Individuals who have had facial Botox injections to fight wrinkles have a hard time reading emotions in others, according to a new study.
Published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, the research team theorized that one of the ways we interpret feelings of others is by mimicking their facial expressions. By having Botox injections, these individuals are unable to adequately mimic the expressions of others, which dulls their ability to perceive and interpret another person’s emotions.
To study the theory, the research team embarked on two experiments. In the first, they compared two groups that had received cosmetic procedures to remove facial wrinkles — one group received Botox while the second was injected with dermal filler. They found in the Botox group that “emotion perception was significantly impaired.”
In the second experiment, the group wanted to test the idea that feedback signals are stronger when facial muscles try to contract but meet resistance. Participants applied a gel to their face that created that resistance. The results found that “emotion perception improved, and did so only for emotion judgments that theoretically could benefit from facial feedback.”
The research team noted the irony that “people use Botox to come across better in social situations, yet you may look better but you could suffer because you can’t read other people’s emotions as well.”
Drinkers who pair liquor with energy drinks such as Red Bull report twice as much stimulation as those drinking only alcohol, which could prove to be a dangerous combination, according to one psychologist.
Cecile Marczinski at North Kentucky University found that combining alcohol such as vodka with Red Bull effectively removes any physical “checks” your body applies when you’ve drank too much, which could lead to mistakes in judgment, such as believing you are sober enough to drive.
“Even with just alcohol alone, young, underage drinkers are bad at deciding how safe a driver they are, but I think this would make that situation far worse,” Marczinski said.
The body follows a predictable cycle when a person consumes alcohol — happiness that with sustained drinking turns into fatigue and sedation, the body’s natural way of telling you to stop. Marczinksi decided to study how much of an effect combining alcohol with energy drinks had on that cycle. Students at her lab drank either plain alcoholic drinks, a combination of alcohol and energy drinks, energy drinks alone or a non-alcoholic beverage.
Participants in the study who combined liquor and energy drinks reported feeling twice as stimulated as those drinking only alcohol. They also reported less sedation, fatigue or sleepiness.
“The disconnect between what you feel and how you act is what is the problem here. Stimulation may not be a good thing when you’re drinking because you may drink longer … than you originally intended,” Marczinski said.
A pregnant woman’s diet during fetal development, regardless of her weight or her baby’s weight at birth, can have an impact on her child’s risk of obesity later in life, according to a new study.
Published in Diabetes, the study found that a process called epigenetic change can alter the function of an unborn baby’s DNA in response to changes in the mother’s diet.
The research team took samples of umbilical cord at birth for epigenetic marks of obesity risk. It found it could predict 25 per cent of the variation of obesity in the 300 children sampled by the time they reached six or nine years of age.
These epigenetic changes affect how DNA is expressed without changing coding sequences passed down to the child from its parents. What they do is influence how a person’s body responds to lifestyle factors like diet and exercise.
Specifically, the researchers studied the methylation status of 68 locations of five candidate genes in the umbilical cord tissue. Methylation of a gene called RXRA and another called eNOS were independently linked to childhood fat mass later in life. A second study found only methylation in RXRA was linked to childhood obesity.
The authors wrote the study is more proof that expectant mothers need to closely monitor their diets and lifestyles in order to reduce the risk of childhood obesity.
Labelling and false assumptions by individuals who are dieting can actually lead them to consume unhealthy, calorie-laden food, according to a study in The Journal of Consumer Research.
According to the research team, dieters make automatic assumptions when selecting what they will eat, creating a mental list of foods to avoid. Individuals who aren’t dieting are less concerned with a food’s name and will ignore “subtle, written clues” that indicated wholesome and healthy nutritional foods.
The research team conducted two tests. In the first, 66 people were stopped in the street and asked to identify a new restaurant menu item that contained vegetables, pasta, processed meat and cheese. Half were told it was a pasta dish and the other half were told it was a salad. People who said they were on a diet believed the dish was less healthy when it was described as a pasta as opposed to when it was identified as a salad. The item, regardless of what it was called, contained 900 calories and 60 grams of fat.
In the second test, 142 college students were given a chewable product at random that was described to half as candy chews and the other as fruit chews, despite being identical. Dieters believed candy chews were less healthful than fruit chews, and subsequently consumed more of them if they believed they were fruit chews.
The authors stated that dieters should focus more on a product’s nutritional labelling than on what the product is actually called if they want to avoid unhealthy foods.
