5 Mental Health Benefits of Reading

For ages, the habit of reading has been associated with wisdom, education, and studiousness, but little did we realize until only recently that reading can also help in keeping people mentally fit. If that piqued your interest, then go through the following points to understand what exactly we are talking about here.

Stress-Buster

If we were to take our facts from a study conducted by the University of Sussex, then regular reading can de-stress people by as much as 68%. In fact, it outperformed other more popular habits for busting stress, such as listening to music or mild forms of exercise like walking and jogging. It turns out that sitting down with a novel from your favorite writer at the end of a stressful workday is more beneficial than anything else that you could possibly do.

Emotional Intelligence

One of the most prominent benefits of reading fiction is that it enables you to become more empathetic towards the people around you, alongside increasing your general emotional intelligence. Studies show that children who were exposed to the habit of reading early on and adopted it grew up with a better understanding of the world and people around them.

Reading Can Help You Heal

Most of us have problems from our past that trouble us inside, even decades later. As any avid reader will tell you, it isn’t uncommon to come across a fictional or historical character who is facing or has faced something similar to what happened to you all those years ago. To read about how that character deals with the problem can totally change your point of view and the psychological effect of the incident. Now, this does have the potential to go sideways at times as well, but in any case, going through such a reading experience is often therapeutic for the mind.

Boosted Memory and Intelligence

There’s a reason why reading has been considered to be an exercise for the brain for centuries, and as it turns out, people were right. Just like physical exercise causes the muscles to become stronger, our memory and intelligence are boosted when we read on a regular basis. You cannot read without having focus and remembering details, so it comes automatically. Additionally, reading exposes us to new ideas and concepts all the time, which further broadens and evolves our thinking processes.

Cure for Sleep Disorders

We usually find it hard to sleep because we are too stressed or high-strung and since books help us relax, it has been found that reading is an effective cure for insomnia on a lot of occasions. In fact, some light reading before going to sleep is an age-old, tried and tested sleeping ritual for a lot of successful and busy people around the world.

Most of us have experienced how much of an anti-depressant the right book can be, and those that haven’t, need to try it out. A good book is like a portal into another dimension, so reading is basically you looking through that portal and discovering what’s on the other side. It’s hard not to be excited and feel good about something like that really!

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