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Nutritional Therapist

Professional Diploma Level 5

  • Accredited by CPD
  • Approved by IICT and underwriters for membership and insurance.
  • Included in the Nutrition Business Explorer Program™ at no additional cost
This 20-unit certification teaches you how to recognise nutrition deficiency risks, advise clients, build personalised nutrition plans, and lays a strong foundation for your future as a nutrition professional! You’ll have the opportunity to familiarise yourself with many of the philosophies and science behind nutrition and learn how to implement your new skills in real client scenarios.
Explore more details inside the Academic Tour

This training is for you if:

  • You’re a nutrition professional wanting to work with weight management clients. Poor diet quality can increase obesity risk, but being overweight or obese means that certain micronutrients are required at higher doses per kilogram of body weight..
  • You’re a sports professional working with professional athletes and sports teams wanting to decrease micronutrient deficiency risks from extreme training...
  • You work with emotional eating clients who may have nutrient deficiencies which can impair appetite regulation through multiple pathways...
  • You have symptomatic clients and want to assess symptom severity and frequency, evaluating health risk for referral.

17 modules • 60 CPD hours • videos • workbooks

Nutritional Therapist

Certification accredited for 60 CPD hours
By the end of this certification you will be able to:
  • Recognise the impact of food on DNA expression and learn to do a nutrient check-up
  • Discover 160 superfoods that deliver the most nutrients per calorie and the functions of over 100 micronutrients
  • Perform client assessments and detect nutrient deficiency risks
  • Build personalised food plans and monitor symptom improvements
  • Put forward nutritional recommendations for over 40 common health conditions
  • Packed with printable tools to use with clients right away: questionnaires, workbooks, trackers, and legal forms

Learn to detect nutrient deficiency risks

Printable workbooks and symptom assessments:
  • Antioxidant Assessment™ with Scores and Recommendations
  • Nutritional Deficiencies Assessment™
  • Symptom Results and Nutrient Requirements tools
  • Diet Planning Workbook™
  • Required Foods Identifier
  • Personalising Shopping Lists
  • Antioxidants Shopping List
  • Food and Symptom Journal
  • Symptom Reassessment tool
  • Session Summary Handouts
  • Client Health Check Questionnaire
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Course Overview

  • Introduction to Nutritional Therapy
  • Genetic Adaptations to Nutrition
  • Changing gene expression
  • Switching genes on and off
  • How food changes your DNA
  • Free radicals and DNA damage
  • How to test your antioxidant capacity
  • Antioxidant foods for longevity and disease prevention
  • Nature’s Pharmacy: Polyphenols and phytochemicals
  • Fibre: the antioxidant trafficker
  • Probiotics: Nature’s Antibiotics
  • Essential Nutrients and Antioxidants
  • How to detect nutritient deficiency risks
  • How to create a personalised nutritional programme
  • How to structure client consultations
  • How to monitor nutritional programmes
  • Health benefits and micronutrients in 160 superfoods
  • Nutritional advice for over 40 health conditions
  • Your role as a Nutritional Therapist
  • Setting up or expanding your practice

Looking for Course Curriculum?

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By the end of this program, you’ll be able to:

Recognise the impact of nutrition on health and gene expression and understand the relationship between free radicals and DNA damage

Perform nutritional assessments, detect probable nutrient deficiency risks, and formulate personalised dietary strategies to help correct them

Analyse antioxidant capacity and put forward nutritional recommendations to increase antioxidant protection

Identify which factors either increase the bioavailability of required nutrients or hinder their absorption and utilisation

Understand the influence of plant-based foods, polyphenols, phytochemicals, probiotics, and fibre on health promotion and disease prevention

Build personalised food plans to help improve health symptoms and put forward nutritional recommendations for common health conditions

Test for nutrient deficiency risks on your own

  • Includes results and personalised recommendations
  • Nature’s Pharmacy: Polyphenols and phytochemicals
  • Templates for immediate use with clients. Assessment tools to personalise programmes. Planning kits to use in your practice. Methods you won't find anywhere else!

Skills Lab™ : Instantly apply your knowledge!

