The importance of reading, one of the habits most recommended by experts to prevent Alzheimer’s disease

Reading exercises concentration, attention, memory and visualization skills and is a key tool to prevent Alzheimer’s disease

INFORMATIVE NOTE

Barcelona, ​​April 14, 2025

• Reading exercises concentration, attention, memory and visualization skills and is a key tool in preventing Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
• With more than 25 years of experience, Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona also highlights the benefits of reading for people already suffering from the disease, both to stimulate cognitive abilities and to help them remember.

Dementia represents one of the most important health challenges in the coming years. According to estimates by Alzheimer Europe, in 2050, some 1.7 million Spaniards will suffer from some type of dementia, representing almost 4% of the population, more than double that recorded in 2018 (1.83%). For this reason, on the occasion of Book Day, which as every year is celebrated this April 23, Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona highlights the importance of having reading habits to stimulate and preserve cognitive function and thus prevent Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

Reading is not only a pleasure for the mind, but it is also one of the most beneficial activities for health, as it stimulates brain activity and strengthens neuronal connections. In particular, it helps to exercise concentration, attention, memory and visualization capacity, thus acting as a protective shield against cognitive deterioration.

Numerous scientific sources and institutions support this connection, including the revealing analysis entitled “Reading Habit as a Protective Factor for Cognitive Impairment”. For this reason, it is very important to encourage this habit from a young age and maintain it throughout life. In addition to preserving our cognitive abilities, reading also reduces stress, which leads to neurological ailments such as headaches, and allows us to develop good sleep hygiene routines when it is practiced before bedtime.

Our brain, in order to improve its functions and increase its speed of response, needs to be kept active and exercised. For this reason, one of the greatest contributions that reading provides us with is that it helps us to increase our cognitive reserve, a key concept in this context, which explains how the brain can compensate and better tolerate the changes caused by certain pathologies, allowing people to maintain their cognitive abilities despite the changes in the brain associated with age or neurodegenerative diseases.

In addition to reading, educational level, lifestyle and leisure activities are other factors that increase this reserve and provide greater protection against cognitive impairment. Having a frequent reading habit for more than 5 years and having at least a complete primary education, helps to a more significant protection against this type of pathologies.

Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona's recommendations

Beyond keeping the habit of reading alive, Ace experts encourage the following guidelines to keep our brains exercised:

1. Keep learning: learning new things stimulates our brain and favors neuronal plasticity, that is, the capacity of the nervous system to change its structure and functioning throughout its life, as an adaptation to the diversity of the environment.
2. Being socially active: being in society helps us to be cognitively active, reinforces abilities such as language, social skills or memory and keeps us in the right frame of mind.
3. Performing activities: leisure activities that have a defined goal or objective, such as board games, cards or sudokus, allow working skills such as organization, planning or decision making.
4. Get away from routine: leading an organized life helps us to reduce stress, the problem is that when we automate activities our brain activation decreases. Breaking a habit, changing routines or having new objectives is a way to increase the performance of our brain.

Reading to treat Alzheimer's disease and dementias

Finally, it is worth highlighting the importance of reading not only to prevent Alzheimer's disease, but also to treat it and improve the quality of life of people who already suffer from it. Specifically, it helps them to work on language and memory and contributes significantly to preserving cognitive functions. To this end, América Morera, head of the Day Care Unit at Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona, advises encouraging the habit of reading aloud with patients and emphasizes: “It is important to adapt the readings to the needs and interests of each patient to make this activity attractive to them and even allow them to remember vital aspects or emotions”.

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