Nutrition and Health Course: Certificate by home study

Today everyone needs to know some basics of nutrition! The importance of the subject is very real and pressing. This course will give you some information that can make a big difference in your life. Appling this knowledge will lead towards a better standard of well-being now and prolonging good health in the future. This course is ideal for anyone who wants to know more at moderate depth, it is delivered entirely by distance learning and upon successful completion, leads to the Plaskett International College Certificate in Nutrition.

The course will enable you to work out sound nutritional regimes for yourself and for members of your family. This course can also be very useful to any health care professional who wants to expand his or hers knowledge of nutrition and health. Whether you work in mainstream medicine or in one of the alternative disciplines, the course can help inform you of aspects of nutrition that can enhance your main practice or even enable you to provide simple nutritional programmes for your clients. It is especially useful if you are working in voluntary health care, health and fitness, weight control, catering, the health food market, the nutrition business, or even in the media reporting upon nutritional subjects.

It will also assist in the alternative and complementary medicine as an osteopath, chiropractor, acupuncturist, homoeopath, herbalist, reflexologist, aromatherapist etc as it will give a better general understanding of nutrition to supplement your professional base.

Our course in Nutrition and Health will teach you basic nutritional principles and help you formulate healthy diets and set out well-informed programmes when faced with the bewildering array of nutritional supplements on the shelves today. Specifically, it will help you:

Gain a general understanding of the subject;
Grasp the fundamentals of the cell's need for nutrients;
Appreciate the role of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals;
Understand the basics of how these nutrients work in the body;
Be aware of the enormous health benefits that can come from favourable dietary change;
Appreciate the merits of particular foods and nutrients.

Please note, however, although this course serves as an excellent introduction to nutritional therapy, it is not designed for the full training of Nutritional Therapists. These people are trained to treat the sick through nutritional means and require much fuller professional training with a wealth of medical knowledge. However, this course could be a first step towards that goal, since it can give you exposure to the field and help you to decide whether or not nutritional therapy could become either your future profession or a very useful extension of what you already do.

The PIC course in Nutrition and Health consists of twelve sections of written material and two textbooks (at an additional cost). You will be guided from course notes to the texts and back again in accordance with a straightforward programme of study.

At the end of certain sections you complete a multiple choice question sheet, which serve to check comprehension and coverage. There is no formal examination for you to worry about. These sheets should then be sent to us on completion of all sections for checking. A Plaskett International College Certificate in Nutrition and Health will be issued to you if you have shown us that you have read and thoroughly understood the course.

These questions sheets must be returned to us within six months. If you are having difficulty in meeting this deadline, however, we are prepared to grant an extension if you have good reasons and you write to ask for an extension of time.

Section 1
This teaches the basic science of the bulk nutrients, protein, carbohydrate and fat. These are the suppliers of food energy, essential amino acids and fatty acids. You will want to understand these so as to manipulate them with skill.

Section 2
This will illuminate the nature of the cell and explain how the energy of the cell is generated and what functions the cell must perform using that energy. It explains calories as units of energy measurement and the dynamic role of the enzymes in the cells.

Section 3
This explains the importance of the controlled environment inside the cell. It particularly stresses how important it is to maintain the balance between sodium and potassium and between calcium and magnesium.

Section 4
This shows you how the cell needs to remain vital and active and to maintain the integrity of its energy systems and enzymes. It stresses the cell's need to excrete waste and toxic materials and to actively cleanse. This approach is both naturopathic and science-based.

Section 5
This emphasises and explains the importance of microminerals. It shows them in their role as enzyme activators and how they contribute in this way to cell energy and to maintaining the cell's integrity and function. It explains the key roles and characteristics of individual microminerals.

Section 6
This covers the entire group of vitamins. It shows how they activate enzymes, contribute to cell energy and increase vitality. It explains their differing functions and characteristics.

Section 7
This explains how the complex population of bacteria in the intestines contribute to maintaining vitality and health. In particular it will become clear how these bacteria aid cleansing and the maintenance of a good environment within the body so essential to good health. It includes how to nurture your own bowel flora organisms.

Section 8
This identifies the 'suppressive' foods - those which block the body's elimination of toxins. It separates them from the 'eliminative' foods - those which enable or enhance the voiding of toxins. It gives the characteristics (in this respect) of the main food groups. It will tell you what problem foods to avoid and identify the acid-producing foods.

Section 9
This provides a great deal of data on the composition of foods, their content and the main differences between them. This is a working mass of data to enable your own design of health-giving diets.

Section 10
This is an introduction to allergies or intolerances - what they are; physical signs and symptoms, the most frequent; masked/hidden and/or addictive allergies; causes of allergy - food, chemical, emotional and mental; stages of allergy; different types of allergy - fixed, variable, cyclic; managing allergies and sensitivities - how to handle them; rotation diets (including the rotation chart); allergy testing and its limitations; food additives and chemicals; the role of nutrition in all this.

Section 11
This provides clear guidance on designing maintenance nutritional diets that, compared to most ordinary diets, should improve health.

Section 12
This explains and demystifies the subject of vitamin and mineral supplements and their use. It enables you to design simple maintenance and health-giving programmes of supplementation.

Fee £250 credit and debit cards accepted