How to Become a Longevity Nutrition Counseling Specialist – Degree & Certification Requirements

Part Two of Our Series on Longevity Nutrition Counseling

Who wants to live forever? Well, pretty much everyone. Which is why you know how big a deal it will be for your career if you decide to specialize in longevity nutrition counseling. The potential market of clientele includes basically anyone with a pulse.

Put together that very human desire to max out the number of years available, and to do it in robust physical and mental health, with new evidence and a new understanding of how aging happens at the cellular level, and there’s a boom for dietitians that is just waiting to happen for specialists in longevity nutrition counseling.

The basic toolset for becoming a longevity nutritional counselor is right there in the training and education that all certified nutritionists and registered dietitians already have. The essentials are all right there in the coursework you’ll find in a standard bachelor’s degree in nutrition and foods:

• Advanced Nutrition and Metabolism
• Food and Nutritional Health
• Lifecycle Nutrition
• Nutritional Biochemistry

The following bachelors and Master’s programs offer career-focused instruction delivered by trained nutritionists with experience in the field. Find out more what each individual course of study offers through the locations below.

Longevity Nutrition Counseling Puts Together Standard Nutritional Recommendations With Other Healthy Aging Breakthroughs

Because of the similarities in training and process with most other types of nutritional counseling, working in longevity and healthy aging is mostly about building on your degree and experience with new evidence-based developments.

Longevity nutrition counseling is a more holistic approach to healthcare, and it combines dietary factors with fields such as:

• Genomics
• Medicine
• Exercise and Physiological Science
• Psychology

Most longevity nutrition experts will end up working with other specialists in those fields to cover all the bases. However, pretty much any diet and nutrition specialist in this area will need to develop a broader understanding of how all these areas fit together in modern longevity science.

Much of this doesn’t come as any surprise to a well-trained nutritionist. They’ve been teaching people to push back the clock using these strategies for generations.

That means building skills at integrating results from genetic screening and comprehensive bloodwork into your diet recommendations. It takes a real understanding how fitness and nutrition build healthier organs. It can mean finding ways to bring together food recommendations and meditation options to manage stress and optimize well-being.

Longevity Nutritional Specialists Help Make Healthy Lifestyle Choices Sustainable

You don’t have to be a nutritionist or dietician to know which foods to avoid if you’re just looking to live longer – soda, candy, cookies, ice cream, added sweeteners of any sort…

For many people, though, this is a laundry list of some of the foods that make life worth living in the first place.

Much of the challenge for longevity nutrition specialists isn’t so much just creating a healthy diet but making that diet delicious and appealing enough for clients to commit to it.

What Kind of Education Do You Need To Become a Longevity Counseling Specialist?

There are no special degree requirements to become a longevity nutrition counselor, but the reality is that it will mostly be registered dietitians who hold master’s degrees in nutrition filling these roles.

That’s because of the complex and highly scientific nature of longevity studies. Veering into exotic realms like epigenetics and cellular metabolic processes, the core findings that support longevity science pretty much make a graduate-level education mandatory.

You can actually find specialized degree programs that cover the subject today, such as a Master of Science in Nutrition, Healthspan and Longevity or a Master of Science in Lifespan, Nutrition, and Dietetics. These can be found both online and in traditional formats. They may be accredited by ACEND and count toward your qualifications as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.

That means they will have a curriculum that covers all the core nutritional concepts like food science, microbiology, clinical nutrition, and so on. But they also go further, diving into classes covering topics like:

• Food, Culture, Disease and Longevity
• History of the World’s Blue Zones
• Nutrition, Genes, Longevity, and Disease
• Technological Innovations in Aging
• Mindful Aging

These are all subjects that verge into the larger perspective that longevity counseling has to take on. They will help dietitians who study them in integrating other aspects of longevity counseling with nutritional planning.

The Best Certifications To Get for Work as a Specialist in Longevity Nutrition Counseling

While there are indeed a few specialized degree programs for preparing for longevity nutrition counseling specialists, there aren’t yet any widely-recognized certification standards for the profession. Instead, you will find a few scattered options such as the upcoming Certified Longevity Nutrition Specialist course from the Geneva College of Longevity Science.

