackers) and I plan to continue that mission, bringing timely and interesting content from across the web to my @agingdoc1 channel.
The implications of this “mid-life” epiphany are far ranging, and among the consequences would be that I would need to take a deep breath, take the plunge, and disclose my personal identity.
I quickly realized that it would not take long for my followers to discover who I am. So I am coming out to you now, my wonderful followers, so that you may hear it directly from me rather than from some inevitable rumor. I have previously resisted going public to keep my life in silos. There is a personal price to pay for being a public figure with a known identity. I wish that I could have my cake and eat it too. But I can’t.
It would be unfair to me- my personal growth and potential to contribute to the world in a unique way, even if only for a few clients- not to take that chance. So with no small amount of fear/stress, I open myself to the inherent vulnerability of showing oneself to the world. It is only by expanding my view of myself, that I can truly embrace my human potential, and fully engage all of myself towards impact.
I am enormously grateful to have you as a community and continue to look forward to engaging with you. You are a unique and amazing group of scholars, academics and biohacking and health aficionados from academia to futurism enthusiasts.
Agingdoc1 is a special place and I have no plans of changing the model. This will continue to be a space for sharing interesting and topical publications (both good and bad!) in healthy aging, geroscience, lifestyle medicine and longevity, and to foster respectful and constructive, data driven, critique and debate. The tone and format will remain true to its roots and a safe-haven from all the hype and noise in this space across the rest of social media. And yes, I will remain the same unabashedly enthusiastic, quirky, nerd/geek and biotechnophile I have always been.
In the film Dead Poet’s Society, Robbin Williams reminded us of the brevity of life, of our deep yearning to find meaning & purpose in our lives, and manifesting them as personal moonshots: our Great Mark on this world. For this glorious fleeting moment, this is the first step of what impact means to me now, and I now have the rest of my life yet to uniquely contribute to this amazing space. 😊
Sincerely,
@agingdoc1... aka David Barzilai MD PhD (*)
​
​
(*) ...and for the record, no relation to Nir Barzilai!
​
PS- If you want to keep in touch, I've also just started the "Agingdoc Podcast" -
Subscriptions are free, and clicking on the bell icon let's you know when there's a new video. None of this is medical advice, but focuses on "deeper dives" interviewing thought leaders in geroscience, lifestyle medicine, and longevity medicine. 👇
​
​
​