Practise the techniques taught in your certification before seeing real clients through guided field tasks, practical assignments, questionnaires, idea banks creation, and games. Learn how your classmates are doing and stay motivated!

Hear from our grads and how this cert propelled their careers 

5/5
Enhancing my knowledge by getting the science behind my own understanding and use.
- Scott Pirie (Croyde, Braunton, UK)
5/5
I enjoyed everything, one of the benefits is you work from home in your own time so it's very flexible. The downloadable print outs were very helpful as well.
-Liam from Texas

Want to experience the same difference?

Get instant access to it inside your Academic Tour

We have developed the Free Academic Tour to help our students make informed decisions. When you go on the Academic Tour, you will discover the Curriculum of the Certification, Webinars on Principles and Certification Path, Access a couple of modules of the Certification (Trial), Career Opportunities, Learning Path and Outcomes, and much more. You can instantly purchase the certification inside Academic Tour.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you want to equip yourself with science-based knowledge that would help you launch or scale your nutrition business?

Do you want to sharpen your client skills and connect better with your clients through advanced clinical skills training and practice?

Do you want to make an impact in the world and help people who will need the clinical nutrition skills you will bring to the table?

If you have answered yes to all of the questions above, then indeed, this program is for you! It doesn’t matter if you are a practising professional with clients or if you need the knowledge for yourself as an athlete, or you want to improve your diet,you want to meet weight management goals, you want to learn how to take care of your gut, you want to help your child’s or ward’s brain development or perhaps you want to sleep better and stress less. The learnings from this program will equip you with scientific and evidence based demonstrable knowledge to meet your health and wellness goals and also propel your career forward.

Yes, you should! You do not need to have a university degree to join this program.


The Clinical Nutrition Program offers advanced science-based knowledge to grow your nutrition knowledge and help you launch a business, including the practical tools and clinical skills training you need to start working with clients with confidence.


Our core competencies, although advanced, will equip you with the fundamental knowledge for starting out in the nutrition space and then uplevel your expertise so you can compete fairly in your chosen niche once you graduate from the Clinical Nutrition Program.

There are no prerequisites for joining this program. This program was designed in a way that allows you to get started without any prior nutrition knowledge.

You only need to meet these basic requirements:

✔️ Proficient in English

✔️ High level of computer literacy (including Word document editing and formatting)

✔️ Good Internet connection

✔️ Access to a computer with video camera and high-quality microphone (for the Observed Clinic Session)

If you want to grow your client skills exponentially with the latest evidence-based strategies, you need clinical nutrition skills!

Learn how to apply clinical skills and personalisation strategies to support specialised health outcomes through advanced clinical skills training and practice, including real-time training and feedback on preparing a client case study and on your client session delivery.

This program goes above and beyond any of our individual certifications. As you go through the Clinical Nutrition Program, you will also be completing a nutrition client case study and meeting clinical nutrition hours with practice clients or classmates.

The clinical skills you will gain will give you the confidence and practical tools to work with clients and set you apart from nutrition professionals that may only have book knowledge but not the know-how.

This level 7 program includes the following:

✔️ 8 core competencies

✔️ Clinical skills training and practice

✔️ An elective specialisation of your choice

✔️ Completion of a Research Project consisting of Nutrition Client Case Study, a Clinical Skills Written Exam, a Reflection Form for your chosen elective specialisation, and an Oral Practical Exam consisting of a live observed clinic session.

Here are more details about each mandatory component itemised above:

PART 1. Eight Core Competencies, to be completed in this order:

✔️ Nutritional Therapy and Food Science

✔️ Anatomy, Pathophysiology and Lifestyle Medicine

✔️ Clinical Weight Loss and Eating Psychology

✔️ Gut Health Nutrition

✔️ Mental Health

✔️ Nutrition for Cancer Risk and Longevity

✔️ Dietary Supplements

✔️ Advanced Research Techniques

PART 2. Advanced Clinical Skills Training and Practice (to be explained in more detail below)

PART 3. One Elective Specialisation of your choice:

✔️ Food Allergies and Intolerances

✔️ Sleep Management

✔️ Child and Family Nutrition

✔️ Toxicology and Detoxification

✔️ Fertility Nutrition

✔️ Sports and Exercise Nutrition

✔️ Or upcoming specialisations at The Health Sciences Academy:

     > Skincare Nutrition 

     > Plant-Based Nutrition

You are welcome to complete further specialisations separately at your own time after you graduate from the Clinical Nutrition Program. Attainment of additional specialisations following your program completion can be counted towards your ongoing CPD requirements.

