Good healthcare begins with looking closer
Meet Alani
I’m Alani Kalfayan, a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and founder of AK Wellness.
I created AK Wellness to offer the kind of care I believe people deserve: time to tell their story, thoughtful questions, and a willingness to look beyond individual symptoms to understand how the pieces fit together.
My approach brings together conventional and functional medicine, with a particular interest in the connections between gut health, hormones, nutrition, stress, sleep, and the nervous system.
Look deeper. Connect the dots. Treat the whole person.
How I got here
My interest in this kind of medicine started long before AK Wellness.
Years ago, I became very sick after a trip to Mexico. What I thought would be a short-lived stomach illness turned into months of digestive symptoms, exhaustion, and test after test that told me everything looked normal - which was relieving and frustrating!
Looking for answers led me deeper into nutrition, gut health, and the interconnected systems of the body. My health journey brought me back to school where I became a family nurse practitioner. When I had my young kids I found myself asking many of the same questions again. Why do some kids struggle with digestion, nutrition, sleep, energy, cavities or different behaviors when every test and physical comes back normal. What else might be contributing?
That curiosity eventually led me to functional medicine. It gave me a broader framework for asking what changed, what systems might be connected, and what we might be missing when we look at symptoms one at a time.
AK Wellness grew from the belief that there is room for both: the rigor of conventional medicine and the curiosity of a whole-person approach. Today, I work with adults, children, and families to understand the bigger picture—and create care that makes sense for the person in front of me.
A Thoughtful Approach to Care
Training + experience
Alani Kalfayan, MSN, FNP-C, is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and the founder of AK Wellness. She earned her Master of Science in Nursing as a Family Nurse Practitioner from Seattle University in 2012 and is board certified through the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.
Her clinical background includes HIV prevention research, comprehensive primary care, and women’s health. She later pursued advanced training through the Institute for Functional Medicine, expanding her clinical approach to include functional and integrative medicine principles, advanced laboratory evaluation, nutrition, and lifestyle medicine.
Alani’s approach brings together the strengths of conventional and functional medicine. Her conventional medical training provides the foundation to recognize, evaluate, and treat disease—and to know when traditional medical treatment, additional evaluation, or referral is needed. Functional medicine provides a broader framework for understanding how factors such as nutrition, gut health, hormones, sleep, stress, genetics, environment, and lifestyle may interact and influence health.
Rather than viewing these as competing approaches, Alani draws from both. She stays engaged with current scientific research and continuing education to inform how she evaluates and treats each patient, while recognizing that evidence-based care should still be individualized to the person in front of her.
My approach
Curious by nature.
I want to understand what's happening before deciding what you need.
Data-informed, not data-driven.
Labs can give us valuable information, but they're one part of the picture. Your symptoms, history, and lived experience matter too.
Personalized, but practical.
A plan only works if it works in your real life. Nutrition, lifestyle, supplements, medications, testing, and other interventions are considered thoughtfully—not automatically.
Integrative by design.
Functional medicine doesn't have to mean choosing between conventional care and a whole-person approach. I believe there is value in both.
And outside the office...
I'm also a mom, a lifelong lover of food and flamenco, and happiest when I'm outside, traveling - I’m always up for an adventure.
I believe food should be nourishing and enjoyable, that health should make your life bigger rather than smaller, and that there's a lot more to a person than what's written in a medical chart.
These perspectives shapes the way I practice medicine, too.
Ready to take the next step?
Start with an Initial Visit
Your first visit is a comprehensive 90-minute appointment where we'll talk through your symptoms, health history, lifestyle, and goals—and begin creating a path forward.
Not sure if AK Wellness is right for you?
Schedule a complimentary 15-minute Discovery Call to learn more about my approach and ask questions about working together.