• Submitted by: admin
• Health and Medicine
• 01 / 27 / 2007

Sound mind and sound body to enjoy a full life and mental health was the premise that ruled the 111th Congress of Havanas University Hospital Calixto García, formation site of several medical professional and technician generations.

The topic Mental Health/Clinic Specialties results from the interconnection between mind and body at a time when stress, overpressure, mental illnesses favor the presence of chronic maladies in Cuba and in the rest of the world.

The event was developed in a warm atmosphere of debates and lectures as annually carried out on January 23 marking the hospital founding date in 1896. later and during the dictatorships of ex-presidents Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista, the installation sheltered many revolutionaries and combatants.

However for over half a century things radically changed in that hospital as the face of Cuban health system is now quite different to the extend that the white-uniformed personnel contingent expend time and effort enough saving human lives and researching how to prevent diseases despite scarcity of the required means.

On Wednesday and Thursday working sessions panelists confirmed the concept sound mind in a sound body (top philosopher in ancient Greece and Socrates disciple Platón- 428 a.C.). Doctors and technicians of El Calixto joined their counterparts of the hospitals Havana Psychiatric and Hermanos Ameijeiras and of other Pubic Health institutions.

Two ways of discussion were: Who ignores that stress may lead to early blood pressure disorders and people suffering from high blood pressure are emotionally impaired?

Doctor Joaquín Sellén Crombet of Cardiology Service Unit successfully lectured on Present and future of arterial hypertension in Cuba.

It threw light among other themes on the notion food intake since childhood influences largely in the adults mental health.

In other words; deficient nutrition may cause psychological and physical damage such as depression, anxiety, early aging and other more serious disease such as Alzheimers disease and vascular dementia.

Doctor Miriam Bolet Astoviza of the hospitals Nutrition Unit says the population should get well informed in this respect in order to assimilate the diet that most favors good health. See that a brain very-well fed provides nerve cells with vitality enough to ensure a healthy life.