Genetic Material From Food Unlikely To Get Into Our Blood And Regulate Our Genes

In 2011 and 2012, research from China’s Nanjing University made international headlines with reports that after mice ate, bits of genetic material from the plants they’d ingested could make it into their bloodstreams intact and turn the animals’ own genes off…

Chocolate Gorging Linked To Opium Chemical In Brain

A new brain study suggests an opium-like chemical may drive the urge to gorge on chocolate candy and similar fatty and sweet treats. Researchers discovered this when they gave rats an artificial boost with a drug that went straight to a brain region called the neostriatum: it caused the animals to eat twice the amount of M&Ms they would otherwise have eaten…

Apple Peel Compound Protects Mice From Obesity

A new study in mice finds that ursolic acid, a compound naturally present in apple peel, partially protected the animals against obesity and some of its harmful effects such as pre-diabetes and fatty liver disease…

Preventive Use Of One Form Of Vitamin E May Reduce Stroke Damage

Ten weeks of preventive supplementation with a natural form of vitamin E called tocotrienol in dogs that later had strokes reduced overall brain tissue damage, prevented loss of neural connections and helped sustain blood flow in the animals’ brains, a new study shows…

Gene, Lack Of B Vitamin Linked To Increased Colon Cancer Risk In Mice

Offering a likely insight into how such cancers develop in humans Cornell University researchers report they have identified a gene that increases the risk for colon cancer in laboratory mice when the animals’ diets are deficient in folate…