I am an author and advocate whose work has been shaped by epilepsy, disability, neurological injury, faith, patient advocacy, years of independent study, and the continuing work of building a meaningful life. Those experiences matter, but they are not the whole of who I am or what I write about.
I write about health, evidence, faith, personal agency, healthy aging, resilience, and the difficult decisions people face when the answers are not simple—along with the wider questions that come from living, learning, building, and paying attention. My goal is not to tell people what to think, but to examine worthwhile questions carefully, distinguish experience from evidence, and help people think more clearly for themselves.
What Shaped My Perspective
My perspective did not come from watching difficult circumstances from a safe distance. Epilepsy entered my life as a teenager and eventually affected far more than my health. Over the years there were seizures, medications, hospitalizations, injuries, surgeries, periods of stability and periods when almost every part of daily life had to be reconsidered. Disability changed work and independence. Neurological injury changed what recovery meant. Some losses were temporary; others became part of the life I had to learn to live.
Illness and disability are part of my story, but so are work, faith, relationships, curiosity, learning, advocacy, writing, building new things, and the ordinary routines that make up a life. I do not believe a person has to be in crisis before questions about health, judgment, growth, purpose, or how to live well become worth asking.
Those experiences taught me how different lived reality can be from a diagnosis on paper. They also taught me the importance of asking better questions: What actually helps? What is supported by evidence? What remains uncertain? What can I influence, and what is outside my control? How do you preserve judgment and hope when fear, pain, urgency, or confident voices are pulling you in different directions?
My online writing and public advocacy reach back to at least 2007, when the social web looked very different than it does today. What began as personal writing and connecting with others eventually grew into organized epilepsy advocacy, including The Epilepsy Connection, and later expanded into books, health advocacy, faith-based writing, and the broader body of work I continue to develop today.
Those experiences and years of advocacy have shaped my books, articles, resources, cancer-navigation work, and much of what I publish now. Lived experience gives me perspective, but I do not treat experience as proof. That distinction has become one of the foundations of how I approach my work.
What I Write About
My work no longer fits neatly inside a single subject. Some of it grows directly from what I have lived; some begins with a question, a claim, a book, a study, a public issue, or something I believe deserves a closer look.
Health & Evidence
Health, nutrition, neurological illness, wellness claims, evidence, uncertainty, and the difference between promising ideas and established conclusions.
Critical Thinking
How claims are framed, what evidence actually supports, where hype enters the conversation, and how to remain open-minded without surrendering judgment.
Faith & Devotionals
Christian faith, Scripture, suffering, grace, purpose, discernment, and what it means to continue following Christ through unanswered questions.
Epilepsy & Advocacy
Epilepsy, disability, patient advocacy, safety, neurological resilience, and the realities that can disappear when illness is discussed only in clinical terms.
Cancer Navigation
Decision-making, complementary approaches, misinformation, uncertainty, and the challenge of protecting both hope and critical judgment when the stakes are high.
Perspectives
Personal reflections and wider subjects that matter to me—where lived experience, observation, history, public life, technology, culture, or simply a worthwhile question becomes the starting point.
How I Approach the Work
I try to keep several distinctions clear. Lived experience can provide perspective without proving that the same conclusion applies to everyone. A plausible idea is not the same as an established fact. Skepticism is not the same as discernment, and confidence is not the same as certainty. Conventional claims deserve scrutiny, and so do alternative ones.
When the evidence is strong, I want to say so. When it is mixed, limited, or uncertain, I want that uncertainty to remain visible. I do not believe people are served by exaggerating evidence to make a point, whether the claim comes from medicine, wellness culture, marketing, social media, or anywhere else.
My Christian faith is foundational to my life, but I do not use faith as a substitute for evidence in questions that can be investigated empirically. In the same way, science is not asked to answer every question of meaning, purpose, morality, or God. Different questions require different kinds of reasoning, and intellectual honesty includes knowing the difference.
From Natural Vitality Advocate to David Julian
I created Natural Vitality Advocate in 2025 after years of experiences that had changed the direction of my life. NVA gave a growing body of work a home and became connected to my books, health and epilepsy advocacy, resources, cancer-navigation work, faith, resilience, and a commitment to helping people think more clearly for themselves. I am grateful for what I built through Natural Vitality Advocate. I am not trying to erase it or pretend that chapter never happened.
As the work developed, however, it became broader than the name that originally gave it a home. At the same time, a closer review of the business and brand structure raised practical and legal considerations surrounding the Natural Vitality name. Nothing forced this change, and I am not suggesting that I was legally prohibited from using Natural Vitality Advocate. The process simply made me examine more carefully whether that identity was still the right home for everything I was building.
Natural Vitality Advocate had never created the work. I had created Natural Vitality Advocate.
Once I understood that clearly, the direction became much simpler. I did not need another organization or a broader wellness name. I could bring the work under my own name while carrying forward what mattered: the articles, resources, books, advocacy, cancer-navigation work, devotionals, faith, and the commitment to clarity, evidence, discernment, agency, resilience, and purpose that developed through NVA.
I haven’t abandoned the work. I’m bringing it with me.
Faith
My Christian faith is not a branding category or an accessory to the rest of my work. It is foundational to how I understand my life, suffering, grace, responsibility, hope, and purpose. At the same time, I do not expect every subject I write about to become a devotional. There is room here for explicit Christian writing and for careful work on health, evidence, history, public life, or other subjects that should be addressed on their own terms.
The fuller story of how I came to faith, what I believe, and how those beliefs developed through illness, searching, Scripture, questions, and experience belongs in Read My Testimony →.
Books by David Julian
My books carry different parts of this work: memoir and lived experience, health decision-making, personal agency, critical thinking, faith, and what it means to keep living deliberately when life is uncertain.
Memoir
Healing Against the Odds
A firsthand account of serious illness, neurological injury, faith, and the long work of rebuilding when the body refuses to cooperate.
Memoir
Still Walking
A memoir about the long middle of serious illness—epilepsy, disability, neurological hardship, faith, and continuing forward when progress is slow or mostly invisible.
Book
You Do You
A direct case for independent judgment in a culture crowded with pressure and certainty—thinking clearly, deciding what you actually believe, and living from conviction.
Patient & Caregiver Guide
Navigating Cancer: Between Hope and Hype
A practical guide to making sense of cancer care, complementary approaches, nutrition, misinformation, and difficult decisions—without surrendering either hope or critical judgment.
Continue Exploring
This page is only an introduction. The books, articles, epilepsy work, devotionals, resources, and testimonials go deeper into the subjects, experiences, and earlier advocacy work that have shaped what I publish.