Monthly Spotlight: Read a Book Day

Did you know that reading can help your physical and mental health?

It sure can! And here's how:

• Improves brain connectivity
• Helps you fall asleep
• reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and heart rate
• fights depression symptoms
• prevents cognitive decline as you age
• provides a healthy escape
• can make us more understanding
• Enhance the sense of well-being
• Participants who read more narrative fiction had greater activation of parts of the prefrontal cortex involved in perspective-taking when reading text containing social context.
  • This greater activation may partially explain the correlation between lifetime reading and the ability to understand how people are thinking.
•  The 'A Chapter A Day' Study found that older adults who regularly read books had a 20 percent reduction in mortality compared to those who did not read.
• Health practitioners use books and bibliotherapy to support the mental health of groups facing various challenges, including anxiety, depression, and grief.
• One seminal study found that frequent fiction readers were associated with better social ability and that the tendency to get absorbed in a story correlated with higher empathy scores.
•  These results have been replicated, and a meta-analysis found that lifetime exposure to narrative fiction was associated with more perspective-taking and empathy.

Pros and cons of digital reading (books vs ebooks vs audiobooks)