Reading, Better

It is relatively uncontroversial to say that reading is good for cognitive health, but we don’t like to make claims without science if we can help it, so let’s get started:

There was a 2021 study, which found that even when controlling for many other factors, including highest level of education, socioeconomic status, and generalized pre-morbid intelligence:

❝high reading activity, as defined by almost daily reading, was associated with lower odds of cognitive decline, compared to low reading activity❞

~ Dr. Carol Chan

Source: Can reading increase cognitive reserve?

However, not all reading is the same. And this isn’t just about complexity or size of vocabulary, either. It’s about engagement.

And that level of engagement remains the key factor, no matter how quickly or slowly someone reads, as the brain tends to automatically adjust reading speed per complexity, because the brain’s “processing speed” remains the same:

Read more: Cognitive coupling during reading

Everyone’s “processing speed” is different (and is associated with generalized intelligence and executive functions), though as a general rule of thumb, the more we practice it, the faster our processing speed gets. So if you balked at the notion of “generalized intelligence” being a factor, be reassured that this association goes both ways.

Read more: The unique contribution of working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and intelligence to reading comprehension and reading speed

So is the key to just read more?

That’s a great first step! But…

The key factor still remains: engagement.

So what does that mean?

It is not just the text that engages you. You must also engage the text!

This is akin to the difference between learning to drive by watching someone else do it, and learning by getting behind the wheel and having a go.

When it comes to reading, it should not be a purely passive thing. Sure, if you are reading a fiction book at bedtime, get lost in it, by all means. But when it comes to non-fiction reading, engage with it actively!

For example, I (your writer here, hi), when reading non-fiction:

• Read at what is generally considered an unusually fast pace, but
• Write so many notes in the margins of physical books, and
• Write so many notes using the “Notes” function on my Kindle

And this isn’t just like a studious student taking notes. Half the time I am…

• objecting to content (disagreeing with the author), or
• at least questioning it, or which is especially important, or
• noting down questions that came to my mind as a result of what I am reading.

This latter is a bit like:

• when you are reading 10almonds, sometimes you will follow our links and go off down a research rabbit-hole of your own, and that’s great!
• sometimes you will disagree with something and write to tell us, and that’s great too (when this happens, one or the other or all of us will learn something, and yes, we have published corrections before now)!
• sometimes what you read here will prompt a further question, and you’ll send that to us, and guess what, also great! We love questions.

Now, if your enjoyment of 10almonds is entirely passive, don’t let us stop you (we know our readers like quick-and-easy knowledge, and that’s good too), it’s just, the more you actively engage with it, the more you’ll get out of it.

This, by the way, was also a lifelong habit of Leonardo da Vinci, which you can read about here:

How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day – by Michael J. Gelb

a very good book that we reviewed last year

How you read (i.e. what medium) matters too!

Are you reading this on a desktop/laptop, or a mobile device? That difference could matter more than the difference between paper and digital, according to this study from 2020 that found…

❝The cumulation of evidence from this and previous studies suggests that reading on a tablet affords different interactions between the reader and the text than reading on a computer screen.

Reading on a tablet might be more similar to reading on paper, and this may impact the attentional processes during reading❞

~ Dr. Ugo Ballenghein et al.

Read more: Cognitive engagement during reading on digital tablet: Evidence from concurrent recordings of postural and eye movements

What if my mind wanders easily?

You can either go with it, or train to improve focus.

Going with it: just make sure you have more engaging reading to get distracted by. It’s all good.

Training focus: this is trickier, but worthwhile, as executive function (you will remember from earlier) was an important factor too, and training focus is training executive function.

As for one way to do that…

Mindfulness training improves working memory capacity and GRE performance while reducing mind wandering

If you’d like a primer for getting going with that, then you may enjoy our previous main feature:

No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Enjoy!

