Tuesday, April 16, 2025
Some more benefits from daily reading as evidenced from scientific research groups:
Researchers from Yale School of Public Health showed that reading for 30 minutes a day can add two years to your life span. It keeps the brain active enough to prevent a decline in thinking and processing. Another research study at the University of Sussex shows that reading even for 6 minutes (!) before falling sleep reduces stress. It is better than listening to music or drinking a warm cup of milk.
A book is not only a pleasant distraction but also actively engages and expands your imagination, thus helping you enter an altered state of consciousness. Cognition associated with Alzheimer’s is strengthened by reading, which builds discerning power that can compensate for the loss of brain cells damaged by aging and disease.
Those who read consistently exhibit significantly greater memory and mental abilities at all stages of life. They are also better public speakers, thinkers, and, according to some studies, better people in general. Irrespective of what you read – fiction: a thriller, suspense, romance, or nonfiction, scientific journals or spiritually uplifting stories – opening a book or a magazine before you go to bed or sleep could help combat insomnia.
Reading clears your mind, helps you to live in the present, not the time of the setting of the story, but the process that takes place between you and what you are reading. The subject matter of a book is revealed to you linearly. The places, people, and events in the book come alive in the present moment; characters breathe in the present. The setting is vivid in your mind in this moment. What is implicit in the language becomes explicit as a living thing in your mind. Like a lamp lighting another wick, the author’s voice enlightens your mind even though not present or long gone.
Lorraine
It’s energizing to know that something as simple as reading is so powerful. Great post!
Jennifer D. Diamonder
LOVE this, Madhu! Especially the last line, “Like a lamp lighting another wick, the author’s voice enlightens your mind even though not present or long gone.” Thank you for sharing!
Madhu B. Wangu
Thank you, Jenn!
Madhu B. Wangu
As we writers are such voracious readers, and continuously reap its benefits we don’t realize what hinderances non readers face in their day to day lives. These get accumulated into larger obstacles. Thank you, Lorraine!