Skip to Content
Home /  Courses And Programs / Advanced Nutrition Topics

The course builds on the foundation, established in the course “Food as Medicine: The Art and Science of Self-Healing,” for a career-focused training program Certificate in Integrative Nutrition. Taught by leading national experts, it provides students with advanced theoretical perspectives and targeted applications of the use of food as medicine. These are applied to the prevention and management of several common, important health problems. It begins with an examination of nutritional strategies for clinical care, including the use of whole food, plant-based diets, medical foods, fasting, and functional medicine. It then proceeds to link diet to the development and treatment of several important issues in clinical medicine including heart disease, cancer, blinding eye disease, and women’s health. It then exposes students to differing viewpoints on and helps them to think critically about some of the hottest topics and deepest controversies in the field (such as the emerging understanding of the role of the human microbiome and the pros and cons of genetic engineering of foods). Finally, it offers new ways of conceptualizing how to apply and research the use of food as medicine. The course is taught through a series of online lectures, assigned readings, and online discussion.

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • Describe the scientific relationship of food with the development, progression, and treatment of several common, important health concerns.
  • Understand the rationale for and healing properties of a whole food, plant-based diet and its targeting toward specific health problems.
  • Explain the uses of specific medical foods including their scientific basis, healing properties, and clinical applications.
  • Discuss and provide an overview of Functional Medicine and how it may be used therapeutically to help ameliorate a variety of health problems.
  • Explain different approaches to fasting and fast-mimicking diets and their clinical applications.
  • Discuss the human microbiome and its scientific underpinnings, relationship with and modulation by food, and far-reaching health implications.
  • Articulate and explain different perspectives on major controversies in the field of diet and nutrition.
  • Conceptualize and provide an example of how individual data may be used to research and understand the impact of diet on disease.

Course Number: FPM-40620
Credit: 2.00 unit(s)
Related Certificate Programs: Integrative Nutrition

+ Expand All