Imagine a health enthusiast's consultation with a physician. The doctor expects her to share her diseases or symptoms within the first 30 seconds. But what if she has no such disease or symptom to report Any good doctor would be obviously upset. "Why on earth did you come to me then" would be the doctor's incredulous but unsaid expression.
Within the next 30 seconds, there is something else that any doctor would expect - that this 'patient' will at least share with them any health fears she might be having. Indeed, not a day goes by without most doctors encountering a couple of hypochondriacs. But again, what if she doesn't have any such fears, like whether her jaw pain is a heart attack or her back pain is cancer
Being a health buff, she is consulting with the doctor for something entirely different. She wants to learn how to live healthily, prevent diseases, pursue wellness, age gracefully, maintain beauty & youthfulness, better her emotional quotient, extend longevity and achieve peak performance. But for such loftier goals, all the good doctor can think of is sending her to a dietician or a fitness expert.
While these health professionals can fill up some of the blanks for her, she wouldn't get a complete wellness solution from any of them. This is where the role of a Certified Health Coach or Lifestyle Coach comes in. And this career of being a certified health coach is booming already, with much better years and decades to come for this profession that is pegged to emerge as a $35 billion opportunity. However, not all Certified Lifestyle Coaching programs are created equal. For instance, Viegyan's Certification Program in Lifestyle Coaching has some unique advantages.
But before we delve into those differences, a word about a special breed of doctors are warranted. Though not popular in this part of the globe yet, there is a specialisation in healthcare, called functional medicine, especially in developed nations led by the US. Also called preventive medicine in some countries, this should not be confused with the community medicine approach of preventing mainly infectious diseases in populations.
Rather, functional medicine or preventive medicine, as practised in the developed markets, is all about ensuring personal wellness & peak productivity by the prevention of hundreds of lifestyle diseases as well as by priming the body for peak physical, cognitive, aesthetic and emotional performance, all through scientifically derived lifestyle modifications across diet, nutrition, supplements, exercise, sleep, meditation, breath work etc.
If our health enthusiast that we met earlier had consulted a functional medicine specialist rather than a physician, she would have felt perfectly at home. Because, consulting for such wellness and prevention needs is precisely what functional medicine doctors do. But their numbers are still way too low in a country like India with a burgeoning population of upper middleclass, wealthy & celebrity segments, who make up the primary clients looking for a functional medicine approach for their wellness needs.
In the developed world, this gap is largely bridged by Certified Lifestyle Coaches, and this is what Viegyan has pioneered in India. Since functional medicine doctors are the best equipped to design the curriculum for an ideal Certification Program in Lifestyle Coaching, as well as lead the faculty members for such a course, Viegyan has done precisely that.
And this is one uniqueness of Viegyan's Certification Program in Lifestyle Coaching, which is designed jointly with the Indian Association of Functional Medicine (IAFM), the pioneering professional group of functional medicine doctors in India. The faculty for this course is also led by senior functional medicine doctors with global certifications and experience, as well as coaches certified by the US headquartered International Coaching Federation (ICF).
An even greater uniqueness of Viegyan's Certification Program in Lifestyle Coaching is that it is the only such course which covers epigenetic lifestyle management. While conventional lifestyle management is a generic solution which applies the same set of health advice to all clients, epigenetic lifestyle management is a truly personalised solution and the latest healthcare protocol adhering to the Health 5.0 standards.
This is possible because of the detailed genetic tests and comprehensive metabolic assessments, available today, that unravel a person's unique genetic and metabolic traits that determine whether he or she is likely to develop any among the hundreds of common as well as rare lifestyle diseases, years or decades before they are likely to develop.
This in turn enables the epigenetic management or prevention of such potential disease risks, through research-validated lifestyle modifications across diet, supplements, exercise, yoga etc. Viegyan's parent organisation and the noted Bengaluru based health-tech start-up, Vieroots Wellness Solutions, is a pioneer in this segment through their flagship product, EPLIMO.
A third uniqueness of Viegyan's Certification Program in Lifestyle Coaching is its technologically updated curriculum. Today, the largest quantum of personal health data is coming not from conventional blood tests or scans, but from 24x7 health wearables like fitness bands, smartwatches, smart rings, continuous glucose monitors, pocket ECG machines and such advanced devices.
But very few health professionals, including conventional health coaches, know how to extract and analyse this personal health data for the benefit of their clients, like providing them with personalised and real-time lifestyle changes. This isn't an easy task either as it calls for specialised software and protocols driven by technologies including AI & IoT.
Viegyan's parent Vieroots Wellness Solutions is a pioneer in this regard too with their AI & IoT driven wearables including smart rings, continuous glucose monitors & pocket ECG machines, as well as their TRIGR SuperApp that includes exciting innovations like bloodless blood tests using AI based face scans, and biological age finders. Inspired and enabled by this state-of-the-art body of knowledge, Viegyan has included health data analysis using AI & IoT based devices as a core module in their Certification Program in Lifestyle Coaching.
The US$10 trillion global healthcare sector is undergoing a tumultuous shift from being the reactive or treatment based methodology it has been so far, into a more predictive, preventive and precise set of protocols that start defending against geno-metabolically probable diseases years or decades before they develop. Global studies by leading consulting agencies show that such preventive approaches will overtake reactive treatments, and dominate 60% of the healthcare segment by the end of the next decade, which will drive the demand for Certified Health / Lifestyle Coaches for a long time to come.
However, Viegyan Certified Lifestyle Coaches will have an unfair advantage too, as the parent organisation Vieroots Wellness Solutions also offers career opportunities to the candidates as soon as they successfully complete the Certification Program in Lifestyle Coaching. This way they can hit the ground running in their new career, before advancing to be lifestyle coaches to celebrities, where literally the sky would be the limit by way of exposure and remuneration.
(Viegyan is led by its Founder & Chief Mentor Sajeev Nair who is a pioneering biohacker, longevity researcher, bestselling wellness author of The Making of a Superhuman and the start-up entrepreneur behind Vieroots Wellness Solutions, and includes Dr. Biju K S as Academic Director, renowned health coach Dr. Biswajit Mohapatra and Functional Medicine Specialists Dr. Priti Nanda Sibal, Dr Ashwini Garg as mentors)
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