Virtual reality may help fight obesity

Virtual reality may be used to determine how people perceive their bodies, to treat body image disturbances and to improve adherence to physical activity among obese individuals, scientists say.
Virtual reality (VR) offers promising new approaches to assessing and treating people with weight-related disorders, and early applications are unveiling valuable information about body image, researchers said.
Researchers from Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy and University of Barcelona in Spain, discussed the advantages of VR for evaluating body image disturbances and the potential to use it to combat obesity.
They described studies that demonstrate how VR environments can produce responses similar to those seen in the real world in a study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking.

"Many chronic conditions are associated with a dysfunction of the stress system - obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes; hypertension; anxiety, depression, and insomnia; and pain syndromes," said Brenda K Wiederhold from Interactive Media Institute in US and Virtual Reality Medical Institute in Belgium.