
World Brain Day is celebrated today, a day for thinking about the role of this organ, of the human body, in our quality of life. This date should be used to think how we are connected to its performance, so we interviewed Dr. Celso Pontes, a neurologist and Head of the General Assembly Table of the Alzheimer Portugal Association. The interview supplied us with a large corpus of very relevant information, to which we will pay more attention on a later date. Nevertheless, on of Dr. Celso Pontes’s phrase stuck: “We should think about the brain as a muscle that needs to be worked every day”.
This principle, which server every brain related pathology, is particularly important for Alzheimer’s, a progressive disease that affects the memory and is most common in old age. Dr. Celso Pontes adds that, towards preventing Alzheimer’s Disease, people should have a “physical and cognitive active activity. (…) When I say a cognitive activity, I mean that people should be involved in problem solving. In general, we should have concerns. These concerns shouldn’t be overwhelming, but there should be things that concern us, that make us think, that motivate us. We should have interests and be socially integrated”. Behavioural hygiene is also very important and we should avoid excess medication, as well as noxious habits, such as tobacco and alcohol.
It’s on the connection of all the vectors that influence the disease that the Alzheimer Portugal Association acts. To positively influence who suffers from this disease, it is spread out through a number of activities, like solidary events, conferences and training for those who care for these patients. Its activity reaches even further, with several day care centres and a home in Cascais, all dedicated to Alzheimer’s Disease patients. All these efforts underline the same intent: to improve the life quality of Alzheimer’s patients. That is something that RC REDOL feels it must support, even more because of our connection with the Pharmaceutical Industry, which produces drugs such as Memantine, available in the market, which help to delay the diseases influence and expand the life’s quality of these patients.