Description and Possible Medical Problems

The production of sufficient saliva is important to proper digestion. Besides producing enzymes that help to break down food so the body can use it, saliva helps to prevent tooth decay and also makes swallowing easy. Though a decrease in saliva production is more common in adults, an increase—known as sialorrhea—does occasionally occur.

Treatment

Dry mouth, or xerostomia, is often a side effect of a particular medication. However, an increase in the output of saliva can also result from taking a new drug. Bethanechol chloride, which you may be taking if you have a urinary retention problem, and neostigmine, a medication that alleviates the symptoms of myasthenia gravis, a neurological disease that results in a loss of muscular control, can also cause your glands to produce more saliva than usual.

Sialorrhea is virtually always reversible when your doctor switches your medication. If your doctor does not want to change yout medication, I recommend that you take the antihistamine Benadryl in pill or capsule form twice daily. Seldane is another antihistamine that will also help to dry your mouth, but it doesn’t cause drowsiness like Benadryl does; I suggest you take Seldane once or twice a day. It’s also important to know that increased salivation can be a sign of the progression of Parkinson’s disease, a result of the muscles of the throat becoming lax and hard to control.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

Frequently, a cold that starts out with a stuffy nose will end with a runny nose, also called rhinorrhea. It’s the body’s way of ridding itself of the cold germs and viruses that are on their last legs as you begin to feel better.

Treatment

There’s not much you can do for a runny nose except wait it out. Some people use antihistamines, which cause mucus to thicken, but the downside of using these preparations is that your cold may stick around longer than it would otherwise. Thickened mucus helps to keep germs and viruses in the body longer, and just when you’re feeling better, a virus or germ can get its second wind and attack again.

And the older you get, the longer a cold tends to stick around. So it’s a good idea to avoid using antihistamines for a runny nose and drink lots of fluids, which will hasten the end of your runny nose.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

Mrs. C, a regular patient, visited me for a checkup and complained that food just didn’t taste right to her anymore.

When I pressed her for details, she became visibly upset. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Ever since I turned 60, it’s as if all my senses have deteriorated. It just takes more of everything for me to smell anything lately.”

She described how, in particular, food tasted bland and even the flowers in her garden didn’t smell as sweet as they had the year before. Though, as a rule, women tend to retain their senses in later years better than men do, the sense of smell starts to fade when a person reaches his 50s and 60s. Since the sense of smell is closely connected with the ability to taste, sometimes the first sign that there’s a problem will arise when foods don’t taste the way they usually do. And sometimes certain diseases can hasten the loss.

If your loss of smell is sudden, it’s probably not due to aging. Illness or allergies—whether they’re seasonal or year round—can affect your sense of smell. So can the medication you’re taking for it. In fact, taking any kind of prescription or over-the-counter medication can result in a decreased sense of smell.

To discover if your reduced sense of smell is due to regular aging or an illness, allergy, or medication, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can I pinpoint exactly when my sense of smell or taste began to decline? Or was it more gradual?

• Have I started to take a new medication recently?

• Have I recently recovered from a lengthy respiratory illness?

• Have I had major dental work done recently?

• Do I tend to lose my sense of smell at the same time every year?

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

When you first wake up in the morning, it’s not that uncommon for your vision to be distorted. The digital numbers on your clock may appear a bit wavy, or the cat may look thinner than she really is. Usually, blinking your eyes a few times or just sitting up to regain your equilibrium is enough to make your vision return to normal.

You can blame this funhouse mirror act on your retina and the gradual, yet harmless, deterioration it undergoes as our eyes age. Since the retina’s function is to decode the light that enters the eye through the lens before sending it on to the final processor, the brain, when the retina becomes less flexible with age, the image your brain “sees” will be temporarily distorted in some manner. Some people will notice a slight difference in their vision; for others, the change will be quite dramatic.

Treatment

A certain amount of deterioration in the retina is natural and starts to become noticeable after the age of 60. As aging affects the retina, it becomes dull, and the amount of time it requires to process the light entering the retina increases.

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do to prevent deterioration of the retina. The good news is that a stronger eyeglass or contact lens prescription can frequently cure the distortion. You should, however, be alert to changes in your vision, because sometimes the distorted images you’re seeing as the result of an aging retina can lead to more serious retinal problems, such as macular degeneration and retinal detachment.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

It’s natural for your eyes to droop a bit as you get older, but if your lids appear to be normal in the morning but then sag noticeably as the day goes on, you may have myasthenia gravis, a rare neurological disease. You may also have diplopia, or double vision. Myasthenia gravis gradually progresses to the rest of the body if left untreated.

Myasthenia gravis is a rare condition in which the body chemicals that control the neurotransmitters that transmit electrical impulses from the nerves to the muscles, particularly acetylcholine, fail to work properly. In effect, the nerves run out of gas. The cause of myasthenia gravis is not confirmed, but we think it’s due to a defect in the immune system. The disease affects primarily the facial muscles, particularly the eyelids and the muscles that control swallowing and the movement of the vocal cords. In addition to eyelids that progressively droop as the day goes on, a person with myasthenia gravis may find that she also starts to blink incessantly and uncontrollably, which can result in fatigue.

Treatment

Myasthenia gravis is such a rare disease that there’s a good chance your drooping eyelids are a normal sign of aging. However, if your eyelids continue to droop noticeably over the course of the day, you should see your doctor. Myasthenia gravis is thought to be caused by a reaction by the immune system. It is commonly treated with regular medical checkups to monitor your condition and the avoidance of certain medications such as antibiotics, beta-blockers, and psychotropic drugs, which can make the symptoms of myasthenia gravis worse.

But some medications, such as the decongestant ephedrine hydrochloride, and corticosteroids, are routinely prescribed to treat the disease. These medications can help bolster the immune system and ease the symptoms of myasthenia gravis. They can also prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine, allowing the nerves to continue to send messages to one another and the muscles.

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