Bold marked region in org mode

Is there a way in org-mode to mark region (one or few words) and make them bold/italic?

Currently, if I want to turn bar into bold face, I have to move the point before the b add * and then navigate the point right after r and add another *. I want to be able to mark the whole word bar, hit something like C-c C-f C-b (did someone said AUCTeX?) and obtain *bar*.