Donald B. Ardell

Donald B. Ardell wrote High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs, and Disease. It was first published in 1976 by Rodale Press, with editions over the years by Bantam Books and Ten-Speed Press. Don would later write a dozen additional wellness books, including Die Healthy (with Grant Donovan), 14 Days to Wellness and most recently, Aging Beyond Belief and REAL Wellness.

Don has degrees from George Washington University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC (urban planning) and Stanford. His doctorate was awarded in 1979 by the Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, OH.

The success of High Level Wellness in 1977 helped spark the wellness movement and propel Don to a career of writing, speaking and teaching. Since 1984, Don has produced 74 quarterly print editions of the Ardell Wellness Report and 650 weekly electronic newsletters. This report is billed as A Non Faith-Based Newsletter Dedicated To The Idea That REAL Wellness Is Too Important To Be Presented Or Lived Grimly. The four major themes are reason, exuberance, athleticism and liberty. Topics are contemporary issues in the physical, mental, and meaning and purpose dimensions of Don's wellness philosophy organized by 16 skill areas.

Don's Wellness Center is the largest repository of wellness essays in the world. Don has been writing articles for this site for well over a decade on the physical, mental, and meaning and purpose dimensions of the wellness philosophy, with topics further organized into 16 skill areas.

Don was a long-term member of the board of trustees of the National Wellness Institute for over a decade. He is one of ten Americans given the Healthy America Fitness Leaders Award in 1991 by the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

Don has won numerous national and four world championships in triathlon and duathlon competitions in Tasmania (1994), Montreal (1999), the Gold Coast of Australia (2009) and most recently, Budapest (2010).

In July 2011 at the annual National Wellness Conference, Don was given the Halbert L. Dunn Wellness Award, one of the highest honors in the health promotion and wellness fields. The four recipients of the award have "shown a dedication to wellness over the course of their lifetimes, offering leadership while making many significant contributions and that furthered the wellness movement." The German Wellness Association also bestowed upon Don its Lifetime Achievement award three years ago in Dusseldorf.