Shared article from AARP - having your head buried in a book is a GOOD THING!!

Several geriatricians recommended building up a daily reading habit by starting small — maybe setting aside five to 10 minutes at first.

"Our brains are hard-wired for novelty, and so we have to keep offering our brains different things, but with aging our brain does take longer to process information," said Dr. Catherine Madison, a neurologist at the Center for Dementia Care with Jewish Family and Children's Services, which includes Rhoda Goldman Plaza.

To get the benefits of reading it's important to engage with the material — in other words, if readers find themselves skimming the pages or not actually absorbing the story or information, it's probably not helping much.

"If you're doing it correctly, it's a very interactive process," said Kado. "When you're watching a movie or TV show, things are being interpreted for you. It's more passive. Reading is about retaining and absorbing and processing."

Several experts in geriatrics recommended book clubs as ideal sources of both the intellectual and the social benefits of reading. "Positive emotions happen when people are social, and then there's the intellectual challenge of remembering the book and talking about the book," Nandipati said. It's also beneficial to hear others' interpretations of the material.

A study published earlier this year found that rates of reading have dropped significantly among all adults over the past 20 years; only about 16% said they read every day as of 2023, down from 28% in 2003. Among adults 66 and older, about 30% reported reading every day, down from more than 50%.

Those rates have fallen as use of social media and other attention-grabbing technologies have exploded, and across all age groups scientists are trying to determine how much and what kind of damage this may be doing to people's cognitive and emotional well being.

Although there's little science looking specifically at the benefits of reading on brain health, there's plenty of evidence showing that reading and similar mental activities are associated with lower rates of dementia and improved memory and brain function in older adults. Some studies have found that a history of regular reading is tied with lower risk of dementia later in life.

"If you're intellectually engaged, you're working on neural pathways and helping the brain become more resilient," said Dr. Sirisha Nandipati, a neurologist with Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael. "The brain is almost a muscle — if you don't use it, it shrinks. Reading is one way to build that muscle and to build those neural connections."

A more resilient brain may be better able to fend off dementia, or may make the memory loss and other cognitive decline less severe, Nandipati said.

She noted that reading is not necessarily better than other brain activities, like doing crossword puzzles or other word or math games, or playing cards or making music or art. "All of those fall under the same umbrella," she said.

Much of the benefit of reading, though, comes from experiencing a world outside one's own, said Dr. Deborah Kado, a Stanford geriatrician.

"You're taking in new information, and that is cognitive stimulation that we all need," Kado said. "Reading is a way really for people to escape their own reality and create new neural connections and ideas. And all that stuff is good for cognitive and psychological health."