A weekly round-up of news affecting your health.
DEMENTIA-FRIENDLY HOMES
Changing busily patterned wall or floor coverings is just one tip for carers in a new app aimed at making homes more accessible for people with dementia.
The $2.99 tablet app, launched by Alzheimers Australia Vic, uses interactive 3D game technology Unreal Engine and aims to enable people to stay in their own homes longer.
Most people don't realise that people with dementia may experience spatial and visual challenges as well as the more commonly understood memory issues, says CEO Maree McCabe.
The Dementia-Friendly Home app includes small, inexpensive ideas, like placing labels with pictures on cupboard doors.
More significant changes include installing motion sensors that turn lights on and off when people walk through the house and changing busily patterned wall or floor coverings.
SMOKING MOTHERS
Nearly half of women who stop smoking during pregnancy resume the habit soon after their baby is born, say researchers.
Their review, published in the journal Addiction, analysed the effectiveness of UK stop-smoking support for pregnant women.
They found 43 per cent of the women who managed to stay off cigarettes during the pregnancy went back to smoking within six months of the birth.
While not smoking during pregnancy is very important, there's an urgent need to find better ways of helping mothers stay off cigarettes afterwards, say the researchers.
Approximately 18,887 pregnant smokers in the UK used NHS stop-smoking support in the financial year 2014/15.
HOSPITAL FEEDING
Children in intensive care recover faster with little to no nutrition, says a study debunking the assumption that they need to eat to regain their strength.
The international study, coordinated by Belgium researchers, involved a randomised controlled trial involving 1440 critically ill children.
They examined whether fasting or receiving very small amounts of feeding during the first week in the paediatric intensive-care unit was better than full feeding through an IV.
"We found that the current practice of feeding children in an early stage does not contribute to their recovery" said lead author Professor Greet Van den Berghe.
"On the contrary, the children who had built up a nutritional deficiency after receiving little to no feedings had fewer infections, less organ failure, and a quicker recovery than children who had been fed through the IV.
"The effect was present in everyone, regardless of the type of disease, the children's age, or the hospital in which they were staying."
SIBLING BENEFIT?
Becoming a big brother or sister before going to school may lower a child's risk of becoming obese, says a University of Michigan-led study.
The birth of a sibling, especially when the child was between about two and four, was associated with a healthier body mass index (BMI) by first grade, according to the US research published in Pediatrics journal.
Kids the same age who didn't have a sibling were nearly three times more likely to be obese by first grade.
"Research suggests that having younger siblings - compared with having older or no siblings - is associated with a lower risk of being overweight," the researchers said.
"However, we have very little information about how the birth of a sibling may shape obesity risk during childhood."
They say a possible explanation for their findings could be that parents may change the way they feed their child once a new sibling is born.
Or children may engage in more "active play" and be less sedentary in front of screens once a younger sibling is born.
