Wellness Alaska

An Introduction

This website makes accessible a selection of research about staying healthy, despite our being surrounded by a very modern disease-making environment. It is the product of me, Burl Sheldon. I am a plant-based health and wellness coach based in Haines, Alaska. A snippet from my personal story is under the menu Safe Traveling.

For time immemorial, nature provided humanity with whole food. Some foods were packed with fat and protein, others packed with fiber. Few were sweet like a modern apple or peach, but those that were included their full complement of nutrients and antioxidants. Nothing removed or refined! Our long ago ancestors occupied the globe — hunting, foraging, farming, playing, and laughing — fueled only by whole and complete food.

Fast-forward to today, over half of all Americans are now impacted by two or more lifestyle-related chronic disease conditions. Over three-quarters of our chronic illness is considered preventable and even reversible. Our diet is a major factor, but that’s not all. We manufactured a myriad of new stressors, unhealthy occupations, sleep-robbers, and we’ve even engineered-away the need for rigorous physical activity.

In 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control identified 90-percent of total U.S. spending on “health care” as being treating the symptoms of chronic disease. About half of U.S. bankruptcies will be directly tied to health-care expense — about 550,000 this year alone. In the next 15 years, the U.S. is expected to spend about $47-trillion — just to treat (preventable) chronic disease.

Does the U.S. health care industry help people resolve or reverse disease? There are marvelous treatments (like my very own artificial knee) and their media machine will proclaim yes, absolutely: “Health is here!”  Most chronic disease patients however never get Big Pharma out of their pocket book. Indeed, our disease-care system seems to monetize suffering, more than it reverses illness. Clear, bright lines for health have never been so critical: families staying active, a good night’s rest, managing the modern stressors, and acquiring balanced nutrition, and not too much — as our ancestors accomplished for time immemorial.

Let’s begin with a broad visual summary. 

At Right — This illustration of inter-connected factors of health highlights three “pillars* built upon an unsurprising foundation. Some might add a fourth pillar for “Spiritual.”*

Sleep is much more than rest or rejuvenation. As neuroscience and sleep researchers continue to unravel the complex health benefits of sleep, we see it in a new light. From cancer and heart disease to type-2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, to job performance and 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 four factors. Today, it’s tricky to escape the modern commercial seduction, and our many available addictions. Below restated are some 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

Adapted from: *The Art and Science of Social Connections (2024), Kasley Killam, MPH:

** Why We Sleep (2018). Mathew Walker, Ph.D

Some outside force of colossal power seems to be motivating habitual and unhealthy choosing.  Indeed, internal and external forces are at play. For the U.S., our greatest addiction crisis (arguably) is not alcohol, opioids, porn, or pot. Rather, it’s our widespread conditioning to the calorie-packed, refined, ultra-formulated “food” (and other disease-generating distractions).

Translation: a perfectly healthful apple, or a bag of unsweetened nuts, doesn’t have that “POW.” Only, a sugary, refined, or added-fatty treat will do. 

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 indictment would be simple — and entirely insufficient. Chronic stress, including 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, social, 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 a metabolic problem — a body-wide sickness of food-to-energy conversion.

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! The unifying factors of Insulin resistance, inflammation, 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 and — perversely — NOT being supported by our disease-care system. 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 deeply compassionate health professions toil within a system that is not engineered for reversal and remission. For instance, 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 high cost of insufficient sleep. For about one century medical schools and the American Medical Association, viewed these as subservient side-gigs — mostly unrelated to patient health, measurable outcomes, or the bottom line. Does that make sense?

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!