Short communicationA chapter a day: Association of book reading with longevity
Section snippets
Participants
The study cohort was drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), collected by the University of Michigan's Institute of Social Research and supported by the National Institute on Aging. The HRS has conducted national telephone surveys biennially since 1992 among adults over age 50. In 2001, the off-year Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS) was added, which contained questions about reading habits. All individuals completed identical telephone questionnaires and had identical
Results
In support of the prediction, book reading was associated with significantly greater survival for both the second and third tertiles, with adjustment for all covariates (HRT2 = 0.83, p < 0.001; HRT3 = 0.77, p < 0.001). During follow-up 33% of non-book readers, died, compared to 27% of book readers. Hazard ratios for reading periodicals were also obtained (HRT2 = 1.01, p < 0.001; HRT3 = 0.89, p < 0.001), with a protective effect seen only for the third tertile. The HRs for reading books were
Discussion
A 20% reduction in mortality was observed for those who read books, compared to those who did not read books. Further, our analyses demonstrated that any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage than reading periodicals. This is a novel finding (in both senses of the word), as previous studies did not compare types of reading material; it indicates that book reading rather than reading in general is driving a survival advantage.
The mediation analyses showed for the
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01AG032284). The Health and Retirement Study is supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA U01AG009740) and is conducted by the University of Michigan Institute of Social Research, Special thanks to graphic designer Mark Saba for creating survival figure.
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