Hair problems?

Women who have an eating disorder often can't recognize the problem or they try to hide it, making diagnosis difficult. But a new method involving hair analysis may provide a more objective means of determining whether someone is a sufferer. As hair grows continuously by adding new proteins (the make-up of which is influenced by a person's nutritional state and eating patterns), each follicle becomes a chemical record of the individual's daily diet. A team of researchers at Utah's Brigham Young University analyzed the pattern of carbon and nitrogen molecules in hair strands to see if this varied between people with eating disorders and those who had normal eating behaviors. Careful statistical analysis enabled the scientists to give an 80% accurate prediction about whether a person had anorexia or bulimia, the two most common eating disorders.