by Siviwe Zibi
The most popular New Year’s resolutions usually have to do with losing weight and eating healthy, practice of reading books should be one of those resolutions as it has health benefits as well. It creates cognitive engagement that improves lots of things, including vocabulary, thinking skills, and concentration.
Reading is important because it develops our thoughts, gives us endless knowledge and lessons to read while keeping our minds active. Reading books help us learn and understand and makes us smarter, not to mention the knowledge, vocabulary and thinking skills we develop. I’m sharing with you the benefits of reading and why we should captivate reading habits.
The benefit of reading books
- Cognitive mental stimulation and brain exercising
Reading is great fun for many people, but it also has many benefits for your mental health in the form of thinking and understanding. By concentrating on the words and the storyline, it stimulates your brain and cognitive functions. This particular stimulation can help sharpen your mind, especially the part of the brain that is responsible for concentration and critical analysis. It sharpens this part of the brain much like you would sharpen a knife. This sharpening of the mind will eventually heighten your focus when concentrating on something important. It sharpens your mind through stimulation of the brain. By causing you to focus intensely on the words, your brain takes in a significant amount of information, which can improve both your critical thinking and analysation skills as well. This stimulation is healthy for your mind and the sharpening your thought processes.
- Vocabulary and knowledge expansion
When reading, you might come across a few words you don’t quite understand or even recognise. This confusion can lead you to look up the word and discover the definition. Dictionaries, both in physical form or ebook form, can be beneficial to your understanding this new word you might not recognise. Because you didn’t know the word, to begin with, the act of searching for the definition helps your brain retain that new and exciting word.
- Lower levels of stress and tension relief
Most people know from experience that reading is a great form of entertainment, but what you and those other people might not realise is that reading can help lower stress levels. You read that little fact right, though it seems strange to say. The very act of it and focusing on the written word can help relieve your mind from anxiety and the pressures of the day. By pulling your mind away from the stress at hand, you can relax and let the stress melt away.
- Helps with depression and dysthymia
Reading, especially self-help books, can help ward off depressive occurrences. Just like with lowering your stress levels, it stimulates the part of the brain that deals with depression as well. Self-help books, full of information about how to better yourself and your state of mind, can help ease depression. Reading books can be extremely beneficial for someone who might suffer from depressive tendencies but not enough to need medication.
- Strengthens your writing abilities
Reading doesn’t just have health benefits; it has benefits for other aspects of your life as well. These advantages help to make readers well-rounded individuals. Those who write, know the importance of reading. Whether you write things for work or just for fun, heavy reading can improve your writing skills and abilities.
