Doctors always need to be on the look out for thyroid problems. By the time I gave up regular practice I had started routinely measuring thyroid levels in patients over sixty as well as those who had any suspicious signs that might suggest an under or over active thyroid.

Teeth and eyes are checked by the dentist and the optician. Certainly by the age of 63 an annual visit to the optician is helpful.

In many areas there is a rough and ready means of checking for colorectal bleeding - and hence possible polyps or cancer - available. Discuss this with your doctor.

Much of the criticism of screening is part of the administration's spinning. The authorities are terrified that we should have efficient screening services in this country and that all sorts of diseases would be discovered that would need treatment. They say that widespread screening would bankrupt the NHS and therefore denounce it. It is only by having earlier diagnosis that we are going to achieve as good an outcome as is already achieved in other western countries.

Q2: Through my company I am a member of a private health scheme (BUPA) and every year I am called for a health check. I must admit I like the occasion because the emphasis is all on ME! However, I am never quite sure what I should say in the part of the form where they ask what I am not happy about. I don't like to tell them about the things bothering me because they just seem too superficial and silly and small and yet I must admit they bother me. For example I have unsightly spots on my legs which are possibly due to age (I am 61) and which my family doctor says he would tell a male patient to just cover them up with his trousers! What should you sensibly tell or not tell on an annual examination? Mrs Lana Morrsion, Kesteven.

A2: The BUPA private health screening has remained little changed for the last thirty or forty years. Then as now it's most important service was to provide a doctor who was there to talk about all your problems. Don't hesitate to take advantage of this. Unfortunately modern NHS general practice allows virtually no time for chatting to the doctor and yet it is by talking to the doctor that early diagnoses can be made. As Sir William Osler, the founder of modern British medicine who became professor of medicine at Oxford, said - a doctor who was prepared to allow a patient to talk for long enough, and had the quality of being a good listener, would rarely be stumped for a diagnosis. At your annual check you should tell your doctor everything. Nothing is too superficial. The doctor wants, or should want, you to talk. It doesn't matter much what it is about but it is because you are talking that he or she will get an idea about your health, happiness and any potential physical or psychological troubles.

The diagnosis of moles and spots is now much improved, thanks to the invention of various high tech machines. These have the ability to magnify the skin by several hundred times and to look into the deeper layers of it. People who have multiple moles, particularly if they are large ones or the moles are in any way atypical, or if the patient has been sometime or another in their lives - perhaps in childhood - severely sunburnt should have these moles regularly examined.

Q3: At what age should I start having a regular annual check up. I am 32, alternative between being fit (when I am running and training for marathons) and starting to get a beer belly, when I am not training! George Larcher, Whitechapel.

A3: In your early thirties you should have a complete check up so that you set your base lines. It is not usually necessary for you to have annual checks at this age but probably every four or five years would be helpful. Regular annual check-ups should start at forty and will begin to become more intensive from the age of fifty onwards. Marathon running has many advantages but a ticket for the marathon is not a passport to good health for life. You would be more likely to enjoy a fit old age, and have a longer life, if you had forty minutes brisk walk a day - every day - unless the weather was impossibly inclement. The pace of the walk should be such so that talking is just possible but difficult.

Beer bellies are frowned upon. It is not the fat carried just beneath the skin, and that can be pinched up between your finger and thumb, that matters but all the fat that hangs around your guts and pushes your belly forward that does the damage. Visceral fat inside your abdomen produces a great many hormones and chemicals that can undermine your long-term health. Conversely, by and large, the external fat is only being warehoused and isn't manufacturing much in the way of chemicals.

Q4: I don't want to sound belligerent about this - but isn't this taking the nanny state too far? Why bother with an MOT, as long as you lead a regular kind of life, you shouldn't need all this kind of attention. Let well alone, I say, and I am 76 and relatively healthy, doing just that. Alan Knight, Edinburgh.

A4: Certainly lead a regular life with moderation in all things and avoid excesses but even the most assiduous, athletic, decent church minister may be caught out by his, or her genes or pure mischance. The government MOT's very half-hearted attempt at screening is better than nothing but there are many screening plans that are much better than it. The government won't be worrying you with it as they are not screening anyone once they reach the age of 75. This is exact reverse of what NHS doctors were taught to do in the 1960s when we were expected to keep a very close check on blood pressures, urines (for diabetes), anaemia and early signs of heart or lung troubles in the over 70s. Now the government in England has decided that once you reach the age of 75 the nanny state will retreat from your health battle and your future will be in the lap of the gods. An interesting philosophy that can be defended on financial grounds, but not on moral ones nor does it fulfil the concepts of good medical practice.