ADHD’s Knock-On Effects On Mental Health

We’ve written before about ADHD in adult life, often late-diagnosed because it’s not quite what people think it is:

ADHD… As An Adult?

In women in particular, it can get missed and/or misdiagnosed:

Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women

…but what we’re really here to talk about today is:

It’s the comorbidities that get you

When it comes to physical health conditions:

• if you have one serious condition, it will (usually) be taken seriously
• if you have two, they will still be taken seriously, but people (friends and family members, as well as yes, medical professionals) will start to back off, as it starts to get too complicated for comfort
• if you have three, people will think you are making at least one of them up for attention now
• if you have more than three, you are considered a hypochondriac and pathological liar

Yet, the reality is: having one serious condition increases your chances of having others, and this chance-increasing feature compounds with each extra condition.

Illustrative example: you have fibromyalgia (ouch) which makes it difficult for you to exercise much, shop around when grocery shopping, and do much cooking at home. You do your best, but your diet slips and it’s hard to care when you just want the pain to stop; you put on some weight, and get diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, which in time becomes diabetes with high cardiovascular risk factors. Your diabetes is immunocompromising; you get COVID and find it’s now Long COVID, which brings about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, when you barely had the spoons to function in the first place. At this point you’ve lost count of conditions and are just trying to get through the day.

If this is you, by the way, we hope at least something in the following might ease things for you a bit:

• Stop Pain Spreading
• Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
• Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue (While Having The Limitations Of Chronic Fatigue)
• When Painkillers Aren’t Helping, These Things Might
• The 7 Approaches To Pain Management

It’s the same for mental health

In the case of ADHD as a common starting point (because it’s quite common, may or may not be diagnosed until later in life, and doesn’t require any external cause to appear), it is very common that it will lead to anxiety and/or depression, to the point that it’s perhaps more common to also have one or more of them than not, if you have ADHD.

(Of course, anxiety and/or depression can both pop up for completely unrelated reasons too, and those reasons may be physiological, environmental, or a combination of the above).

Why?

Because all the good advice that goes for good mental health (and/or life in general), gets harder to actuate when one had ADHD.

• “Strong habits are the core of a good life”, but good luck with that if your brain doesn’t register dopamine in the same way as most people’s do, making intentional habit-forming harder on a physiological level.
• “Plan things carefully and stick to the plan”, but good luck with that if you are neurologically impeded from forming plans.
• “Just do it”, but oops you have the tendency-to-overcommitment disorder and now you are seriously overwhelmed with all the things you tried to do, when each of them alone were already going to be a challenge.

Overwhelm and breakdown are almost inevitable.

And when they happen, chances are you will alienate people, and/or simply alienate yourself. You will hide away, you will avoid inflicting yourself on others, you will brood alone in frustration—or distract yourself with something mind-numbing.

Before you know it, you’re too anxious to try to do things with other people or generally show your face to the world (because how will they react, and won’t you just mess things up anyway?), and/or too depressed to leave your depression-lair (because maybe if you keep playing Kingdom Vegetables 2, you can find a crumb of dopamine somewhere).

What to do about it

How to tackle the many-headed beast? By the heads! With your eyes open. Recognize and acknowledge each of the heads; you can’t beat those heads by sticking your own in the sand.

Also, get help. Those words are often used to mean therapy, but in this case we mean, any help. Enlist your partner or close friend as your support in your mental health journey. Enlist a cleaner as your support in taking that one thing off your plate, if that’s an option and a relevant thing for you. Set low but meaningful goals for deciding what constitutes “good enough” for each life area. Decide in advance what you can safely half-ass, and what things in life truly require your whole ass.

Here’s a good starting point for that kind of thing:

When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)

And this is an excellent way to “get the ball rolling” if you’re already in a bit of a prison of your own making:

Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

If things are already bad, then you might also consider:

• How To Set Anxiety Aside and
• The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← this is about getting out of depression

And if things are truly at the worst they can possibly be, then:

How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

Take care!