It is Okay to Read

So I found this article a while back about being a bookworm. It had such a good title: Being a bookworm boosts your brainpower into old age.   The fact that we read a lot now will prevent senile stuff before it really gets started. This study asked people to read and do other mentally stimulating activities, take memory tests throughout their old age, and then donate their brains to science after they die.  This study then looked at their brains to see what affect these activities might have had.  A quote from the article states:

They found that the people who reported doing reading, writing and other mentally stimulating activities throughout their lives also did better on the memory tests. But what’s interesting is that some of the people who regularly read books, or did other brain-stretching activities, did not show outward symptoms of Alzheimer's, even if their brains showed physical signs of the disease. (Some of them did show symptoms of dementia, but the rate of cognitive decline was slower in people who did more of these mentally stimulating activities.)

That's just cool to me....we can gain the brain symptoms of Alzheimer's but because of the exercise we do to our brain we don't have to show those symptoms.  So go find a good book! And all of my students who resist SSR....suck it up and just deal with it.  I'm helping you out :)

And this makes me think too that Meredith's mom would have never gotten Alzheimer's because she was so dang smart
Thanks to www.buddytv.com