Wellness Alaska
An Introduction
For time immemorial, nature has provided humanity with only whole food. Some highly nutritious, others not so much, but our ancestors hunted, foraged, farmed, worked, played, and laughed hard. Foods of every description, whole and real, nurtured us until Homo sapiens occupied the globe.
Fast-forwarding, over half of all Americans are now impacted by more than one lifestyle-related chronic disease; yet, experts suggest over three-quarters of our chronic illness is preventable and even reversible. And it’s not just about what we eat. Far from it. We manufactured a myriad of new stressors, unhealthy occupations, sleep-robbers and, gradually, engineered-away the need for rigorous physical activity. Indeed, a maladaptive and apparently hazardous environment surrounds us.
Then there is the financial cost. In 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control showed that 90-percent of total U.S. spending on “health care” treated the symptoms of chronic disease. Two-thirds of U.S. bankruptcies will be directly linked to health-care expense — about 550,000 this year alone.
Does the U.S. health care industry help people resolve or reverse disease? They have some marvelous treatments (like my very own artificial knee) and their media machine will tell you yes, absolutely; however, a high percentage of chronic disease patients never get Big Pharma out of their pocket book. Clear, bright lines for health have never been so critical: families staying active, a good night’s rest, managing the modern stressors, and acquiring proper nutrition, as our ancestors accomplished for countless generations.
This website seeks to make accessible and (hopefully) understandable, some research about staying healthy, despite our being surrounded by a “myriad” of modern disease-makers, what I referred to as “maladaptive,” above. Let’s begin with a very broad visual summary.
Graphic Right — A modified illustration of four inter-connected factors of health highlights three basic pillars*, shown upon an unsurprising foundation: physical, mental and social. Some might add a fourth pillar for “Spiritual.”
Sleep is foundational and more than “rest and rejuvenation”. As neuroscience and sleep researchers** unravel the complex health benefits of sleep, we’re seeing it in a new light. From cancer and heart disease to type-2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s to better understanding social cues, the foundation for optimal physical, mental, social, and even spiritual health seems to be ample sleep — generally 8-hours nightly or more.
Numerous conditions weaken these core factors of health. Today it’s tricky is to bring them into our lives while escaping the modern seduction and addiction, at the same time. Fleshing out a punch-list, below are broad themes that improve human health and wellness:
Cultivating social/community connections
Acquiring daily habits to lower stressors (For starters, breathe!)
Boosting daily physical activity
Sound and sufficient sleep of at least 8-hours daily
Replacing the highly-processed, refined calories with Whole and Real food
*The Art and Science of Social Connections (2024), Kasley Killam, MPH:
** Why We Sleep (2018). Mathew Walker, Ph.D
Is some outside force of colossal power motivating habitual and unhealthy choosing? There are indeed internal and external forces at play. For the U.S., our greatest addiction crisis (arguably) is not alcohol, opioids, or pot. Rather, it’s the “craving” (or outright addiction) to the unhealthy, ultra-formulated “food” (and other disease-generating distractions).
It’s easy to blame the refined junk that spikes blood-sugar. After all, it’s in every deli-case, hot-case, gas station, and much of the “merch” in any U.S. grocery store. That would be simple — and entirely insufficient. Chronic stress, including the lack insufficient sleep also helps to elevate blood sugar, insulin and weight gain. We make progress towards greater health by understanding the amazing “colossus”, now described as The Standard American Diet (SAD):
The SAD dietary pattern possesses vast power — economic, cultural, and hormonal power. “SAD” is referenced throughout the website and discussed in detail under the menu The “SAD” vs. Real Food.
Habitual SAD (and stress) will unbalance your healthy feeling of food satisfaction (satiety), hack your eating hormones, and damage your trillions of cells. SAD-associated diseases often include: obesity, type-2 diabetes, vascular diseases, kidney problems, and risk factors for cancer, depression, ADHD, and auto-immune trouble. These are commonly linked to metabolic trouble — a body-wide food energy conversion sickness.
Are there outward or easily measured symptoms? About one-third of U.S. adults have a problem managing blood sugar (blood glucose) and about half have hypertension (high blood pressure); both are highly correlated with type-2 diabetes and vascular problems such as heart disease — America’s greatest killer. One-half of U.S. Adults report “significant daily stress”* and over half of U.S. adults report feeling “emotionally disconnected” and isolated.**
* State of the World’s Emotional Health, 2025 — Gallup
**Stress in America, 2025: a crisis of connection. American Psychological Association
All can contribute to chronic physical, mental, and social deficits! Insulin resistance and chronic stress are discussed several places on this website, but specifically under Insulin and Metabolic Disease.
So, the above-noted “colossus” — which involves our “health care”, how we use our time, spend money, and acquire sustenance — is often utterly disconnected from wellness! Perhaps, we should expect that. After all, motivating you and I towards repeat sales (customers) is how they measure their own success. Moreover, the transformative commitment by a patient to reverse their disease is quite uncommon. Our amazing high-tech health system may, indeed, save one’s life, short term. But when will the prescriptions and “treatment” end? The answer, too frequently, is when you die — and that is certainly not the doctor’s fault.
Our hard-working and deeply compassionate health professions toil within a system that simply is not engineered for reversal and remission. Generations of U.S. physicians were poorly trained in human nutrition, stress-management, helping people get moving, and we’ve only begun to understand the body’s sleep requirement (probably more than you think). For about a century (or more) medical schools and the American Medical Association, viewed these as subservient side-gigs — mostly unrelated to patient health, measurable outcomes, or the bottom line.
For a short primer on how lifestyle modification and an optimal “treatment” diet can help REVERSE a deadly disease conditions, including coronary artery disease and type-2 diabetes, look for “Reversal” under the jump-links on the page Fats, Oils and Health (under the Food and Health menu). To be clear, health and disease reversal are by no means solely about food. Many Americans are chronically sleep deprived, spend large segments of their day seated or standing fairly motionless — not what the human body was designed to do. These conspire with our complex stressors to produce life-shortening disease.
Health and Wellness Coaching
The website also features health and wellness coaching. You can learn about a few Alaska-based health coaches — under the menu Alaska Health Coaches. It’s a diverse, professional, and growing field. One that can augment and may even replace some of our “traditional” therapies. More people getting professional health-coaching means more people making permanent lifestyle change and achieving their goals, healing, and accomplish their dreams. And hopefully with less Pharma!
The roots of health coaching are ancient: a trained, active listener holds space, gains understanding through inquiry, and support the other (the client) as they themselves assemble and embody their own path to greater health wisdom and wellness.
Health coaching is rooted in empathy, listening, questioning, new knowledge, creating action-steps — and making steady progress towards the client’s own wellness values and dreams, one step at a time. Like the foundation and “pillars” (shown above), health coaches have different strengths, so you have to be sure the coach fits your needs.
For example, my health coaching certification is with Food Revolution Network (foodrevolution.org) an organization promoting the wide-ranging benefits of whole-plant menus and “plant-forward” eating. Yet, I personally have received highly professional coaching from Darcie Ziel, who was, firstly, had worked as a Registered Nurse for decades. Darcie’s coaching gave me new tools and I achieve a remarkable and unexpected heart-health benefit from a three month coach-client engagement in 2024. The health outcome was profound and unexpected! I provided Darcie with a quick two-minute video testimonial. You can enjoy my testimonial HERE.
Thus, each coach possesses unique training and life/work experience — differences that inform their style. This website promotes this important field as a way to strengthen comprehensive health, reduce disease-risk, and boost our life-fulfillment and joy!