Bonfire's Purpose Is To Create Well People.
The objective of the Bonfire Health Program is to empower individuals with the understanding of a genetically congruent lifestyle and equip them with compatible behaviors and strategies using proven implementation methods. Our purpose is to lead a critical change effort. Our vision is to create well people.
The Vision
As a result of seeing the lack of people's comprehensive understanding of the what and how of correct lifestyle choices, Bonfire was created by Drs. Stephen Franson, Bruce Wong and Paul Kratka out of their desire to take the wellness lifestyle teaching that they had successfully integrated into their clinical practices out to the world via a comprehensive interactive online platform. The three doctors, with their combined 54 years of clinical practice, were committed to developing a step-by-step process of evidence-based lifestyle behaviors that would enable all willing individuals to transform their lives within a proven self-actuated healthcare model.
Why Bonfire? - The Need
People have never been this sick before in their history on earth: Statistically, we currently have the highest number of unhealthy people, as well as the sickest people who have ever walked the face of the earth. Only three to five generations ago, chronic and autoimmune disease was rare to non-existent. These statistics are a direct reflection of the lifestyle choices we make within the domains of eating, moving and thinking.
There is much talk within the political and economic arenas about "healthcare," but it's really about the healthcare "system," which implies hospitals, doctors, research scientists, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. There is another area under the healthcare umbrella that has been neglected: health itself - our state of health, both individually and as a society.
Shocking and sad is the fact that for the first time in the history of man, children born after the year 2000 are not expected to live as long as their parents.
Everything mentioned above is attributed (and scientifically documented) to the lifestyle behaviors and changes to our food supply, dietary habits, nutritional intake, lack of physical activity, and chronic stress environments that have occurred at an accelerated pace since the industrial revolution in the past 250 years.
“Overwhelming evidence from a variety of sources, including epidemiological, prospective cohort, and intervention studies, links most chronic diseases seen in the world today to physical inactivity and inappropriate diet consumption.”
Roberts, CK, Barnard RJ Effects of exercise and diet on chronic disease. Journal Applied Physiology 2005; 98: 3-30. [read article]
Our ancient ancestors (and more recent primitive hunter-gatherer peoples) did not experience the diseases that plague modern man. Ancient cultures and more recent ones that from only 250 years ago, did not experience heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, arthritis, constipation, autoimmune diseases, acne, psoriasis, eczema, etc. It has been overwhelmingly proven that the skyrocketing rates of these diseases are due to living outside natural laws that we are genetically designed to obey or live within.
Just as a Koala bear is designed to eat a particular species of bamboo and not ice plant or corn to be healthy; and as a snake is designed to eat gophers, squirrels or birds and not flowers or bark as a beetle or aphid might be designed to do, man has specific boundaries within which we have been designed to live in order to thrive and experience optimal health.
Furthermore, it has always been popular in the health sciences to promote the concept that the factors that dramatically influence our lives and our health are genetically predetermined and therefore, out of our control. We now see the result of this flawed thinking - a cultural pitfall of reckless living. The science is incontrovertible: the expression of our genes is determined by (subordinate to) our lifestyle choices (lifestyle and environmental influence on genetic expression is called epigenetics).
The Bonfire Health program is designed to free people from the mistruths and shackles of believing that their health is determined by genes, bad luck, bad germs, or random chance; enabling people to comprehensively understand the laws of cause and effect and that they can significantly impact their health and longevity by the lifestyle behavior choices that they make will result in truly impacting the health (not healthcare) crisis that pervades modern society today.
The Solution: bonfirehealth.com
The Bonfire Health Lifestyle Transformation Program is an online health implementation strategy resource program which has multiple layers of comprehensive resources and interactivity. The program consists of a three-tiered strategy to teach, coach and lead people through evidence-based lifestyle implementation strategies designed to support genetically congruent lifestyles behaviors in the categories of eating, moving and thinking.
The first tier is a ongoing (repeatable) 90-day online health and life transformation cycle, which guides people through both how to implement evidence-based "best practices" and appropriate vital behaviors for health promotion, disease prevention and/or disease reversal. Additionally, the program outlines the scientific research showing how and why the major chronic disease killers of today are preventable and not genetically predestined, which has become a common misperception fostered by the medical-pharmaceutical industries.
Social influence science is calculated and structured to provide people with the implementation strategies and tools to make appropriate and desired changes to their lifestyle choices which are actionable and lasting. For example, a vital behavior is a high leverage action that leads directly to a desired outcome. The Bonfire Health Program is unique in its integration of social influence technology as a foundational principle or "backbone" – people today don’t simply need more information (or the what), they need the methodologies to make effective change (the how).
Social influence science is calculated and structured to provide people with the implementation strategies and tools to make appropriate and desired changes to their lifestyle choices which are actionable and lasting. For example, a vital behavior is a high leverage action that leads directly to a desired outcome. The Bonfire Health Program is unique in its integration of social influence technology as a foundational principle or "backbone" – people today don’t simply need more information (or the what), they need the methodologies to make effective change (the how).
Following the initial 90-day implementation process, the second tier is the ongoing support and resources available to members to ensure sustainable success within a community of like-minded members. As Seth Godin so aptly describes in his book Tribes, humans are meant to live in community with one another. Hence the popularity of social networks, social media sites, blogs and community-based forums and membership sites.
The third tier is a series of intensive wellness workshops, retreats, and conferences customized for all demographics (e.g. executive and congregational), which are designed to demonstrate the why, what and how of the lifestyle choices we engage in and their consequences, both positive and negative.
The Process/The Program
Members are initially taken through a definitive health evaluation screening to assign them a Wellness Lifestyle Score, placing them into their appropriate levels within the categories of eating, moving and thinking. For example, a person might be categorized as an E2, M1, T2, meaning they are at Level 2 with regard to their nutritional lifestyle, at Level 1 in their physical fitness regimen, and at Level 3 with regard to their mental and stress management coping mechanisms and skills.
Each week members receive their level-appropriate Insight or lesson plan that includes detailed constructs outlining the critical thinking and vital behaviors in the three categories of eating, moving and thinking to implement into their lifestyle that week. The website is multidimensional in that each Insight (the "what" or lesson plan) comes with additional layers information on the how, the why, and the science behind the Insights and Vital Behaviors, as well as comprehensive resources including daily and weekly menu plans with associated recipes and shopping lists; daily and weekly workouts with text, still photo and video coaching resources; daily and weekly lifestyle and stress management implementation strategies, journaling exercises and resources.
For more read the Bonfire Humanifesto
