Reading is one of the most ancient hobbies, human has acquired. From the old Egyptian ways to today’s iPad age reading has been a constant support to the human brain. From childhood, reading helps our brain in multiple ways. It helps us learn new things, improve our vocabulary, improve our communication skills, help us in better sleep etc. The more you read, will help in more exercise in the cognitive areas of your brain.

Memory is a precious object. Ideally, it’s a big part of our cognitive capacity. Once we lose memory, it not only creates problems in our daily lives, but also changes our personality. The conscious experiences change as we start forgetting. Progressive memory loss leads to dementia. Dementia is one of the most dangerous neurological conditions. It slowly takes away our identity. The person, forgets everything and everyone. Finally, he forgets his/her own identity. Think of a condition when you will struggle hard to remember your own name. When you will fight hard to find the way to your toilet. Sometimes you will forget to remember the shopping list. These things are very tragic even for thinking.

Once a person suffers from dementia, there are very few treatments to reverse the problem. So the best way to counter dementia is to prevent memory loss. There are many diseases which cause dementia. Among them, Alzheimers disease is one of the most prominent ones. In present day stressful life incidence of alzheimers dementia is on sharp rise. (memory loss)

READING AND MEMORY LOSS

Reading improves memory because it stimulates and exercises the brain. It also accelerates the formation of new connections and neurons. And when reading, distraction can help alleviate the symptoms of stress. Dementia risk was significantly lower among those who reported daily participation in intellectual activities, like reading books, magazines, and newspapers. Several researchers say reading into old age also reduced memory decline by more than 30 per cent, compared to other forms of mental activity.

WHAT TO READ

Several researchers indicate, that reading anything can help in making new connections in the brain. which, further helps in memory production and processing as well as storage. But for the prevention of memory loss Leisure reading, the kind that really sucks you in is good for you, and it helps build the mental abilities on which reading depends. One of these mental abilities is episodic memory, or memory for events, which allows us to remember what happened in previous chapters of a book and to make sense of the ongoing story. Another ability is working memory, the capacity to hold things in our minds as we engage in other mental processes. Working memory helps us keep track of things that happened in recent paragraphs as we continue reading. Both improve in pleasure reading.

HOW LONG TO READ

Read for 90 minutes a day, five days a week. Make it a habit. Along with moderate exercise, reading will guard your memory to prevent dementia. Many research papers reveal that even 8 week pleasurable reading for 90 minutes can help improve memory significantly.

Dementia is a very lethal neurodegenerative disease. Once it captures you, there is no cure. But we can prevent it easily by pleasurable reading for 90 minutes weekly 5 days along with 30 minutes moderate exercise 5 days a week. Along with it some healthy diet . So start from today only and safeguard your memory.

Please read and share

Stine-Morrow EA, McCall GS, Manavbasi I, Ng S, Llano DA, Barbey AK. The effects of sustained literacy engagement on cognition and sentence processing among older adults. Frontiers in Psychology. 2022;13.