How following team sports can be therapeutic!

When he was 86 years-old, Hernan became the biggest football fan and started to write down every single goal of a Barcelona’s Next-Big-Thing, Messi.

In fact, he invested on this young footballer’s natural talent at that time and was vindicated because Messi forced him to be active almost every week, and use his pen to write on his notebook 746 times (it sounds like a proper assignment)!!!

The old man, being retired for a long time, so had no real occupation, discovered a novel motivation. An activity that required his visual-motor coordination, memory and alertness in order to keep track of Messi's team matches and with his grandson’s continuous support to write on his notebook every time his favourite player had scored.

Obviously, we cannot be sure if during this period of the 14 years Hernan has gone through any diseases, however (and this is our hypothesis) he reached 100  years because he created new neurons and new synapsis in his brain (a new routine with strong motive -not so easy for someone of his age) and it seems very likely that this prevented him from suffering from other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or Huntington’s.

Huge Congrats to the grandson who intervened as an experienced geriatric occupational therapist supporting his grandfather so much.

And a great evidence, that football (all team sports in reality) can be therapeutic for some people. A social phenomenon more than just a game!