Reading = Healthy Brain

It keeps you young and healthy!

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

I saw a book that I wanted to read (Ivanhoe). I knew it wasn’t an easy read but this time it was extremely hard for me to get into. Looking at the pages, I found it hard for me to focus. These printed ink, I couldn’t decipher what was being conveyed to me. The letters were there but putting them together to form words wasn’t happening. How could I, a previously avid reader, find it difficult to read?

“Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body” - Brian Tracy

Brain Muscle

From the start, what is reading? Eyes looking at a page with ink arranged in a way that the brain can process the word, to build a sentence, to build a paragraph, to chapters to then a story. Simple, yet when looking into it, it really gets the brain going.

When reading, four parts of the brain are activated¹; visual, phonological, semantic and syntactic cortex’s. Working parts of the brain that work the eyes, your language or languages you know, their structure and sounds to understand what’s being presented on a page. This engagement of different parts of the cortex’s and therefore different parts of the brain, strengthen the neural pathways and crate new ones².

I’m not just typing this, there are studies that showed that reading strengthens the connectivity within the brain³. There are many studies on reading for children⁴ and their development. That might not be impactful for you, my lovely reader at the moment as I assume you’re over 12 years old. How about looking at reading from the twilight of life? A study published in July 2021⁵ showed that keeping your brain active with reading, word puzzles and card games can delay the onset of alzheimer’s and dementia as we age⁶.

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers” - Harry S Truman

Brain Food

Aren’t chocolates, fried foods and other ‘junk food’ tasty? But, too much of that can, in the long term, not be beneficial to health. Much like how particular food nourishes the body, what you read can nourish the brain.

So what you consume, what you read will either nourish and create or, distract and destroy. I’m not saying that a little distraction, a little sweetness is bad, maybe too much of it will not be beneficial. And if all you take in is dry, learning material eg: medial publications, I’m sure after a while you’d want to pull your hair out.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is, there’s plenty of reading options, so choose your brain diet well. I find myself asking questions like:

• is this, for me, enjoyable to read?

• does this story speak my interest/desire/creativeness?

• will this book/article/ help me learn something?

• will this book/article make me angry and frustrated for long enough to create a substack article out of it?

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Gutom na ako - 배고파 - Tengo Hambre - 我饿了- I’m Hungry

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Multiculturalism

I also have a thought that, depending on what language or languages you learn changes the way you look at life⁷ and certainly the way you read.

How about people who can read scrips from different languages? The benefits of speaking more than one language are already extremely beneficial⁸. Then to top it off with reading⁹ in different scrips enhances the skills already established by being multilingual: improved learning ability, better understanding of language and better understanding and perception of the world¹⁰. Further enhancing the brain connectivity and offsetting neural degeneration as individual ages¹¹.

Brain Recovery

When you finish work, do you want to continue reading the accounting reports? The emails? Unlikely I’m sure, so to take your mind off work, grab a book and read. Just by sitting, reading in silence, stress levels go down by at least two thirds¹²¹³.

Bibliotherapy is used to help support mental health issues of individuals; stress, anxiety, grief, depression etc¹⁴. Bibliotherapy is not new¹⁵, coming from ancient Greece¹⁶ and there’s not much scientific research¹⁷¹⁸on this as yet, but I don’t see why Bibliotherapy can’t help. Personally, I do feel much better after a good fantasy book after working all day.

Fin

Reading is good for your health - especially brain health. If you feed the brain good, nutritious ‘food’, I feel that the information would flow from there and go on to keep the rest of your body healthy as well. I am sure that the rest of the body will flow into a good state of health just from reading.

I was surfing the net and if you’re curious, here is the the article that sparked my fire into investigating reading further, after my frustration with Ivanhoe: How the Brain Learns to Read.

All in all, if you want to be healthy; read¹⁹.

1. https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/how-children-learn-read/reading-brain#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%9Creading%20brain%E2%80%9D,that%20stores%20word%20meanings%2C%20and

2. https://www.gwinnettpl.org/kids/how-reading-boosts-your-brain-power/#:~:text=Reading%20strengthens%20the%20brain's%20existing,100%20hours%20of%20reading%20training.

3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3868356/

4. https://www.gwinnettpl.org/kids/how-reading-boosts-your-brain-power/#:~:text=Reading%20strengthens%20the%20brain's%20existing,100%20hours%20of%20reading%20training.

5. https://www.aan.com/PressRoom/Home/PressRelease/4909

6. https://www.alzinfo.org/articles/reading-alzheimers-bay/

7. https://kidlab-psych.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2019/06/CasselsChanChungBirhc2010CultureAffectiveEmpathyJCC10.pdf

8. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5662126/

9. https://medium.com/a-thousand-lives/the-benefits-of-reading-in-a-foreign-language-d5a994c68210

10. https://www.brainscape.com/academy/benefits-of-being-multilingual/

11. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3710134/

12. https://www.cae.edu.au/news/7-proven-reasons-why-reading-is-good-for-you/

13. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/5070874/Reading-can-help-reduce-stress.html

14. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-art-effect/202203/the-mental-health-benefits-reading

15. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5319266/

16. https://www.booktherapy.io/en-us/blogs/news/a-short-history-of-book-therapy?srsltid=AfmBOopTX-pAHWkpS85R9ajKplnK31pvOw_c3xquBKN0WqhlP4nsjOQt

17. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00337-8/abstract

18. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143034308090058

19. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/313429?fbclid=IwY2xjawII_ptleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHW-QEr8KKARWesZ1l1kkF8-C0XirxcvPDym0TeKC6cZy8FjLZLMBPCMcOw_aem_S4WqEBCPjUUnrOLVsb_5SA