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Richmond Times-Dispatch Food Writer Bill Lohmann has a nice article on eating healthy in the paper today along with several heart healthy recipes and tips from experts on improving your diet.

Circle Center Adult Day Services has moved to new, larger space at 4900 W. Marshall Street.

There’s a decent-sized exercise room and a lot of other nice stuff. But one of the neatest things is the Snoezelen room, a special room devoted to multisensory stimulation therapy for patients with memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s.

Kelly Lewis oversees the therapy room, which has devices that stimulate the senses with different sights, sounds and smells. Colorful lights, vibrating pillows and chairs and aromatherapy are part of the therapy, which can help calm patients who are agitated or stimulate patients who are lethargic.

“A session normally lasts 30 minutes in here,” said Lewis, who remains in the small room with the patient during therapy. Snoezelen therapy is more popular in Europe, where it originated.

Some places are also trying Snoezelen therapy for children with autism, for relaxing breastfeeding mothers and for people with learning disabilities.

Speaking of pretty lights….

The Evans-Haynes Burn Center at VCU Medical Center has what’s called a Vecta Distraction Station.

The theory is that the visual and other stimuli distract patients undergoing procedures, taking their mind off the pain.

The photos are by VCU’s Rinny Wilson. With the move to the new Critical Care Hospital last fall, the burn center is larger and has improved technology.

The full story is on the VCU Web site.

The Science Museum of Virginia may not be the first place you would expect dozens of giggly girls to want to convene on a Saturday night.

Then again, if the event is a sleepover and the offerings include a yoga session, making a healthy snack, a movie, solving brainteasers and a chance to sleep in the Rotunda, it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

The Science Museum of Virginia and HCA Virginia Health System are offering a Girls in Medicine Camp-In for middle school girls in grades 6-8 Feb. 28. Girls arrive at 6:30 p.m. Saturday and stay until after breakfast the next day, with activities packed in between.

The cost is $10 per girl. Every girl must be accompanied by a chaperone, and one chaperone can supervise up to four children. Chaperones are admitted free.

To pre-register or for more information, call (804) 864-1400 or 800-659-1727

All the attention being paid to fighting staph infections may be paying off for hospitals.

A paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week said antibiotic-resistant staph infections in hospital intensive care units have been decreasing in recent years.

Specifically, the study looked at staph infections associated with central lines, catheters placed in the chest for delivering therapies like chemotherapy or nutritional supplements. To see a summary of the report, go to: Medline.

In the same journal issue, Dr. Michael Williams Climo, a hospital epidemiologist at McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, discusses what the findings may mean. For one, it’s not clear what specific practices are responsible for reducing infections.

Staph infections can be troublesome. Virginia is among the states that have passed legislation requiring cases of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to be reported. The measure was passed as emergency legislation in 2007 when some schools and parents went into a frenzy over possible student exposure to staph infections. The final regulation is being considered. To see comments, go to Virginia Regulatory Town Hall. Warning: it’s a pdf document.

One thing that became clear at a conference on preventing childhood obesity was that if you give kids time to run, kick ball and chase each other around the playground they will gladly do it.

A lot of the programs featured as “best practices” at the Save Our Kids: The Obesity Crisis Conference at the Richmond Marriott on Feb. 18 had a “get out and play” component.

Sports Backers and Bon Secours Richmond put on the conference. Physical education teachers, nurses, physicians, parents, public health workers and others talked about what works when it comes to getting kids to be more physically active and to eat better.

“A lot of parents it seems get a little overwhelmed with preparing healthy meals,” said physical education teacher Kristin Massie. Through a program Massie put together, parents were invited in for a weekly exercise, nutrition and healthy snack making sessions.

“We saw students very, very excited. Parents got excited as well,” said Massie. Some are asking her when the next session starts, she said.

Massie, who teachers at Charles City Elementary, said she saw the need for the outreach after noticing that more of the children in her classes seemed to be getting a little chunkier. But it wasn’t until she got out the scale did the extent of it become evident.

“I was shocked at the numbers,” said Massie. She said 43 percent of the students fell into the 85th percentile for their age category, suggesting they were at risk for being overweight. Another 27% were in the 95th percentile.

Doctors don’t like to classify kids as overweight or obese because with a grow spurt their weight could even out.

Massie applied for and won a $110,000 competitive grant from the Williamsburg Community Health Foundation for the project. Children were given time to be active and taught to read food labels and their parents and siblings were invited in for weekly sessions that included exercise, education and making a healthy snack.

“The first goal was to continue to provide appropriate physical education and health curriculum,” said Massie. Another goal was to enhance their current after school program. “Our third goals was to offer a family program that emphasized physical education, healthy behaviors and nutrition components.”

Collaborators included the local extension office, the parks and recreation and health departments, the state Department of Education. Student interns from Hampton University and Virginia Commonwealth University helped teach and with data analysis, which is under way.

Other things from the conference worth noting: viewing childhood obesity prevention as a social justice issue since low-income children in rural and urban areas are more likely to be at risk for overweight.

Also, Dr. Minot Cleveland described a decade-long effort to get mandatory physical education time in Oregon schools. Cleveland said physical education ought to be viewed as just as important as childhood vaccines when it comes to preventive medicine.