A new study has recently revealed that compound found in grapes, red wine and peanuts may help prevent age-related memory loss.

Ashok K Shetty, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Medicine and Director of Neurosciences at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, has been studying the potential benefit of resveratrol, an antioxidant that is found in the skin of red grapes, as well as in red wine, peanuts and some berries.

Resveratrol has been widely touted for its potential to prevent heart disease, but Shetty and a team that includes other researchers from the health science center believe it also has positive effects on the hippocampus, an area of the brain that was critical to functions such as memory, learning and mood.

Resveratrol might even be able to help people afflicted with severe neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.

The study is published in the Scientific Reports.

Snail facial has come out to be the latest beauty craze among the ladies across Thailand, it has been revealed.

Two Frenchmen opened the first such spa in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with just 100 of the garden creatures initially but now they have upgraded it with 30,000 snails on their organic farm, the Daily Express reported.

In this treatment around 30,000 snails are being used that helps to get a youthful glow and heals all the burns, acne, stretch marks, scars and wrinkles.

Luc Champeyroux, a co-founder said that they take care of the snails as their own family or babies, and always keep them in good condition.

This slimy skin regime could be under threat as public health inspectors descended on the Thai spa to investigate whether the treatment was safe or are they harmful, but the results are yet to be disclosed.

A team of scientists has discovered key to preventing blindness and stroke devastation.

Researchers at LSU Health New Orleans discovered gene interactions that determine whether cells live or die in such conditions as age-related macular degeneration and ischemic stroke. These common molecular mechanisms in vision and brain integrity can prevent blindness and also promote recovery from a stroke.

Researcher Nicolas Bazan said that studying the eye and the brain might hold the key to creating therapeutic solutions for blindness, stroke and other seemingly unrelated conditions associated with the central nervous system. The eye is a window to the brain.

Bazan added that during the last few years, his laboratory has been immersed in studying gene regulation and they have uncovered a novel control that makes definitive decisions about whether a retina or brain cell will survive or die when threatened with disease onset. The gene mechanism that they discovered is the interplay of two genes turned on by the messenger Neuroprotectin D1 (NPD1), which is made from the essential fatty acid, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

The research team worked with human RPE cells and an experimental model of ischemic stroke and discovered novel mechanisms in cells with the ability to activate pathways that crosstalk one to another and then assemble consolidated responses that decide cell fate.

The researchers found that the powerful messenger, NPD1, is produced on-demand in the brain and retina and that it elicits a network of positive signals essential for the well-being of vision and cognition.

They showed that NDP1 bioactivity governs key gene interactions decisive in cell survival when threatened by disease or injury and demonstrated that not only does NPD1 protect photoreceptors, but it also promotes remarkable neurological recovery from the most frequent form of stroke in humans.

The paper is published online in Cell Death and Differentiation, a Nature journal.

Green tea consists of an ingredient , which may help kill oral cancer cells, without touching the healthy cells, says a new research.

Associate professor Joshua Lambert at Penn State said that earlier studies had shown that epigallocatechin-3-gallate-EGCG-a compound found in green tea, killed oral cancer cells without harming normal cells, but researchers did not understand the reasons for its ability to target the cancer cells. The current study shows that EGCG may trigger a process in the mitochondria that leads to cell death.

The researchers studied normal human oral cells side-by-side with human oral cancer cells to determine how EGCG was affecting cancer cells differently than normal cells.

They grew the normal and cancer cells on petri dishes and then exposed them to EGCG, the major polyphenol found in green tea, at concentrations typically found in the saliva after chewing green-tea chewing gum. At various times, the researchers would collect the cells and check for oxidative stress and signs of antioxidant response.

The researchers said that a protein called sirtuin 3 -- SIRT3 -- was critical to the process, so the idea that EGCG might selectively affect the activity of sirtuin 3 in cancer cells-to turn it off-and in normal cells-to turn it on-was probably applicable in multiple kinds of cancers, Lambert said.

The study builds on earlier research on how EGCG affected oral cancer, a disease that is expected to kill more than 8,000 people in the United States this year.

He said the next step would be to study the mechanism in animals. If those tests and human trials are successful, the researchers then hope to create anti-cancer treatments that are as effective as current treatments without the harmful side effects.

Lambert said chemotherapy drugs just targeted rapidly dividing cells, so cancer divides rapidly, but so did the cells in your hair follicles and cells in your intestines, leading to a lot of side effects. But green tea consumption didn't have such side effects.

The study is published in the online issue of Molecular Nutrition and Food Research.

A new study has examined that people who have flexible work schedules have better health and they sleep properly than their counterparts.

Orfeu M. Buxton, associate professor of biobehavioral health, Penn State, said that in the absence of sufficient sleep, they are not as attentive or alert, they process information more slowly, miss or misinterpret social and emotional cues and decision making is impaired.

The researchers followed 474 employees as part of a Work, Family and Health Network study conducted at an information technology company, with about half of the employees serving as the control while the other half experienced the study intervention. Both employees and their supervisors participated.

The intervention was designed to reduce conflicts between work and personal life, and focused on two main cultural shifts: allowing employees to decide on when and where they worked and training supervisors to support their employees' personal lives. Those who were assigned to the intervention were encouraged to be completely flexible about when and where they would work at the office, from home or elsewhere while still working the same number of hours as the control group. All of the participants wore a sleep-monitoring watch, a device that tracks movement to monitor periods of sleep.

At 12 months, the researchers found that employees who participated in the intervention experienced an average of eight minutes more sleep per night, which is nearly an hour more sleep per week, than the control group. Intervention participants' perceptions of their sleep sufficiency also improved.

Buxton added that work can be a calling and inspirational, as well as a paycheck, but work should not be detrimental to healthIt is possible to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of work by reducing work-family conflict and improving sleep.