Lovers of Indian food, give yourselves a second helping: Daily consumption of a certain form of curcumin — the substance that gives Indian curry its bright color — improved memory and mood in people with mild, age-related memory loss, according to the results of a study conducted by UCLA researchers. (more…)
Drinking concentrated blueberry juice improves brain function in older people, according to research by the University of Exeter.
In the study, healthy people aged 65-77 who drank concentrated blueberry juice every day showed improvements in cognitive function, blood flow to the brain and activation of the brain while carrying out cognitive tests. There was also evidence suggesting improvement in working memory. (more…)
Female hormone estriol reduces relapse rate by nearly 50 percent, UCLA neurologist reports
A study conducted by Dr. Rhonda Voskuhl, a UCLA neurologist, shows that combining estriol, a female hormone, with Copaxone, a medication currently used to treat multiple sclerosis, reduced the relapse rate of MS by nearly 50 percent with only one year of treatment. (more…)
‘Greener’ and more engaging experiments draw students in
As a college student, Michelle Driessen had an all-too-typical experience.
“I hated general chemistry,” she says. “I thought it was terribly boring.”
She had plenty of company. Experiments were all laid out in advance, and the goal seemed to be to get to a predetermined result without blowing up the glassware.
In the old days, “very few students appreciated the point of most general chemistry labs,” adds Driessen. “With cookbook chemistry, you couldn’t have anything go wrong or deviate [from what’s supposed to happen], but I find those things to be the most interesting part of science.” (more…)
A gene that influences the inflammatory response to infection may also predict the effectiveness of drug treatment for a deadly form of tuberculosis.
An international collaboration between researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, Duke University, Harvard University, the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam and Kings College London reported these findings Feb. 3 in the journal Cell. (more…)
University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Douglas R. Seals has amassed scientific evidence indicating that exercise, weight loss, 
good nutrition and salt restriction can cut your chances of getting cardiovascular disease, the United States’ No. 1 killer.
But Seals knows that exhorting people to exercise and lose weight, no matter how well the case is buttressed with data, will only go so far. So Seals’ laboratory has begun researching “nutraceuticals,” food extracts or vitamin supplements that could mimic the effects of a healthful lifestyle. (more…)
Health benefits of walnuts have been known since time immemorial. Hippocrates and Avicenna mentioned them in the treatment of various diseases. In addition, the ancients thought that they stimulate mental activity. Anna Protsenko, a nutritionist, told MedPulse.ru.
