If you’re reading my newsletter, then most likely you love to read fiction, but did you know how much more it is doing for you than entertainment. Not to minimize the fun factor, but I think it’s pretty cool to know how our brains love us for feeding it stories!
Check out these five benefits you’re getting every time you sit down with a book.
1. Mental Stimulation ·
A growing body of research shows that reading literally changes your mind.
Using MRI scans, researchers have discovered that reading involves a complex network of circuits and signals in the brain.
In one study conducted in 2013, researchers used functional MRI scans to measure the effect of reading a novel on the brain.
Participants read the novel Pompeii for nine days. The scans showed areas of their brain lit up as tension built in the story. During the reading period and for days after, brain connectivity increased.
Read more.
- Vocabulary Expansion
Researchers have found that students who read stories regularly have larger vocabularies than those who don’t read often.
Read more.
- Memory Improvement and Focus
Although research hasn’t proven that reading prevents mental disease, the National Institute of Aging recommends reading often as a way of keeping the mind engaged as one grows older.
Rush University Medical Center did a study. In 2013 and concluded that people who engage their minds with stimulating activities are less likely to develop plaques, lesions, and tau-protein tangles found in the brains of people with dementia.
Read more.
- Stress Reduction
In the Journal of College Teaching and Learning, one study conducted in 2009 discovered that thirty minutes of reading lowered blood pressure, heart rate, and psychological stress just as well as yoga and humor.
Read more.
- Analytical skills
Analytical skills are the ability to conceptualize and solve simple and complex problems using all information available to you. Reading a book is one way to improve analytical skills. Consider this. If the antagonist reveals his plan, our brains go to work for the protagonist, trying to find out how the hero will escape.
Read more.
While reading fiction for fun is the main reason I sit down with a good book, I’m thankful for the covert benefits happening for me without any extra effort.
On my bookshelf
This week I’m reading The Revealing, by Bill Myers, book #5 of the Harbingers series.
Brenda and the team find themselves in Rome trying to retrieve the mystical spear Hitler once owned–the very spear that pierced Christ’s side. Their search will take them from hidden chambers inside the Vatican to the catacombs of Rome to a mysterious seaside cave with unexpected powers. But what they seek is more perilous than they know.
These books are for all ages. I really enjoyed this book and am anxious to get on to the next. Hope you do too!!!
After reading the first four in this series I pre-ordered the next in the series. I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas! Well written with an edge-of-your-seat plot, and THAT is putting it mildly.
I can’t do this without you …
If you are one of those beautiful people who love helping authors spread the word about their books, then please join my influencer team and get a copy of my book before it goes on sale.
Add your name to the list below.