How to Become an Integrative Health Practitioner

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The functional medicine world has taken off in the past 5 years!

If you are new here, or unaware of my story; my journey into clean living propelled my interest in learning health at a more integrative approach over the traditional conventional medicine approach. This blog post will give you insight on how to become an integrative health practitioner. From healthcare professionals to everyday people, more and more people are wanting to get into wellness coaching.

**Disclosure-nothing in this blog post is medical advice, just what has worked for me

**Affiliate disclosure-I do have affiliate links in this blog post. All links are all personal recommendations of everything I have tried.

How the Integrative Health Practioner Course certificate program came into my life

I will never forget my first few months of nursing school. We were in the beginning of clinical practicum, and if you know anything about nursing school, your whole main task besides taking care of patients with the overseeing nurse was to put these complicated care plans together as homework. Each care plan was supposed to be specific to the patient we were caring for. I remember putting my care plan together for my patient who was morbidly obese, and had multiple co-morbidities like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and was on the brink of congestive heart failure. 

We had to write out our goals for our patients and how we would implement those goals for the patients. One of my main overall goals(this was very overzealous for me) but I didn’t know better as a new nurse, was that I wanted to get this morbidly obese patient off all of his meds. Yes, I know, I know, not going to happen overnight, but I didn’t mean for this to happen overnight I meant in the future. When my instructor asked me about this, I explained that I believed if this person had some help with lifestyle change he could potentially get off all his medications. I will never forget the look my instructor gave me. She basically laughed in my face and told me that would never happen and my goals needed to be “reasonable” for the patient. 

As I said, I get that I was a bit overarching with that statement, but what I meant was maybe this client could get some nutritional coaching on how to start properly eating for proper nutrition so that he could start losing weight. Maybe he could get a physical therapist to show him how to do some basic exercises he could start doing today to help him move better and utilize that with diet to help him lose weight. But no, my instructor wanted goals on how I could help him with such things as how to “keep him comfortable” and “how to keep his blood pressure managed with medications.” You get the picture; not looking at how this person could change his life himself, but how the world of medicine could keep him “comfortable.”

From that moment on, I knew I wasn’t cut out for the traditional nursing patient care that I had signed up to go to school for. 

Fast forward years later, I began looking into my environment as to why I was getting chronic headaches only to find my scented body lotions and candles filled with artificial fragrances were messing with my body. That was the ultimate wake-up call to me in the sense that we have so much more power over our health than the world of Western medicine wants us to believe. I believe a lot more people are turning to naturopathic doctors, complementary therapies, and a more holistic approach to their health.

Fast forward even more, I was researching graduate schools, because I thought maybe becoming a nurse practitioner and getting my master’s degree was going to help me elevate my nursing clinical practice into having a more integrated approach. I wasn’t very happy with the price tag that came with an advanced nursing degree license though. 

I was scrolling Instagram one day, and came across Stephen Cabral and his profile. He was talking about his new course on becoming an integrative health practitioner. I was very curious as to what this entailed. I started researching Stephen Cabral and found that he has a board certification in the Doctor of Naturopathy among several other certifications. I was very impressed, to say the least. I was even more impressed after I read about his background and why he got into his career path. He was essentially very ill his whole life with doctor after doctor telling him they had no idea why he was so sick and that he would just have to “live with it his whole life” Well, he took his health into his own hands and researched and researched and found holistic practitioners who helped him change his life and reverse every health issue he had.

Has anyone ever told you that? Do you have an autoimmune condition that the doctor doesn’t know how you got, but that you will live with it for the rest of your life? I had found my next step in nursing, to help people change their lives and become an Integrative Health practitioner. 

What is an integrative health practitioner?

An Integrative health practitioner is a practitioner who treats the whole person- mind, body, and soul. The principle focuses on 7 different integrative disciplines:

Ayurvedic medicine: The science of life & body-typing 

Functional medicine: looking at root causes by using state-of-the-art lab testing

Orthomolecular medicine: The science of vitamins and minerals as “medicine”

Traditional Naturopathy: Using “Right Living” to reverse illness

Eastern Philosophy: Using the mind to heal the body

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Herbalism: Utilizing nature’s healing wisdom with herbal medicine

Bioregulatory medicine: The science of self-healing and rebalancing

As you can see, the integrative practitioner approach uses a lot of self-healing principles and seeing what the “root cause” of someone’s dis-ease is. I love the way Dr. Cabral talks about “disease” he pronounces it “dis-ease” as he believes all “disease” can be undone. 