On the other hand, many clients and potential employers rely on existing industry certifications, such as the Registered Dietitian credential from the Commission on Dietetic Regulation (CDR), or the Certified Nutrition Specialist®™ from the Board for Certification of Nutrition Specialist (BCNS).

There may also be other certifications available that are not specific to nutrition, but cover longevity counseling and services in general. These often are tied to specific, commercial programs which you might find more or less useful in your practice. They include certs like a Longevity Coach Certification or Longevity Wellness Coaching Specialist certification.

One closely related certification from a well-respected and established certification organization is the Functional Aging Specialist Certification from ISSA (International Sports Sciences Association). This is a cross-professional cert that can make a lot of sense for nutritionists working on their own in longevity and healthy aging. The added instruction in exercise and fitness science helps cover gaps in longevity science that the typical nutrition degree program won’t cover.

Longevity Nutrition Counselors Find Jobs With Specialized Clinics or Solo Efforts

It’s entirely possible for nutritionists to work as independent consultants in longevity and healthy aging counseling. However, delivering the full spectrum of supports available through modern longevity science is a struggle for any small shop.

So the majority of individuals working in longevity nutrition counseling will probably be working for someone else.

Currently, that usually means private longevity clinics. As a new trend in the biotech industry, these clinics offer clients a full-spectrum of aging-prevention and wellness treatments. They cater today to ultra wealthy clients, but the expanding market and the potential for scale may soon break them out into more mainstream wellness services.

Some longevity nutrition counseling experts may work for healthcare organizations that have taken an interest in the field. On a more limited basis, healthy aging specialists are often found serving retirement homes and geriatric care facilities. While these don’t usually incorporate the full range of longevity treatments, they may aim at the low-hanging fruit that a longevity diet can offer.

There are also a number of universities that hire these specialists as part of their own research or healthcare programs.

What Is It Like Working as a Longevity Nutrition Counseling Specialist?

The day-to-day work of longevity nutritional counselors is something that pretty much every dietitian will recognize:

• Interviewing clients
• Understanding individual goals
• Researching recipes and food dietary content
• Developing meal and feeding plans
• Educating and counseling clients about food choices

The real differences come in the level of detail involved and integration with other specialists. Nutrition planning is really only one aspect in a longevity health plan. While it’s often the key to those plans, it needs to be integrated with findings from other professionals, including:

• Radiology technicians
• Genetic counselors
• Doctors
• Exercise trainers

Diet goals and plans may have to be integrated with other processes and treatments common in longevity programs, including fitness routines, cold plunges, and stem cell therapy or other biohacking measures. Further, this all has to happen within a sustainable long-term lifestyle for each individual client. Unlike conventional therapies, a longevity program is, by definition, something that your clients will do for life. If it doesn’t quite fit, it’s ultimately not going to accomplish the goal.

Questions People Also Ask About How To Become a Longevity Counseling Specialist

There is a lot of information to absorb and not a lot of trusted sources yet when it comes to longevity counseling. We’ve done the spade work for you and come up with some of the best answers to some of the most common questions that people have about specializing in this line of nutritional consulting, though.

Do You Need a License To Work as a Longevity Nutrition Counseling Specialist?

The credentialing requirements for nutritionists working in longevity and healthy aging are exactly the same as those for any nutritionist or registered dietitian working in the same state. Those rules vary from state to state, but in about half of all jurisdictions you need formal certification or a license.

There are some fuzzy lines when it comes to longevity counseling, however, which is otherwise unregulated. You may not be able to represent yourself as a nutritionist in some states, for example, but could offer the same advice as a longevity or healthy aging coach.

On the other hand, clients in every state, and particularly employers in longevity clinics, usually want to see some kind of professional certification, such as a CNS (Certified Nutrition Specialist) before hiring such specialized professionals.

Do Longevity Nutrition Counseling Specialists Get Paid Better Than Other Dietitians?

It’s far too soon for any specific data to be available on salary rates for longevity nutrition counselors. However, the high-class, well-funded nature of dedicated longevity clinics has a clear potential to offer top-dollar pay for nutritionists with the right expertise. Naturally, experts who are registered dietitians, with master’s degrees, will probably be the best candidates for those jobs, and already command higher salaries.