About

Hi, I’m Karen Owoc

Welcome to my blog! If you’ve landed here looking to cultivate a new healthy lifestyle, I would love to be your health coach.

As a certified clinical exercise physiologist in Cardiology at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center and in my private practice, I assist Veterans and older adults with type 2 diabetes, cancer, obesity, orthopedic limitations in addition to cardiovascular, pulmonary, and neurodegenerative disease.

I am an author/speaker and fortunate to have found a platform as the weekly health expert on KRON 4 Weekend Morning News for the past five and a half years. Each week I condense new scientific studies and current health topics to a six-minute live interview segment (with over 210 interviews to date) where I distill medical information into practical healthy living tips.

As the recurring health expert on ABC 10 in Sacramento, I created distinctively clever, fun, and healthful food demonstrations.

My Why: One month before I was due to deliver our first child, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. She received many months of aggressive and unsuccessful chemotherapy treatment.

Surgery followed, but due to the extent of the disease, her oncologist told us she had just three months to live. My heart ached realizing she may never see her first grandchild through his first nine months of life. It was harsh.

I refused to accept her doctor’s cruel declaration and was angry that he would strip my mom (or anyone for that matter) of life’s most powerful feeling — hope.

I heard about the Maruyama vaccine, a controversial anti-cancer agent used in Japan, and jumped through hoops to get it. This daily injection may not have been effective, but it was potent — and here’s why.

This vaccine gave us hope, and clinging to hope made each day bearable. There’s something very powerful behind the chance that something good might come true.

Sadly, my mom passed away at the age of 64 just outside of the doctor’s three-month window.

So with each TV segment, each Fit Tip, and each reader, viewer, or patient, spreading hope underlies every thing I do — whether it’s the hope of moving better, living longer, or just feeling happier.

Medical information can be overwhelming and even depressing depending on your frame of reference.

After my mom’s death, I couldn’t read a health article without worrying about my fate and family. With that said, I make a point to provide science-based news with a shot of optimism and small actions steps to live well.