Reading is right up there with exercise in keeping your total “self” in balance.
I love to read, but find myself reading more Facebook, Twitter and other newsfeeds more than books. The challenge is in keeping a balance between all of these things, as there is so much new information out there every day (in so many media forms) that we forget to go back to the basics and read books.
When you think about all of the elements that make up a healthy lifestyle, you probably start with the basic building blocks of regular exercise and a nutritious diet. Next you might consider maintaining a normal weight, staying away from vices such as smoking and heavy drinking, and managing stress levels. But chances are good that one thing that wouldn’t make your list is being an avid reader. However, according to new research, reading books might be vital to your health.
The study, which was conducted at the Yale University School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut, found that spending time immersed in a good book every day may be associated with living a longer life.1 The subjects were 3,635 men and women over the age of 50. All of them were taking part in the Health and Retirement Study, which is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.
The participants provided information on their typical reading habits throughout the 12-year period that they were tracked. The scientists analyzed every volunteer’s daily reading time in comparison with their health records for the duration of the study. Each of the subjects was classified into a group based on their time spent reading. These groups consisted of the individuals who reported no regular reading, those who reported reading books for up to three-and-a-half hours per week, and those who reported reading books for more than three-and-a-half hours per week.
Once the statistics were compiled, the researchers came to the conclusion that a greater amount of time spent reading was strongly associated with a longer life. And these findings remained consistent even after they controlled for potentially influential factors including economic status, education level, cognitive ability, and more.
Participants in the middle-of-the-road group who read for up to three-and-a-half hours a week, or close to 30 minutes a day, were found to have a 17 percent lower risk of dying than their peers who were not reading regularly. And the group who read for more than three-and-a-half hours a week, or an average of over 30 minutes a day, were shown to have a 23 percent drop in mortality risk compared to their counterparts who did not read. The people in the reading groups lived an average of two years longer than those in the non-reading group.
