Read more – you will live longer

Reading books in old age was associated with life extension

Oleg Lischuk, N+1

American scientists have found that reading books in old age is associated with an increase in life expectancy. The results of the work are published in the journal Social Science & Medicine (Bavishi et al., A chapter a day: Association of book reading with longevity).

Yale University researchers analyzed data from 3,635 participants in the national representative cohort study of retired health and Retirement Study. All of them reported their attitude to reading books at the beginning of the observation, which lasted 12 years.

According to this indicator, they were divided into three groups: the first included those who did not read at all, the second – those who read up to 3.5 hours a week and the third – those who read longer than this time. The dose-dependent relationship of reading with life expectancy was statistically assessed by Cox proportional risk modeling adjusted for age, gender, education level, ethnicity, own assessment of health status, concomitant diseases, income level, marital status and depression.

It turned out that during the study period, volunteers from the second group died by 17 percent, and from the third – by 23 percent less often than those who did not read at all. At the same time, those who read books lived on average 23 months longer than those who were indifferent to reading.

A similar pattern was observed when reading periodicals, but their connection with survival was weaker than that of books.

The most reading participants in the study were women, people with at least college education, as well as those with high incomes.

"The results of the work indicate that the benefits of books include prolonging life so that you can read more of them," the researchers conclude with a bit of humor. According to their data, the found relationship with a relatively high probability (p = 0.04) is associated with the positive effect of reading on cognitive abilities.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  24.08.2016