With my usual winter cold this year, I lost both my sense of taste and smell. I worry that this may be due to my age (70) and would appreciate your advice.
It is possible to taste only four flavours—sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Our ability to smell is far more important, and the smell of the food in our mouth is most of what we perceive as taste.
The cells which sense smell are covered in fine, microscopic hairs and are situated at the top of the nasal cavity at a level that is just below our eyebrows. These nerves send appropriate signals into the brain.
When you have a cold, thick mucus may cover the fine hairs and prevent them from reacting to the odours in both the environment and the mouth. As a result, you perceive that you have lost your sense of taste, when in fact it is smell.
In most cases, the problem disappears as the cold resolves, but if there has been a severe bacterial infection of the nose, the smell cells may be damaged, and the sense of smell will not return until these cells are able to repair themselves.
To prove what I am telling you, next time you feel that you have lost your sense of taste, with your eyes closed have someone put a crystal of sugar and then salt on your tongue—you’ll immediately be able to tell which is which!

I have suffered for many months with a failure of the sense of taste and cannot distinguish one type of food from another. I am 88 years old and am wondering if this problem is due to old age or illness.
A wide range of conditions can cause a loss of taste. These include lead poisoning, a lack of saliva causing a dry mouth, an underactive thyroid gland, some forms of stroke, a condition called Sjogren’s syndrome and numerous rarer conditions.
In older people a dry mouth is a common cause of poor taste sensation.
You should get your general practitioner to give you a thorough going over to exclude any illness as a cause of your problem. If nothing specific is found, old age may have to be blamed.

I am a female aged 30, and I sleep 3 hours, or at most 4 hours, every night. I would like to take some tablets to make me sleep, but my friend said if I start with tablets now, I’ll have to take them every day.
The amount of sleep needed varies dramatically from one person to another. Some require only three or four hours a day; most require seven or eight hours; others may need ten hours.
There are, of course, those who genuinely cannot get to sleep for a variety of reasons, and 15% of the population fall into this category. There are many things other than medication that can be done to ease the problem.
The simple steps that anyone can use to aid sleep include:
• Avoid exercise immediately before bed. Take time to wind down before going to bed.
• Avoid drinks containing caffeine such as tea, coffee or cola. Caffeine is a stimulant.
• Lose weight if you are obese. A slight weight loss can significantly improve sleep.
• Avoid eating a full meal immediately before bed time. Give your food a couple of hours to settle.
• If you cannot sleep once in bed, get up and read a book or watch television for half an hour before returning to bed. Never lie there tossing and turning.
• Learn to relax by attending specific relaxation classes which your doctor may recommend. Follow up by listening to relaxation tapes.
• Instead of counting sheep or worrying about your problems, focus your mind on a pleasant incident in your past (such as a holiday, journey or party) and remember the whole event slowly in great detail from beginning to end.
If all else fails, and you still find you are unable to sleep, consult your general practitioner. He or she can prescribe medications that can be taken ideally for a short time only, to relieve the problem.

My husband snores a lot, and at times during his sleep he seems to stop breathing for ages. Is this dangerous?
Sleep apnoea is a condition that affects one or two in every hundred people, and males are more commonly affected than females. Apnoea’ means ‘no breathing’, and patients with sleep apnoea stop breathing for periods from 10 to 60 seconds on many occasions during the night. There are two reasons for sleep apnoea developing.
The most common cause is due to the small muscles at the back of the throat and in the roof of the mouth relaxing completely, and allowing this tissue to become very soft and flabby. The airway tends to collapse as the patient breathes in, closing it off, and preventing breathing. Snoring is also caused in the same way. Most patients with this form of sleep apnoea are overweight, middle-aged men.
The other far less common cause is an effect in the brain, whereby the urge to breathe is suppressed during very deep sleep. Elderly men with high blood pressure most commonly fit into this category. Patients complain of tiredness during the day, morning headaches, personality changes, poor concentration, failing memory, bed wetting and impotence. These may become bad enough to cause car accidents and job loss. The sleeping partner complains about the other person’s loud snoring, and thrashing restless sleep.
Treatment involves weight loss, and avoiding alcohol, sedatives and smoking. These steps alone may be sufficient to cure the problem. In persistent cases, surgery to clear the nasal passages and/or shorten the soft palate at the top of the mouth may be performed. This surgery performed by ear, nose and throat surgeons, is very successful in selected patients as the slack tissue that falls back to block the airway is removed.
Other treatments include, a rather cumbersome but effective face mask and machine that supplies air at higher than normal pressure to force open the airway. A number of other devices that can be inserted into the mouth to keep the airway open have also been devised.