Dr. Cabral correlates “dis-ease” with our overall toxic load in our bodies, mind, and spirit. He uses the theory of the “rain barrel effect” on our bodies. The “rain barrel effect” is essentially picturing our bodies as a rain barrel. When our rain barrels become too full of rain they overspill right? Well, imagine your body as a rain barrel and everyday toxicities in the world such as chemicals on our food, synthetic fragrances we put on our bodies, and toxic food we eat fill up our body or “rain barrel.” Eventually, our livers become overburdened trying to filter out all of these toxicities, and our “rain barrels” overflow. This means “dis-ease” takes place. Autoimmunity, allergies, chronic pain and inflammation, etc. He wrote an amazing book on the Rainbarrel effect. Grab it here

He also goes into depth about his functional medicine detox that helps support your liver and body to get rid of toxins it is holding.

Once we can see what toxicities we are dealing with, we can begin to address our “rain barrel.” 

The DESTRESS Protocol

The Integrative Health Practioner program also utilizes the DESTRESS protocol which stands for: diet, exercise, stress, toxins, rest, emotions, supplements, and success mindset. 

An Integrative Health practitioner looks at an individual using the DESSRESS protocol to see where this individual needs help in any of these areas and helps them put an individualized plan into place. 

The course goes over what types of diets and exercise work for certain body types. How stress emotions and toxins can be at play for a person’s health condition and chronic diseases. And how to utilize specific supplements and a success mindset for healing. This course is all about helping people reach optimal health.

Integrative Health Practitioner Certification Program Courses

There are 2 levels of Integrative Health Practioner. IHP level 1 and IHP level 2. Both courses utilize online learning.

IHP level 1

This is the foundational course that anyone can take. You don’t need any prerequisites, degrees, or anything. Anyone, as long as you have a passion for learning and helping people can take this course. This level goes in depth on Dr. Cabral’s destress protocol. It is the foundational course for learning about proper nutrition, exercise, and common toxicities found among people. It contains over 40 hours of video  You can begin whenever you are ready and move at your own pace. A new module will open up every week from the day that you enroll.

There is a quiz after every module, but don’t worry you can take the quiz as many times as needed.

Module 1: Welcome to IHP!

Module 2: Diet Bio-individualization

Module 3: Exercise programming

Module 4: Stress and sympathetic nervous system regulation

Module 5: Toxin removal

Module 6: Rest and parasympathetic nervous system resetting

Module 7: Emotional balance

Module 8: Supplement protocols

Module 9: Sucess mindset

Module 10: Career building

IHP Level 2

You must take and pass IHP level 1 before you can move on to IHP level 2. This level is all about the various lab tests that Dr. Cabral uses in his private practice. It contains 9 different modules including who labs should be run on and for what purpose. This module is about truly identifying someone’s root cause with lab work.

Module 1: Welcome to IHP Level 2

Module 2: Food Sensitivity Testing

Module 3: Parasite and bacterial stool testing

Module 4: Organic acid testing

Module 5: Omega 3 testing

Module 6: Adrenal Hormone Testing

Module 7: Thyroid adrenal hormone testing

Module 8: Hair tissue mineral analysis testing

Module 9: Take your health coaching career to the next level

One of the last modules in level 2 teaches you how to build a business off of your IHP certification if that is your goal. I had every intent to build a coaching business, but life got in the way! You can open your own private practice in health coaching!

You can also apply to become one of IHP’s health coaches who review client labs for clients who order labs through the website and don’t have their own health coach to go through.

Is IHP certification worth it?

Yes! Absolutely, I gained an enormous amount of knowledge and skill development just from level 1. Level 2 is next level for wellness coaches and is a challenge for sure, but I am so glad I did them both!

What is the difference between functional medicine and integrative health practitioners?

In my opinion, functional medicine is more about running blood work to see what blood work says about a patient to find a cause. Integrative health is more about the person as a whole; what their ayurvedic body type is, what type of exercises might benefit this patient, etc. Integrative health is a whole view of the patient. I believe both functional and integrative medicines can work well hand in hand.

How long does it take to complete the Integrative Health Certification?

For both courses, the average amount of time it takes for most people is between 3-6 months if you go at a steady pace.

Is there a time limit to complete the courses?

No! You can complete it at your own pace.

What is the Price for the Courses?

The best option is to check out the current prices on the website here

I hope this blog post on how to become an Integrative Health Practitioner was helpful! Make sure to check out my previous blog post on how 5 easy budget-friendly ways to get started with non-toxic living!