CHOMP Dr. Terry Franklin drops a smart, free app.

Terry “Tel” Franklin describes the state of people’s health in good news-bad news fashion.

Bad news: People are unhealthy.

Good news: It’s not their fault.

“Most diseases in the United States are preventable because most are lifestyle – oriented,” Franklin says. “But the choices we choose are not conscious. We don’t take the time to reflect and say, ‘Is this what I really need, is this in my long-term best interests?’ It’s what I call toxic hunger. It’s not from our stomach, it’s from our brains.”

But there’s better news: A little education, collaboration and motivation can do wonders for that problematic decision-making. That’s where Franklin comes in.

As a staff physician at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula and medical director of the Ryan Ranch Medical Group, Franklin’s wrapped up his accumulated wisdom into an iPhone app, TelMD Level 1, released this month on the iTunes store.

Franklin is a weird hybrid of a traditional doctor and holistic healer, incorporating acupuncture, vitamin infusions, nutritional and sleep counseling and meditation into his practice. The hybrid nature of his practice is reflected in the app – it can be used by any patient seeing any doctor. He hopes it will help people collaborate with their doctors more productively with an end goal of living healthier, more balanced lives.

The idea for the app came in 2014, when Stanford University invited Franklin to a think tank of innovators trying to figure out new ways to help people live healthier lives. “I said, ‘It should really be to change our thought process,’ and they said, ‘This is beyond the scope of what we’re trying to do.’”

Franklin said he’d be back in four months with an app. It was more like a year.

He sat in his living room with a stack of yellow legal pads, wrote out how the app should work and collaborated with a professional developer and then a designer.

“TelMD is about nutrition, taking inventory of where you are and where you want to go and life as a journey,” he says. “Learn to eat better, learn to spend time in nature, learn to go to the chiropractor in order to stay healthier, give your body proper nutrition and sleep.”

TelMD Level 1 is available on the iTunes store.

FRANKLIN’S BASICS

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Hydrate. Drink three big glasses of water a day.

Take vitamins—iron, a fish-oil supplement and calcium.

Get sufficient sleep—and get help if you can’t.

Learn to meditate. Even 20 seconds of deep, focused breathing a few times a day is a good place to start.