We look into a mirror and manage our face and skin everyday to try to be a good-looking man or woman. To be beautiful, we lavish money and even do plastic surgery. However, do you think your gorgeous appearance makes you a true good-looking person? In fact real beauty is, ‘brain beauty’. We care for many things such as skin, money, and human relations, but to our brain hese things are not the most important factors. I think the reason that many people don’t manage their brain is this: They can’t think of cultivating their brain because they can’t see their brain directly, or they don’t know how to do it. With the increase in dementia patients, we can feel how important it is to manage our brain from our youth. I will introduce the book Brain Beauty written by Doctor Duklyul Na, who is awakening many people to the importance of managing the brain by telling them, “Let’s live beautifully until the age of 100 by managing our brain like we do our face.”
  Listening, speaking, remembering, judging… We are living with healthy cognitive functions. However, the cognitive functions that we have taken for granted may deteriorate someday. That is, most people can suffer cognitive malfunction for a long time or a short time. The writer says, “We can be guaranteed to be happy in old age if we understand and deal with dementia from this moment.” In a word, dementia is a lifestyle disease. In other words, because acquired factors rather than genetic factors have more influence, our present habits naturally lead to dementia in old age. We need to make an effort to change our habits for our happy old age. In this book, the author regards people who know what good habits are for the brain and practice them as ’brain beauty’. So let’s defeat dementia by becoming, ‘brain beauty’.
  What are the ways of being a brain beauty? In the book, Brain Beauty, the author explains the cognitive health regulations to which brain beauty should adhere in their daily lives with six words; PASCAL. Doctor DukLyul Na, made six dementia preventions. PASCAL: Physical exercise, Anti-smoking, Social activity, Cognitive activity, Alcohol in moderation, Lean body mass and healthy diet. Let’s find out more about these words. First, Physical activity. Regular exercise lowers the percentage of Alzheimer’s disease 30%. Second, Anti-smoking. When we smoke for 25-30 years, the risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease increases by 250%. For people smoking at their mid age, the percentage of having memory impairment in their old age is 37%. Third, Social activity. The percentage of getting dementia is 1.5 times higher when we live a lonely life. Fourth, Cognitive activity. The percentage of getting cognitive disability increases by 10% when we do only passive mental activity like TV watching. When we do the task that requires concentrated thinking, accuracy, and with a time limit, the risk of getting cognitive disability is 30% lower. Fifth, Alcohol in moderation. Excessive drinking and binge drinking increase the chances of getting cognitive disability by 1.7 times. Lastly, Lean body mass and healthy diet. The percentage of obese people to get dementia after 3 years is 1.8 times higher than the normal weight people. You can find yourself to be a ‘brain beauty’ when you perform the PASCAL dementia prevention regulations steadily.
  The big reason we are afraid of dementia is because we can’t stand the fact that we are likely to change disgracefully, and possibly distress ourselves and families. We will try to prevent dementia as best as we can, but there is no guarantee that we will not get dementia by preventing it. In Brain Beauty, the author says let’s get ‘pretty dementia’ even if we happen to get it. If so, the patients themselves as well as their families don’t feel pain.
  Then, what is pretty dementia? Can dementia be pretty? Yes! There is pretty dementia and ugly dementia. Ugly dementia is the one that is known as dementia. There is an old woman who shows the author what pretty dementia is. Although this woman is in the last stage of dementia, suffering from heavy defects of memory, she always laughs loudly in the sanatorium for no reason. She is called, ‘HoHoHo Grandma’ because she speaks well, writes well, and always has a bright smile on her face. In addition to HoHoHo Grandma, the author discovered some characteristics that pretty dementia patients whom he treated, had in common. They have always been considerate of and grateful to others. What draws a line between pretty dementia and ugly dementia is, ‘How they lived at their early age’. I thought that dementia was a dangerous disease that reveals how we lived at an early age through ‘behavioral disorder’. How pretty lives are we living now?
  We have been afraid of and avoided dementia and we have thought of it as trouble for our future. This book tells us that we should be ‘brain beauty’ from this moment on. How important it is to care for our brain at an early age as well as our face and skin. In case we get dementia, if we get pretty dementia just like bright and cheerful children, won’t we be remembered as a graceful figure to all? I recommend all Gachonians to be a ‘brain beauty’ from now on. You can not only feel happiness when you get old but feel your life being more abundant.