Your Healthy Brain

Introduced by: Robert Ballantyne

Dr Stephen Kiraly spent two years writing Your Healthy Brain: A Personal & Family Guide to Staying Healthy & Living Longer.

It arose out of the Healthy Brain Program — a series of presentations that Dr. Kiraly developed nine years ago for people with brain injuries, health-care workers, students, and others. He noted that it was the first program of its kind in North America.

“The brain is an organ like the liver,” Kiraly said. “There are things you can do to make it better, and there are things you can do to stress it or damage it.”

Dr. Kiraly comments, “Most people are referred to me because they are in distress. However, the majority, especially older folk, also have physical problems which are treated by their family physicians. It is easy to overlook the fact that psychiatric problems characterized by depression, distress, anxiety and so forth, are more often than not accompanied by physical ailments as well. After all, the brain does not function separately from the body and the society that contains it! It may surprise you to learn that many of my patients who are seen for “psychiatric problems” have social issues, care issues and even problems like wound care which have to be managed and coordinated.”