China Brain Health Day | I didn’t expect that reading has this benefit →

We all know that reading can increase knowledge and broaden horizons, but did you know that reading actually has a lot of benefits for brain health? September 16 is China Brain Health Day. Let's take a look at the relationship between reading and brain health.

01 Reading can improve sleep quality

The brain is the nerve center of the human body, affecting our feelings, emotions, learning, memory, and even how we dress, eat, and interact with society. However, no matter how special it is, it is also a part of the human body. If the body is compared to a big tree, overall health is the root of the tree.

Some neurologists have pointed out that there are six pillars of brain health: appropriate physical activity, a healthy diet, adequate sleep, control of cardiovascular disease risk factors, sufficient social interaction, and mental exercise .

Sounds a bit complicated? Actually, we can divide it into three categories: those related to overall health , those related to psychological activities , and those related to the brain itself .

Pillars of brain health, Source: Author's own

Take sleep for example, it is a means of self-care for the body. First, sleep can regulate metabolism and enhance the immune system, and lack of sleep is highly correlated with obesity and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Secondly, during high-quality sleep, the brain can clean up toxic substances accumulated by metabolism, thereby reducing the risk of neurodegenerative brain disease. In 2023, an article in The Lancet mentioned that people have always hoped for some kind of panacea for all diseases, but they did not realize that high-quality sleep is an important guarantee of health.

Reading can improve sleep. In 2021, some scholars recruited 991 volunteers and divided them into two groups: one group read before going to bed, and the other group served as a control group. Afterwards, a week-long experiment was conducted to investigate the sleep conditions of the two groups of volunteers. The results showed that in the intervention group, 42% of people felt that their sleep quality had improved, while in the control group, this proportion was only 28%. In other words, reading before bed can significantly improve sleep.

02 Reading can improve your mood

The second way to protect your brain is to keep your mood happy.

In 2015, some scholars found that stress affects the capacity of working memory. If the brain is compared to a mobile phone, the capacity of working memory is equivalent to the running memory. If the running memory is insufficient, the mobile phone will become slow; if the working memory capacity decreases, the brain will also become slow.

A good mood is good for the brain, source: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/655677

If depression and other conditions occur, the consequences will be more serious. The 2022 "China Cardiovascular Health and Disease Report" pointed out that among patients with acute myocardial infarction in China, about 21.66% suffered from depression, which is significantly higher than in other countries. This shows that depression is an important factor related to myocardial infarction.

So, how do you keep a good mood? Establishing broad social support is a good way. Get together with relatives and friends regularly, talk about work, and share your life experience. A large number of studies have confirmed that social support can regulate emotions, reduce depression, and reduce cardiovascular disease mortality . Especially for the elderly, a study by Shandong University in 2023 showed that participating in group activities can directly improve memory.

However, people tend not to move after get off work and prefer to use their phones on the sofa... The "Research Report on Chinese Social Media User Usage Behavior" released in 2021 shows that 47.8% of people spend at least 4 hours a day "accompanying" their phones. If you spend 24 hours a day on your phone, you will naturally ignore the people around you; moreover, many studies have shown that the longer you use your phone, the more likely you are to become depressed.

What if you spend this time reading? A 2009 study showed that reading fiction can significantly improve empathy and is positively correlated with social support. Although this is a correlation study, correlation does not equal causation. However, it is common sense that when empathy is enhanced, it will be easier to deal with people.

03 Reading can increase the brain’s cognitive reserve

The third type of method to protect the brain directly targets the brain itself, which is to improve cognitive reserve.

If the brain is compared to a country, cognitive reserve is equivalent to disaster prevention capabilities. When a place is hit by a disaster, the country can collect supplies from other places to rescue the disaster area and keep society running normally. For the brain, if the cognitive reserve is sufficient, it can maintain normal function even if it encounters pathological damage; conversely, if the damage exceeds the critical value, dementia and other manifestations will appear. As we age, some diseases are extremely difficult to avoid, but sufficient cognitive reserve can alleviate the impact of the disease.

Earlier studies have shown that education level and occupational complexity have a significant impact on cognitive reserve. A 10-year study in South Korea showed that whether stroke patients will have cognitive impairment is highly correlated with the above two factors.

So the question is: What if you miss the opportunity to receive higher education when you are young?

In 2020, a large-scale, long-span study in Taiwan, my country showed that reading can make up for the lack of education to a certain extent - reading a book once a week can delay the decline of cognitive ability.

Conclusion

Compared to other means of protecting brain health, reading is very simple. Every educated person knows how to read; you can read by the bedside or on the sofa; you can start with audiobooks or consider setting up a reading group.

Take advantage of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday to read more books. Maybe while reading, you will suddenly have the courage to improve your lifestyle.

Author: Zhao Yanchang, member of China Science Writers Association

Reviewer: Tang Qin, Director of the Science Popularization Department of the Chinese Medical Association, National Health Science Popularization Expert

Produced by: Science Popularization China