The many benefits of reading books is a-plenty. Scientific research proves that reading daily can help you lower your blood pressure, increase your heart rate, lower your stress level, and boost your immune system. In addition to all of these beneficial effects, books offer a wealth of escapes and alternate realities, but they also help you rename, re-energize, and recharge your view on the world around you.
The ability to effectively handle stress is an important factor in almost everything we do. Stress affects us both physically and mentally. The symptoms caused by prolonged stress can be devastating, not to mention extremely expensive in terms of health care. The ability to cope with stress, to manage it properly, plays an important role in our overall well-being, which is why reading helps to lower our risk for physical illness and disease as well as mental stress.
Another benefit of reading is cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is the practice of helping people to work through their problems and seek resolution. For example, if someone suffers from high anxiety and is unable to sleep at night, reading is often helpful as it provides a form of non-verbal stimuli (such as plot structure, character development, dialogue, etc.) that helps them to calm their mind down and work through their feelings.
Another aspect of cognitive therapy deals with the issue of poor memory function or a decline in one’s memory. Poor memory function is known to contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, which can potentially lead to death. Furthermore, the symptoms of cognitive decline can manifest themselves in accelerated aging. People who are aging and experiencing cognitive decline are much more likely to experience the inability to recall things and are much more prone to making poor decisions in terms of financial matters.
There are also many amazing benefits to reading as it relates to mental health. For instance, research has shown that reading can play a significant role in the reduction of depression, especially in people who are not otherwise happy with their mental health. In addition, research has also demonstrated that reading can improve mood, emotional stability, physical health, life satisfaction, resilience, perseverance, creativity, memory, concentration, response speed, academic performance, personality, confidence, social skills, trust, motivation, and loneliness/stress. In short, reading can improve just about every aspect of your life!
Lastly, when you read, you tend to think less about things that cause you stress and more about things that do not bring you stress. In other words, you will be less likely to relive or repeat events that cause you stress or that result in high levels of anxiety. This means that you are less likely to have an “out of sight, out of mind” type syndrome whereby your brain is preoccupied with too much negative information. This is known to be related to lifespan, which can add years to your life expectancy!
The fourth benefit of reading helps develop cognitive and emotional intelligence. It is well known that there are specific connections between how you develop cognitive and emotional intelligence and how you develop and improve your brain’s ability to learn and remember information. For instance, students who had a high school education that included reading performed better in math and in the sciences than those who did not receive such instruction. Research also indicates that reading is particularly beneficial for the development of the human brain’s memory, attention span, and executive function.
Finally, reading can help you deal with stress better. It has been shown that individuals who read on a regular basis develop an increased ability to manage stress and control physiological responses. Additionally, regular readers are reported to have lower blood pressure levels and fewer psychological symptoms of stress than individuals who do not read as frequently. In short, the more you do it the better you’ll be at it, so go ahead, give it a try. You’ll be glad you did.