Health Issue: SHORT CUTS

SHORT CUTS: 'Virtual food may help treat eating disorders'      Scientists have found that food presented in a virual reality environment causes the same emotional response as real food, a evaluation and treatment of eating disorders. Experts believe the technique, which allows one to pretend as if eating in a computer generated restaurant, could reduce the fear for food among people suffering from of food causes major anxiety to those patients, but the researchers said the new technique could help reverse their unhealthy relationship with food to the point where they can eventually be reintroduced to the real thing. The virutual reality (VR) experience was found to be much stronger than just showing the patients photographs. Good looks make for an extrovert?     If you are am attractive man or a woman, chances are that you are quite an extrovert, Evolutionary psychologist Aaron Lukaszewski of the University of California at Santa Barbara asked 85 male and 89 female students to rate their own attractiveness relative to their peers. The results showed that stronger and more attractive men, and more attractive women, were more extrovert. And because strength and attrativeness have a strong genetic basis, it appears that we may learn our personalities, and adjust them to situations we find ourselves inover time. "It's not the way psychologists have typically thought about personality," Wendy Johnson, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Said. Antioxidants keep arteries healthy:     Dietary antioxidants such as vitamin C and vitamin E, if taken as supplements over a long period of time, keep arteries healthy and supple in patients who drink and smoke, says a study. Antioxidants protect cells from the attacks of free radicals - moleculed reponsible for aging and tissue damage. Researchers reported these positive results in a randomised controlled trial of combined vitamin C,Vitamin E, coenzyme Q10 and selenium capsules. "Antioxidant supplementation significantly increased large and small artery elasticity in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk (smking and drinking) factors," said Reuven Zimlichman of the Wolfson Medical Centre, Israel.