October 13 is National Train Your Brain Day - a holiday created to encourage everyone to expand and exercise their brain and use more of its potential capacity.

If you’re one of countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing out as reading benefits the brain in many ways:

It prevents dementia: Studies have shown that mentally stimulating activities such as reading slow the progress of (or possibly even prevent) Alzheimer’s and Dementia. The new research, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that elderly people who regularly read are 2 ½ times less likely to suffer these debilitating illnesses.

It enhances your vocabulary: Simply put, the more you read, the more words you gain exposure to. Expanding your vocabulary is a powerful way to enhance both your life - and your career. Researcher Johnson O’Connor who is known for his studies about the impact of vocabulary on people’s lives has found that a person’s vocabulary level is the best single predictor of occupational success.

It improves your memory: Just like muscles, the brain benefits from a good workout. When you read, you have to remember a whole host of characters, as well as get to grips with the various arcs and sub-plots that weave their way through any story. Incredibly enough, every new memory you create forges new synapses (brain pathways) and strengthens existing ones, which assists in short-term memory recall as well as stabilising moods.

It keeps you smart: In Anne E. Cunningham’s paper What Reading Does for the Mind, she found that reading, in general, makes you smarter, and it keeps you sharp as you age. Knowledge is power, and unlike most things in life, it cannot be taken away from you.

If that’s not enough reason to curl up with a good book, we don’t know what is!