Continuing Education Provider Professional Development Resources Releases New Homestudy Course on Dean Ornish's The Spectrum

JACKSONVILLE, FL, June 19, 2013 (Press-News.org) Professional Development Resources has announced a new course in its online continuing education (CE) curriculum for health and mental health professionals: The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better. The course is designed to help clinicians learn how their clients can prevent and manage even the most troubling illnesses through lifestyle changes, while avoiding the need for expensive surgery and medication.

Lifestyle changes, including diet, nutrition, exercise, yoga, and meditation, have been proven in research to have multiple beneficial effects on health, including preventing and reversing heart disease, reducing cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, encouraging weight loss, preventing and reversing Type-2 diabetes, even preventing and ameliorating cancer.

Dean Ornish, M.D., the author of the book on which this course is based, is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ornish received his medical training in internal medicine from the Baylor College of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

For over 34 years, Dr. Ornish has directed clinical research demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery. The research that he and his colleagues conducted has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Circulation, The New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Cardiology, The Lancet Oncology, and elsewhere. Recently, Medicare agreed to provide coverage for this program, the first time that Medicare has covered a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes.

"Many of the clients we see are experiencing stress or depression that is caused - at least in part - by unhealthy lifestyle habits," says Leo Christie, President and CEO of Professional Development Resources. "In addition to helping clients deal with the issues that brought them into therapy in the first place, we can further enable their return to health by teaching lifestyle changes like those detailed in this course. In many cases, we can amplify and even accelerate the process of feeling better."

The spectrum program consists of three major components: nutrition (extremely low in fat, vegetarian), exercise (aerobic, resistance training and flexibility), and stress management (yoga, meditation and nurturing relationships), along with explanations of how they influence specific conditions. The course adds a practical boost by including a guide to cooking: 100 recipes with dishes based on fresh, seasonal ingredients and ways to adapt them to a person's place along the spectrum. It also includes a DVD which provides instruction in meditation.

The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better stresses personalized plans that combine aerobic activities, resistance training, and flexibility; each person decides what to do and when. To manage stress (long a core element of this program), one can use deep breathing, meditation, and yoga. The secret is to find a combination that works and set aside some time each day to practice. Finally, spending time with friends and loved ones and leaning on them for support can powerfully affect health in good ways.

About Professional Development Resources, Inc.

Professional Development Resources is a Florida nonprofit educational corporation founded in 1992 by licensed marriage and family therapist Leo Christie, PhD. The company, which is accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB), the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) - as well as many other national and state boards - has focused its efforts on making accredited continuing education units more cost-effective and widely accessible to health professionals by offering online home study coursework. Its current expanded curriculum includes a wide variety of clinical topics intended to equip health professionals to offer state-of-the art services to their clients.

Contact:
Leo Christie, PhD, CEO
Professional Development Resources, Inc.
904-645-3456
http://www.pdresources.org/