A kiss to cure anorexia!

A hormone released when kissing could help beat anorexia. Oxytocin reduces sufferers' unhealthy obsessions with food and weight and makes them less fixated on damaging emotions, researchers found. A spray of the chemical could be used as a treatment in two or three years if larger trials succeed. It is hoped it would help patients understand the need to eat more, raising odds of recovery.

There are no drugs to treat the life-threatening disorder, whose sufferers try to be as thin as possible by drastically limiting food and undertaking extreme exercise. In severe cases, counselling is often of little benefit because the brain is so undernourished. British and South Korean scientists tested oxytocin, which is also released during sex, childbirth and breastfeeding.

Anorexics who took the chemical focused less on photos of food and paid less attention than before to images of flabby thighs or stomachs. Dubbed the 'love hormone' or the 'cuddle chemical', oxytocin also changed anorexic patients' responses to images of angry and disgusted faces, according to one piece of research. The research was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology after subjects were given oxytocin using a nasal spray.