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Dr. Bob’s Story

I grew up outside of Houston in a middle-class family, and developed an early interest in my own health. I can’t explain why I focused on health from such a young age, but I sometimes jokingly say I have the “vanity gene”—and I probably do, if such a gene exists. Something prompted me, at about age 12, to ask for a weight set, which remained in my bedroom for the rest of my childhood. I started training regularly, lifting weights consistently, and became quite strong for my age. By the time I reached high school, at 14 years old, I was fairly small in stature at 5’8”, but I had the strongest bench press on the entire baseball team (grades 9-12). By creating the need for adaptation, I probably triggered higher than normal levels of testosterone for a young person. This allowed me to get strong and build a solid foundation—skeletal and muscular systems—that has provided lifelong benefits. I’ve been a lifelong exerciser ever since, and I’m very fortunate in that regard. Now, with what I understand about longevity, I realize that behavior was a major contributor to my current state of health. Science is unraveling how this works at the molecular level.
My genome holds some fascinating insights. After having it sequenced, I discovered that a lifetime of exercise has likely prevented the activation of many negative genes, protecting my health. The good news is that exercise can have immediate positive effects, no matter your age.

High school baseball was my main sport growing up. A love for science and the outdoors initially led me to pursue a degree in fisheries biology. However, my professors encouraged me to aim higher, ultimately leading me to medical school.

One of the top medical schools in the country, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas provided excellent training. Graduating 21st in my class of 205, I felt well-prepared to enter emergency medicine.

The lifestyle of emergency medicine appealed to me, as did the opportunity to pursue a lifelong dream: building a fishing lodge in Alaska. After a summer of commercial fishing in Alaska after college, I fell in love with the Kenai Peninsula. It was clear that this was where I wanted to live.

My residency complete, I moved to my dream home on the Kenai Peninsula and began working in the local emergency room. For almost 25 years, I practiced emergency medicine, proud to have never faced any disciplinary action or legal issues. However, this experience gave me a firsthand look at the devastating effects of chronic disease. Over time, I realized there had to be a better way to help people achieve optimal health.

I fulfilled my dream and built the fishing lodge, All Alaska Outdoors (www.allalaska.com). The view from that seat was considerably better! For the last 30 years, I’ve been piloting bush aircraft across the wilds of South Central Alaska all summer, sharing this epic landscape with countless people.

My faith is a cornerstone of my life. I am in love with God and he has blessed my life. I recognize this life as a precious gift, one I am deeply interested in preserving. I don’t just want to live long; I want a long healthspan. Even as a teenager, I was interested in healthy living. Like any kid, I enjoyed cookies and Kool-Aid, but I also delved into the bodybuilding community’s knowledge about nutrition. I focused on eating as healthily as possible, becoming fairly athletic, relatively lean, and muscular by age 14. I’ve maintained that for most of my life.

As a lifelong exerciser, I was surprised when, in my mid-to-late 40s, I noticed weight gain and declining energy levels despite my workouts. This coincided with growing burnout from practicing the disease model of medicine. Frustration mounted, and then came an epiphany. A 47-year-old man, similar to me in body composition and lacking cardiovascular risk factors, arrived in the ER having a heart attack. It was a wake-up call. We weren’t doing anything to screen for heart attacks, the most common cause of death, until symptoms appeared. This felt like a foolish strategy.

Intuitively, I knew there had to be a better way, but I didn’t know what it was. This sparked a desire to learn more. A deeper understanding of longevity science has always intrigued me. Had I known the right approach to health earlier, I would have implemented it. Medical school hadn’t taught me this, and much of what I thought I knew was wrong!

I stumbled upon an excellent training opportunity and took advantage. Boy, were my eyes opened! Now working with a group of doctors, we focus on the science of longevity and a proactive healthcare model. Our longevity coaches across Kenai utilize cutting-edge scientific advancements to identify individuals who may be prone to disease, have early stages of disease, or even advanced stages without symptoms.

Discovering a health problem before permanent organ damage occurs is key. Early mitigation is crucial. However, if you don’t understand or even know you have a problem, taking action is unlikely. At our Kenai health and wellness clinic, we can identify if you’re on the pathway to developing chronic diseases and create a strategy to address it proactively.

This approach truly works. While it may not be easy or inexpensive, the value lies in improving your well-being, putting more life in your years, increasing your healthspan, and ensuring you’re there for your family and community.

Health isn’t free, but it is achievable. It requires investment, both in terms of effort and finances, to follow the advanced algorithms we utilize. Our approach goes beyond typical insurance-based disease models, providing a surprisingly comprehensive understanding of your personal health and well-being for the cost.

Our health and wellness clinic in Kenai offers a comprehensive evaluation of your current health status, called a Performance Health Assessment. This assessment can be performed in a single, all-day office visit, after blood samples are obtained a couple of weeks in advance. It allows for a thorough analysis of your risk of metabolic and cardiovascular disease based on lab results and other routine studies conducted in our Alaska or Las Vegas offices.

Affiliated with dozens of physicians nationwide who offer the same approach, we use the data collected during your visit, combined with lab work, a review of your past and family history, your current health concerns, and a physical exam to create a complete picture of your health. This allows us to uncover your individual risks and develop strategies for further investigation with any necessary advanced diagnostic studies.

