Biography

I was born in Üsküdar in 1975.

As the second child of parents who were civil servants, I grew up in a low-income family amidst a culture rich in communication, self-sacrifice, love, boundaries, strict discipline, and rules.

My interest in science stems not only from having been raised with a focus on learning and discovery but also from the significant influence of our extensive home library and our dedicated reading times. I used to read encyclopedias—particularly those on botany, physiology, and pharmacology—with great fascination. Later, the relationship I shared with Sencer Benli, my primary school teacher at the Private Çıra College in the Bakanlıklar district of Ankara, played a pivotal role in my journey toward becoming a scientist. Mr. Benli was a rare individual—a true teacher at heart—who deeply valued witnessing the lives of his students.

During my primary school years, thanks to my mother and my class teacher, Mr. Sencer, I took lessons in music theory, piano, and art. From an early age, I took a keen interest in theology, literature, and Far Eastern martial arts.

In those years, on Sunday mornings, I would watch and listen with admiration—on our black-and-white television via TRT-1—to Sakıp Sabancı as he spoke about his life, his passion for “melody bread,” his cheerful demeanor, and his philosophy of living. I also read *Gırgır* magazine every Sunday, never missing an issue.

The most difficult, yet most powerful, experience of my life…

Towards the final weeks of the fourth grade, our financial situation took a severe turn for the worse after a farm—in which my father had invested alongside his fellow civil servants in the Akçakoca district of Bolu—was destroyed by a burst hose. When my father was forced to withdraw me from the private school, Ali Taşçı—the father of my close friend and “brother” Serkan, with whom I had shared the same classroom for four years and whose family was among Ankara’s wealthiest—was adamant that Serkan and I should not be separated. “Uncle Ali” repeatedly tried to persuade my father to let him send both Serkan and me to America for our education after private school. I have never forgotten the conversation that took place between Uncle Ali and my father right in front of the classroom on the last day of school:

“Mr. Ali, your offer would make our family immensely happy; however, stepping out of his comfort zone to experience the other side of life—and facing all its challenges—will shape Uğur into a more mature, conscious, and resilient individual who truly appreciates the value of time. I cannot deprive him of this opportunity.”

My father would often speak of the American and German engineer colleagues he had worked with during his youth. He frequently used the term “comfort zone” and warned me about the great dangers that this zone could pose in the future.

The following year, I strove to get an education at Yahyalar Primary School—located an hour away—making my way from the warmth of my school bus into the dark, biting chill of the Ankara frost; I would traverse the muddy, mucky backstreets of Yahyalar, usually on foot but sometimes by *dolmuş*. I came to understand the value of time and the illusions of the comfort zone through painful experiences at a young age—whether being chased and bitten by stray dogs, or facing unprovoked verbal abuse and harassment from working-class children in the area who were employed as apprentices.

Years later, as a physician trained at Harvard Medical School, I returned to the same school to give seminars and guide my younger fellow students on their life journeys. I also carried out volunteer projects.

While I was a student at Demetevler Yahyalar Middle School, at the end of the first year, we went on a 15-day summer vacation to the resort in Lara, Antalya, belonging to the Ministry of Village Affairs—where my mother had retired from. We were captivated by the wonderfully fresh, oxygen-rich air and the scent of orange blossoms—and especially by the district of Kemer. We began looking for a rental house in Kemer, but since there was no high school there, we turned our attention back to Antalya and found a wonderful, spacious rental apartment on Şarampol Avenue. Who could have known that, years later, the person who would completely alter the course of my life—the most beautiful, miraculous, and priceless gift this world has ever given me, my beloved wife—was the daughter of a well-known and much-loved family from that very district of Kemer?

After we settled into our home, the landlords with whom we had lived like a big family for years in the Demetevler/Yenimahalle district of Ankara also came to Antalya, bought a house, and made significant investments in the area—solely so they wouldn’t have to be apart from us.

As a child who took only a fifteen-day vacation each summer and worked various jobs until school started, I had no desire to sit idle or spend my time just wandering around. My mother used to make incredibly delicious dill pastries, lemonade, and cakes. Until I started the second year of middle school at Merkez Ortaokulu, my father and I used to sell these pastries, cakes, and lemonade from the seat of a bicycle along the Konyaaltı beach. Demand grew so much that we eventually couldn’t keep up with production.

