Wellness Alaska

Nature gives us whole nutritious foods which nurture the body, but food-related chronic disease impacts about half of the U.S. populous. Health-science experts estimate that 80-percent of chronic disease is preventable or reversible with diet and lifestyle modification. In 2024 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimated that 90-percent of all U.S. health care spending is not to treat broken bones or communicable disease, but the symptoms of chronic disease — yet we don’t resolve those diseases! Instead, people chronic diseases often never get off the pharmaceuticals. Clearly, something is wrong with this strategy.

On this website, I’ve tried to make accessible and understandable the relevant and complicated health-science about this pandemic. Here’s the pocket version. The body fights disease and lives longer when we take daily action to: lower stressors, exercise, get sufficient sleep, build quality relationships, and eat whole Real food. Now for a terrifying caveat. By far, the greatest crisis of addiction in the U.S. is not alcohol, opioids, or pot. Rather, it’s our addictions to unhealthy, ultra-palitable food. So, a good place to start is to understand The “SAD” vs. Real Food.

Wellness-Alaska.com wells at length on how chronic symptoms — obesity, type-2 diabetes, vascular diseases, kidney problems, and even cancers — are commonly linked to metabolic problems, including the cellular problem call insulin resistance. That means: how well your cells convert food energy into Life Energy. Insulin resistance is covered several places on this website, but specifically under Insulin and Metabolic Disease.

Tragically, Disease-Care, Inc. doesn’t focus much on “reversal.” Pharmaceuticals may indeed be life-saving in the short term — but when will the prescription and “treatment” end? The frequent answer is when you die.

In truth, our sincere and deeply compassionate providers work within a system that simply is not interested in reversing the metabolic problem at the root of “chronic disease.” Also, they frequently know surprisingly little about human nutrition. That’s a different specialty. For more about how a carefully controlled diet can REVERSE vascular disease or type-2 diabetes, look for “Reversal” under the jump-links on the page Fats, Oils and Health (under the Food and Health menu).

The website is also structured to apprise readers of the field of health and wellness coaching. You can learn about a few Alaska-based health coaches — under the menu Alaska Health Coaches. It’s a diverse and professional field and can supplement and may replace some of our “traditional” therapies. More people getting the coaching they need means more people making the permanent lifestyle tweaks that allow them to achieve their goals, heal, and accomplish their dreams!

Like eating Real food, or going for a walk and focusing on the breath, health coaching can be viewed as an ancient health service, perhaps as old as any: an active listener who can holds space, gains understanding through inquiry, and supports the other (the client) as they assemble and slowly embody their own path to greater wisdom and wellness. 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.

The three-pillar’s graphic on the left shows the interdependence of physical, mental and social factors in health. Numerous factors in our modern environment weaken these pillars! Some common themes that often improve human health and wellness are listed below:

Building social/community connections

Culturing simple daily habits that lower stressors (breathe!)

Elevating daily physical activity

Sound and sufficient sleep

Replacing the highly-processed, refined calories with Real food.

Not all health coaches have the same focus. For example, my health coaching certification is with Food Revolution Network (foodrevolution.org) an organization promoting the wide-ranging benefits of “plant-forward” eating. Each coach will possess unique life and work experience and differences in training that inform their coaching style. This website promotes this important field as a way to strengthen mental, physical and social health, reduce disease-risk, and find greater joy.

You might say that I’ve been smitten by the need for better, more holistic, and personal alternatives to health and healing.  Under the menu My Story, you can learn about my own path and thinking about our health care system, what one provider described to me as “a perversion and what I call Disease-Care, Inc. The website is a work in progress.