Reading For Entertainment and For Your Health
Experts say reading is good for your health, but where to find the time in your busy day?
When’s the last time you picked up a book and just read?
Reading is an unfortunate sacrifice of today’s go-go mentality — but you are the true victim in the end. Diving into a good book — especially a one from the fiction genre- isn’t just a wonderful source of entertainment, it also brings a whole host of benefits along with it. Benefits that can improve your health and your relationships with others. The problem we often run into is we seldom have the time to reap those rewards.
Studies show that 30 minutes a day of reading has a marked improvement in a person’s physical and mental well-being. Most notably in areas such as:
- Reducing stress
- Lowering blood pressure
- Improving your vocabulary both in spoken and written word.
- Memory improvements
- Decreasing symptoms of depression
- Teaching empathy for others
- Improving sleep
To learn more on the benefits of reading, check out the video below:
Finding the Time
These benefits are all well and good, but you still need to find the time to sit and actually read. Most common suggestions for finding that elusive reading time include:
- Giving up 30 minutes of TV time
- Going to bed 30 minutes earlier
- Waking up 30 minutes earlier
If those work for you, great! But, if you work a fast pace job, or have children, it can be near impossible to make those concessions.
For one thing, TV time is often family time at the end of the day. Another is parents go to bed when they can — which is often after their children go to sleep; by which time it’s less falling asleep and more akin to passing out. Let’s not even talk about setting that alarm a half hour earlier!
One suggestion that seems to have a lot of potential… if you have the self-restraint to give it a shot, is switching social media time with reading time.
Reading While You Wait
Take a moment to think about how much time you dedicate to social media throughout the day. Not just the sitting down at the computer time — No, add in the standing in line or waiting around time too. For most, as soon as they have to wait for anything longer than a minute, they instinctually reach for their phone and start the feed scroll.
If you skipped the social media icon on your phone and opened a book or an ebook app instead, you could hit that 30 minute mark in no time. Even better is if you become engaged with the story- if it hits that sweet spot and captures your attention- you’ll magically (not really) find more snippets of time to read.
Reading to the mind is what exercise is the body -Joseph Addison
When we enjoy an activity, we will go to great lengths to schedule it as a priority. A good book; one that speaks to us can turn the act of reading from something tedious into something to look forward to. Basically, it will become associated with a reward response in your brain, and who doesn’t like a reward?!
One draw back of reading on the go is it obviously won’t help with falling asleep faster, but it can still be helpful in other areas, such as reducing stress. Reduced stress can help with depression and blood pressure.
So, if you can find it in yourself to skip reading that post about your Aunt Carole’s childhood neighbors and what they brought to the church raffle last week — and read a chapter of your new favorite novel instead, you can reach that 30 minute mark, and enjoy some health benefits at the same time.
