A weekly round-up of news affecting your health:
BREAD WINNER
Mandatory folate in bread has dramatically cut the rates of serious birth defects in Aboriginal children.
A Telethon Kids Institute study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, used WA data to examine all 52,919 Aboriginal births from 1980 to 2014.
It found the prevalence of spina bifida and related anomalies had fallen by 68 per cent since mandatory fortification of all wheat flour for bread-making was introduced by the federal government in 2009.
Inadequate levels of folate are linked to devastating birth defects of the brain or spinal cord.
Lead author Professor Carol Bower said the defects usually developed in the first month of pregnancy even before many women knew they were expecting, meaning to be effective, folate intake had to be increased before pregnancy.
Folate levels are lower in Aboriginal communities, where there's less access to fresh fruit and vegetables containing the essential vitamin.
VIRTUAL CHRISTMAS
The festive season can be a sad and lonely time for the one in five Australians experiencing mental illness.
But help is at hand through a virtual Christmas Dinner hosted online by the mental illness charity SANE.
Many mental health support services close down, or have only limited resources, during the holiday period, says SANE psychologist Suzanne Leckie.
SANE has been hosting a weekly Friday Feast online forum, where people can chat on everything from managing symptoms and diagnosis to lighter everyday topics in a "supportive, inclusive and encouraging environment".
"With Christmas falling on a Friday this year, Friday Feast will be even more significant," Ms Leckie says.
Go to www.saneforums.org
LUNG CANCER WEAPON
Australian patients are taking part in a world-first clinical trial using a real-time tumour tracking system to improve lung cancer radiotherapy treatment.
It uses a GPS-like device to track the position of the lung to continuously target the tumour with sub-millimetre accuracy as it moves during therapy.
The trial at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital is being led by researchers from the Northern Sydney Cancer Centre and the University of Sydney.
One of the first of the 20 patients to receive the treatment, Ashley Bullen, said the process felt like, "I'm going to the beach, lying down on a towel and having a half-hour kip."
THE EYES HAVE IT
Just over half of all Australians are affected by eye problems, with the rate much higher for indigenous people.
And almost half the population wears glasses or contact lenses, according to new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
"In 2011-12, almost 12 million Australians reported having an eye health condition, with long and short-sightedness the most commonly reported conditions, and there's been an increase in these conditions in recent years," said AIHW spokeswoman Mardi Ellis.
"Eye conditions were more common among females than males, and much more common among indigenous Australians than non-indigenous Australians."
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience higher rates of preventable blindness and vision loss than other Australians, are more than twice as likely to have complete or partial blindness and almost one-and-a-half times more likely to have cataracts.
LOOK AFTER YOUR TEETH
Coronary heart disease patients with no teeth have nearly double the risk of death, according to a Swedish study.
Published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, the study involved more than 15,000 patients from 39 countries and found that levels of tooth loss were linearly associated with increasing death rates.
Compared to those with all of their teeth, the group with no teeth had an increased risk of 27 per cent of major cardiovascular events, 85 per cent of cardiovascular death, 81 per cent of all-cause death and 67 per cent of stroke.
Patients with a high level of tooth loss were older, smokers, female, less active and more likely to have diabetes, higher blood pressure, higher body mass index and lower education.
