Functional Nutrition Career : Scope, Advantages, How You Can Become a Functional Nutritionist
We are in a technological golden age where we’re living the most comfortable life that humans have ever experienced. But regardless of all the innovation in medical field, we’re unable to address one fundamental question that affects us all.
Why are cases of chronic diseases increasing at such an unprecedented rate?
Perhaps, upon closer introspection we find that the reason lies within the name itself. Chronic diseases, often referred to as “Chronic Lifestyle Diseases” originate from the bad lifestyle choices we make in our daily life.
Lifestyle decisions like staying indoors most of the time, not exercising, sedentary work, ingesting toxin-rich food, usage of plastics, etc. are major contributors to the problem.
Fixing these basic lifestyle habits, replenishment of nutrients and detoxification would result in eradication of most of the Chronic lifestyle diseases from their root cause, such that they would never return back.
Finding the Why and then working on fixing it will help you more than finding a temporary solution.
This is the foundation of Functional Nutrition.
Problems With Conventional Medicine
We’re aware that most chronic diseases originate from a bad lifestyle, but instead of fixing the lifestyle and replacing current diet with nutrient-dense healthy foods, we turn to pharmaceutical drugs for quick solution.
New technological inventions have been adopted as a part of conventional medicine treatment and are doing some stunning things with the potential to fight cancer, reattaching limbs, to name a few.
These technical approaches, however, might not be the best ones to cure or treat a chronic disease because more than 85% of these are caused by poor lifestyle and dietary behaviors.
The conventional medical system that the world uses right now is based around symptom suppression. It does not fix the root cause of the problem and hence the disease keeps on coming back.
It uses a very mechanistic approach. Conventional medicine does not see an individual human as a whole and thus does not consider his/her physical, psychological, social and spiritual make-up. The patient presents his body to the doctor as he would his watch to a watchmaker or his car to a mechanic so the expert can fix, add, remove, replace, tighten, loosen, adjust or recharge whatever piece needs work so that the machine functions as it should.
How Does Functional Nutrition Work?
Functional Nutrition can be understood by the following analogy:
Functional nutrition says a normal boat should not fill up with water, so we find the leak and fix it. The boat is then normal again.
The boat can have multiple leaks in multiple locations, different boats can have different kinds and sizes of leaks. No matter what the problem is, we can find and fix it.
Which means with functional nutrition, the path taken is clear; that is to first figure out the problem, then find the cause of its origin and then fix it so that it’s gone forever.
Functional Nutrition places a strong emphasis on the way of eating for each person to regulate the normal function of his/her body. Our connection with food is realigned. Our body starts to restore its capacity to recover from a sickness or injury with an increase in the intake of fresh, pure, uncontaminated, organic food. It significantly boosts both our satiety and energy levels.
That is, we learn to use food as our medicine. Read more here
Benefits of Functional Nutrition
Highly personalized and patient-specific
No two people have the same fundamental make-up. Which is why there shouldn’t be a common healing approach for multiple people. Functional Medicine takes this into account and every protocol is designed around patient’s unique set of health circumstances.
Focus on Holistic Healing
Functional Nutrition is a one-on-one partnership between the patient and the practitioner where the practitioner figures out the cause of diseases based off inputs given by the patient.
An upgrade over conventional medicine
Functional Nutrition does not disregard conventional medicine completely, rather it addresses and improves all the flaw that the current system has.
An alternate route to great health
It focuses on prevention through combinations of therapeutic and healing food, nutrient supplements or botanical medicines, detoxification programs, and/or stress-management techniques.
How To Become A Functional Nutritionist
Becoming a Functional Nutritionist has no specific prerequisite. One key trait of a good Functional Nutritionist is a passion for healthy living and a desire to help your community do so too.
In our experience, ANYONE with an aspiration and enough dedication can become a Functional Nutritionist. We’ve trained people from banking, arts and even IT backgrounds to become world-class Functional Nutritionists.
As of now, the only recognized Certification for Functional Nutrition is issued by iThrive because we are a part of Indian Association of Functional Medicine Practitioners and the only online Functional Nutrition course in India.
Career In Functional Nutrition
Functional Nutrition is the future of healthcare, not because it’s new or fancy, but because it brings us back to the foundation of what healthcare should be about — the needs of the person.
Being a Functional Nutritionist in India today is like being a developer before the dot-com boom. Functional Nutrition has arguably the highest potential in the entire health industry. In India alone, Functional Nutrition is projected to cross over $4 Billion market cap within the next 5 years.
For people who are currently working as Nutritionists, getting a Functional Nutrition Certification would enable them to charge a premium on their consultation fees.
Option for career in Functional Nutrition is not just limited to consultation, its knowledge empowers you to pursue your career as Content Creator, Research Associate, Product Development, Functional Nutrition instructor, practitioner to name a few. The possibilities are endless.
We are often approached by other Functional Nutrition companies who are looking to expand their teams and iThrive Academy Students always get the preference, therefore making iThrive Academy arguably the best functional nutrition certification program
iThrive also offers Internship to every Academy Graduate which helps them get first hand experience of the industry. This is further supplemented by the Coaching and Business Skill module included in the course that will teach you to handle and satisfy clients and utilize your skills to the maximum.
About iThrive Academy
iThrive Academy is a Functional Nutrition teaching institute affiliated with its mother company iThrive - Healing and Beyond, a revolutionary health and wellness startup.
The iThrive Academy introduced an online certification course in Functional Nutrition for the first time in India and has since helped hundreds of people find answers to their health problems they couldn’t find elsewhere. It has also empowered many others to turn their passion for healing into a career opportunity and heal societies of people around them.
The Academy is a stepping stone towards iThrive’s vision of creating healthier, happier, lifestyle disease-free communities across the world every single day.