EXAMINATION. Your clinical skills will be assessed through the following mandatory evaluations, each requiring a passing mark of 80% or more:

✔️ Research Project (consisting of a Nutrition Client Case Study)

✔️ Clinical Skills Written Exam (consisting of approximately 100 scenario-based questions)

✔️ Reflection Forms (one for each of your chosen electives)

✔️ Oral Practical Exam (consisting of a live observed clinic session conducted with one of our examiners)

CLIENT PRACTICE. You will be required to maintain a Nutrition Client Log attesting a minimum of 10 nutrition client sessions in order to sit for the final Oral Practical Exam.

(More details will be provided once you enrol for the program)

You have the flexibility to complete this program within a minimum of 1 year and up to 3 years from your enrolment date.

Certainly. The entire course is online and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You have the flexibility to undergo the program at your own pace.

If you are a part of the first cohort, you will be required to join the live session of the Advanced Clinical Skills Training and Practice conducted by Alex Ruani, our Chief Science Educator. However, if you are unable to join this live session due to time zone differences, the recording would be made available to you.

The opportunity to participate in this LIVE training starting in February 2022 is only available to Clinical Nutrition Program students enrolling during Q4 2021 and no later than Sunday 16th January 2022.

Rest assured that we always consider the time zone differences of all our students before we make decisions.

Yes! The flexibility of the program allows you to study at your own pace. Whether you are fully employed or in the university, dedicating a number of hours per week is enough to help you keep up.

The lectures will be available online via our online learning platform and once you are enroled as a student, you will have access to this learning platform 24/7. You will also enjoy lifetime access to your courses, quizzes, exams and others.

We have also created a study buddy group for students so you can discuss with your peers and share ideas to make learning easier.

If you have completed one or more certifications already, we have made it easier for you to upgrade to the program. Book a call here with the Admissions Team to know about it.

Once you complete the Clinical Nutrition Program, you will have the choice to adopt any of the following professional designations:

You will get a certification of graduation upon successful completion of your Clinical Nutrition Program and you will have the choice to adopt any of the following professional designations:

✔️ THSA Certified Nutritionist (THSA-CN)

✔️ THSA Certified Clinical Nutritionist (THSA-CCN)

✔️ THSA Certified Nutrition Practitioner (THSA-NP)

✔️ THSA Certified Nutrition Consultant (THSA-NC)

PLUS:

✔️ You will be eligible to apply for the American Naturopathic Medical Certification Board. You will enjoy the added credibility of being recognised in the US whilst also carrying UK and international weight.

Board credentialing allows you to use the designation of: Board Certified Nutrition Consultant (nominal after your name: BCNC) For more information on this, please contact our Learner Services Team

✔️ Professional insurance to practice through the program’s pre-approved path in 39 countries.

For more information on this, please contact our Learner Services Team

We understand and want to help you. Our admissions team would be glad to help you gain the clarity you need and guide you on your next steps. Go here to book a call with them now.
Training Nutritionists of the Future™
© Copyright The Health Sciences Academy. The content, graphs and charts on this page have been exclusively prepared for The Health Sciences Academy and its prospect students, existing students and graduates. None of the content on this page and website may be reproduced, copied or altered without our explicit permission. Criminal and legal penalties for copyright and other infringement apply. All Terms and Conditions apply.
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The Health Sciences Academy® is the world’s largest 100% science-based, nutrition-focused online educational institution.
✔ helping health and wellness professionals grow successful client practices
✔ raising industry standards since 2012 through personalised nutrition science
© Copyright The Health Sciences Academy. The content, graphs and charts on this page have been exclusively prepared for The Health Sciences Academy and its prospect students, existing students and graduates. None of the content on this page and website may be reproduced, copied or altered without our explicit permission. Criminal and legal penalties for copyright and other infringement apply. All Terms and Conditions apply.

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