Health experts in Brazil marked National Health Day on August 5 by emphasizing that maintaining brain health through cognitive stimulation is as essential for healthy aging as physical exercise and a balanced diet.
The annual event promotes disease prevention and encourages habits that support physical, mental, and cognitive well-being across all age groups.
Origin of National Health Day
Brazil established National Health Day through Law Number 5,352 of 1967 to honor Oswaldo Cruz, a renowned physician and public health pioneer born on August 5, 1872. Cruz gained national fame for leading sanitation campaigns against yellow fever, smallpox, and bubonic plague in Rio de Janeiro during the early twentieth century.
While traditional health guidelines focus on routine medical exams, balanced nutrition, quality sleep, and regular physical activity, specialists stress that keeping the brain active is equally vital for overall quality of life.
Active aging in practice
Elisiário Silva Netto, a 92-year-old resident of São José dos Campos in the interior of São Paulo state, serves as an example of active aging. Netto worked for decades as an aircraft mechanic before pursuing a lifelong ambition in his senior years to learn to fly planes.
His passion for aviation began in the 1950s while serving in the Brazilian Army in Guaratinguetá. Decades later, Netto completed a pilot course, worked professionally as a pilot, and now maintains his mental sharpness through cognitive stimulation activities.
São José dos Campos is widely recognized as the center of Brazil's aerospace industry, while neighboring Guaratinguetá hosts military aeronautics training institutions. Netto explained that his aviation trajectory required continuous learning, strong memory, intense concentration, and rapid decision-making skills that he actively exercises today.
How cognitive stimulation works
Patrícia Lessa, national pedagogical director of Supera Estimulação Cognitiva, stated that maintaining brain health is just as important as physical health because the brain coordinates every function in the human body. Supera is a Brazilian educational organization specializing in brain training methods.
Lessa noted that cognitive stimulation combines structured exercises designed to develop core skills, including memory, attention, concentration, logical reasoning, creativity, language, and executive functions.
Neuroplasticity and cognitive reserve
The practice relies on neuroplasticity, which is the biological ability of the central nervous system to adapt its structure and create new neural connections throughout life in response to external stimuli.
According to Lessa, triggering neuroplasticity requires challenging the brain with new and progressively complex tasks. Activities such as learning a foreign language, playing a musical instrument, solving strategy games, studying, performing mathematical calculations, writing, or deliberately altering daily routines help stimulate new neural pathways.
Lessa explained that performing identical daily tasks causes the brain to save energy. While energy conservation is natural, novel challenges are essential to build and strengthen cognitive reserve.
Cognitive reserve refers to the brain's resilience and accumulated cognitive resources built throughout a person's lifetime through formal education, continuous learning, intellectual tasks, professional work, and social engagement. This mental reserve allows the brain to adapt more effectively to structural changes and functional shifts associated with aging.