From Antalya High School to News Anchoring on a National Television Channel…

On the day I started Antalya High School, I made a vow to graduate with top honors—a promise I ultimately kept. From my very first year there, I collaborated with friends to produce the school newspaper. At the same time, I achieved success with the sports team and trained alongside national team athletes. Guided by the advice of my father and my dear mentor Hüseyin Yumakoğulları—coach of the Turkish National Karate Team—I embarked on an intensive course of study, drawing from both domestic and international sources to explore the fields that fascinated me most: physiology, psychopharmacology, and phytotherapy. I had virtually no free time; I was constantly reading and learning.

During the week I graduated from high school, I received a job offer from Ahmet Dökdök—the managing editor of Antalya E-Tv and the *Yeni İleri* newspaper—and began writing health-related articles for my column, “Stay Young, Live Long” (*Genç Kal, Çok Yaşa*). On my first day at the newspaper, my father visited me and brought a gift: the book *Look Younger, Live Longer* by Gayelord Hauser, a nutritionist who had achieved great renown in Europe and America. Thanks to this book, written in 1950, genome targeting and the science of genetics became an indispensable passion for me; I can say that it shaped the person I am today. As I read and researched more, I rediscovered every day the value of possessing a scientific mindset and attitude, discipline, and the ability to use time efficiently.

I served as a presenter and received various awards at the Rotary Club District 2430 Conference—an international event—held from May 28 to 31, 1998.

Following this experience, I received a job offer from a national television channel. I completed training in performing arts and diction at ATV—located in Beşiktaş, Istanbul—and subsequently worked as a news anchor for the same channel. I also worked as a voice-over artist for various news and documentary channels.

In 1995, at the age of just 20, I began working as the television manager at Kanal 07 Medya, the regional representative for ATV. At the same channel, I produced and hosted my first television program, which focused on genetics, human relations, and physiological psychology. I also wrote columns for *Gazete 07*.

I carried out volunteer work and conducted seminars and science classes at numerous educational institutions, most notably TED College.

The Deadly Drug Mistaken for a Miracle

The year was 1995. I began receiving intriguing letters from friends studying medicine in the United States. There was talk that a drug—which appeared to work by inhibiting a protein complex known as mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin)—might be capable of preventing aging. Many wealthy individuals who used this drug—which had not undergone sufficient testing and carried a very high price tag for even a single dose—paid a heavy price in terms of their health, most notably suffering from organ dysfunction.

People with big egos cannot do science.

Throughout the remainder of my life and my scientific journey, I did my utmost to possess great knowledge and profound humility.

During my university years, I kept up with developments in the healthcare sector while simultaneously conducting research in my areas of interest. I never stopped experimenting or exploring out of curiosity, and I continued to share what I learned through both my television program and my newspaper column. In the same year I completed my master’s degree, I began providing consultancy services to various institutions in the fields of health-related design, management, and science.

In 2010, I began providing consultancy services to a group that has made a significant mark on Turkish tourism and owns a hotel chain renowned globally for its domestic and international investments. I provided health consultancy to the members and families of prominent business associations that play a pivotal role in the Turkish economy. I continued my work and research to benefit people of all ages and backgrounds—those with the courage to pursue their health-related aspirations—by applying the bio-psycho-social model.

I have volunteered for countless social responsibility projects and endeavored to spread the universal impact that the concept of “volunteering” creates—both on the individual and on society—to everyone around me and throughout my personal sphere of influence.

I conducted seminars, Q&A sessions, analyses, and talks at state institutions, private educational institutions, universities, and private associations. Whenever the opportunity arose, I continued my programs on TRT-Radyo 1 and various television channels.

We raise not only our children but also the parents of our grandchildren…

My parents put great effort into raising me to be a humble, polite, helpful, and gentlemanly man of refinement. In our family, times set aside for conversation were just as important as those dedicated to reading.

The sun was just rising.

On weekend mornings, I used to go to Beyoğlu early with my father and visit his friend, who ran a *börek* shop. Afterward, we would head out to İstiklal Square.