This personalized approach to medicine represents the ideal future of healthcare. However, I’m not confident that conventional medicine will adopt this model anytime soon.

That being said, if you value your health and want to invest in feeling better, having more energy, improving cognitive function, and increasing strength and vitality for as long as possible, schedule a Performance Health Assessment in Kenai with a longevity coach. We would be happy to see you at one of our two Community Health and Wellness locations. If our locations aren’t convenient, I’m happy to refer you to a respected colleague who practices this type of medicine.

I’ve applied these strategies to my own life, studying myself in great depth to understand my current health with more clarity than I ever thought possible. Knowing my risks—and thankfully, having no evidence of significant chronic disease—allows me to proactively address any challenges. You can explore my health journey, studies, strategies, and outcomes in detail if you choose.

My transformation has been remarkable. From a tired, burned-out, and slightly depressed middle-aged doctor, I’ve become a fulfilled and happy longevity physician. The increase in fitness, muscle mass, mental clarity, and energy I’ve experienced feels miraculous. Even the changes in my body composition just a few months after adopting this approach were astonishing.

But the greatest benefit? The reassurance of knowing I’m at very little risk of the chronic diseases I treated for so long.

If you’re convinced, or want to learn more, you should probably proceed with a more in-depth explanation of the performance health assessment.

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Don’t Miss Out-the Science is
Happening Quickly

It’s critical to understand that modern science is unraveling health, wellness, and disease at the molecular level. We are literally understanding what is happening inside the cell, and we are understanding how pharmaceuticals, supplements, and lifestyle prescriptions can affect these processes. For example, we are learning what turns on the genes that repair our DNA. When activated, these repair genes lessen cellular age.

Aging is a product of many factors. Stress damages our genetic blueprint, which controls our cellular function by coding for the proteins that make our cells work. Essentially, aging is a loss of information at the DNA level. We age when we experience oxidative stress, radiation and carcinogenic exposure, and inflammation. All of these cause damage to our DNA.

Damaged DNA results in malformed, dysfunctional proteins, leading to visible signs of cellular aging. Fortunately, emerging strategies show promise in reversing this process. This is what drives me now, and what I want to share with you.

Let’s explore what we know, what remains unknown, and what confidently makes an impact. I’m eager to share the wealth of knowledge I’ve gained through years of studying the science of longevity. Many excellent books, some of which are on the shelf behind me, outline these concepts and research findings. I delve into them, reviewing the underlying science and evaluating the authors’ conclusions.

While I don’t always agree entirely, I generally align with the overall platforms presented in these books. Often, they discuss strategies I discovered and adopted long ago. My experience allows me to view their findings and opinions from a unique perspective.

My goal is to inspire you to take action and care for your own precious life. Rather than getting lost in the complexities of the science, I’ll provide the key takeaways during an evaluation at our Kenai health and wellness clinic. Then, we’ll move directly into practical steps you can take.

Trust me, I follow my own advice. While my personal experience is anecdotal, it might inspire you. Hopefully, I can achieve that goal.

If you decide to follow my approach, these are the core principles: I’ll teach you about chronic disease, helping you understand the enemy. Then, I’ll teach you how to combat it and win, achieving optimal health and longevity.

The Main Strategies Are As Follows:

This prescription may not cure “everything” but it will treat “everything”. The lifestyle prescription obviously is diet and exercise. OK, but I’ll give you the details. I’ll show you the scientific proof. I’ll try to convince you of how impactful these two interventions are, and if I’m lucky, I’ll get you to convert and start to change behavior and improve your own well-being.

readiness
daily movement
activity contributors
The other big cornerstone for most people on a walk with Health, Wellness and Longevity is going to be the concept of hormone replacement therapy. One of the things that declines as we age, and as our cellular function declines, is the function of those organelles that we collectively call the endocrine system. The thyroid gland, testicles in men and ovaries in females, and the adrenal glands are all examples of parts of our body that make hormones. What hormones do is they talk to the other cells in the body and they control cellular function. As these organs make less of these important hormones, what happens is we lose this chemical messaging system that actually turns on the genes inside our cells that make our cells work right. In our patients, when symptoms indicate that hormone function is diminished and levels are suboptimal, we will try to intervene with bio-identical hormone replacement.
Hormone-Optimization
Supplements are probably the smallest Cog in the wheel of wellness, but they are also the easiest. All you have to do is take them. Supplementing is not nearly as hard as controlling the hole in your face and not eating those things you want to eat, but you know they’re not good for you. It’s not nearly as hard as controlling how much of those things you eat. And it’s darn sure not as hard as exercise. Exercise is painful. Why sugar coat it. Supplements are almost on the order of nutrition. Supplementation is basically purposely ingesting molecules, and not in the form of food, but in the form of things that often come from food, that seem to be highly impactful and provide some of the benefits that we see occurring from various nutritional interventions. It’s like a hedge on the bet. Maybe you can’t eat enough vegetables every day, but hey, we’ve got a strategy to help in that domain. And we are discovering specific molecules that appear to be activating those very same genes that turn on turn on the repair proteins to keep our DNA information intact.
Supplementation

These are our strategies that lead down the pathway to a Health span that is long. We would like to prove to you that you can have Health and Wellness at any age, and I think that together we can accomplish that.

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