My father would kneel beside me to get down to my level. We would lock eyes. He would hold my shoulder and stroke my hair. He would brush off my little jacket. Then, we would gaze out along the street. He would tell me about the old Istanbul and how people interacted with one another in those days.

“Listen, son. The year was 1953. I was just twenty years old. It was early morning. People were heading to work. The women were impeccably dressed; the men wore suits, ties, and fedoras. Everyone—acquaintances and strangers alike—was rushing to get to work while exchanging smiles and greetings: ‘Lovely morning, madam; good morning, sir. How are you?'”

Now, today, I ask myself in the same place: What has changed over the years?

Have we attached importance to aspects of our children’s existence? Is their life generally characterized by trust, hope, and love, or by fear, judgment, and anxiety?

I view the following as one of the most critical issues facing our country—particularly regarding economic growth, productivity, and the dire consequences of the “comfort zone trap” within our family and education systems: the nature of the values ​​respected and lived out in the environments where our children grow up—caught as they are in the perception of a competitive race where the world judges whether one is “empty” or “full”—and the values ​​they ultimately internalize as future parents, alongside the massive devastation occurring in the most critical regions of their brains and the clinical disasters resulting from this destruction.

Perhaps during this period, the family’s core values ​​and the education system were perceived as a structure focused solely on information and the transmission of knowledge.

Would we have been unfair to ourselves if we had said, “Today, a generation has grown up in Türkiye that uses the library primarily for homework”?

Amidst the race for education and “value”—a life test that also measures personality and character—perhaps we have not yet made time for books that would develop our children’s emotional intelligence and social skills, or teach them to transform knowledge into awareness and consciousness.

Could it be that, instead of teaching our children—the parents of tomorrow—how to be good citizens, how to greet others, how to help one another, and whether it is more meaningful in life to be someone who judges or someone who bears witness and shows appreciation, we have instead taught them nothing but volume calculations and pool problems as early as the second grade?

Could it be that our inner loneliness appears to us as the only reality—the only role—taking the place of existential values ​​that we may not currently perceive or might never even recall?

Volunteering at the İstinye Garden of Love…

I dedicated the majority of my time to helping—to the best of my ability—the hundreds of clients who reached out to me via social media after my seminars.

At the *İstinye Sevgi Bahçesi* (İstinye Garden of Love), I held one-on-one, face-to-face conversations with—and embarked on a journey of finding meaning alongside—a wide range of people: individuals refusing to yield to cancer; those struggling with substance abuse but unable to access medical support due to financial constraints; people battling chronic illnesses under harsh conditions; couples unable to conceive due to genetic methylation issues; married couples facing separation or cultural family conflicts; young people grappling with major crises and seeing no way out; and anyone else in need of psychological support. Through these interactions, I touched their lives and helped transform them.

Volunteering is a major part of my life. Volunteering enables you to serve with love. Service becomes your act of worship. Your love leads you to know, to learn, to act, and—through perseverance and persistence—to do what you know to be right, simply because you love it.

You will be determined.

A distressing scene from my country and the world…

According to the latest data, there are over 10 million citizens in our country—ranging from children and adolescents to young and middle-aged adults—who use a total of approximately 100 million boxes of prescribed antidepressants. Unfortunately, this figure does not yet include the children who are put on medication after being diagnosed with hyperactivity due to improper psychological and biological nutrition.

The situation globally is far more dire. The figures are much higher. In particular, impairments in the frontal lobe, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and the orbitofrontal cortex are incredibly widespread among a large portion of the world’s population.

This situation signifies an insidious form of destruction—clinically, psychologically, and sociologically.

Being determined…

I am a traveler who set out to halt this destruction and discovered the purity of my intention; a scientist who embodies, within that purity of intention, the future I wish to create.

As I continue to seek answers to these questions on the colorful canvas we call life, I strive to grow anew each day and endeavor to do my absolute best with enthusiasm.

I am one of you—someone focused on existence, striving to be a person who is constantly learning rather than one who simply “knows.”

My heartfelt thanks for taking the time to read this post and for all those beautiful colors you shared…