Q. I am the mother of four young boys, and what worries me is that there is a great deal of heart trouble among the males of our family.

I don't want my boys to end up the same way! I gather that a lot of this heart disease is due to diet. So I wonder if there is anything I could do in the kitchen to try and make certain that my sons don't get the kind of food that will give them coronaries?

A. Very wise of you to be thinking this way, ma'am. Few parents realise that the seeds of cardiac trouble are sown in childhood - thanks to the fairly diabolical diet Western society gives it kids.

Indeed, it's an extraordinary fact that most 18-year-old boys already have the early changes of heart disease in their coronary arteries.

Most doctors believe that the fatty degeneration which occurs in the arteries of teenagers is due mainly to the saturated fat they've been taking in since they were wee toddlers.

Mothers like you can do something to prevent your sons from dropping dead of coronaries in middle life. Your best moves are:

n.Throw away the frying pan! Or if you can't do that, then at least try to avoid giving the kids fried food;

n.Give them skimmed or semi-skimmed milk;

n.Don't let them get stuck heavily into animal-fat products like cheese, butter and cream;

n.Give them only lean meat - always try and cut off the fatty bits.

If all of Scotland's mums followed this advice, then far fewer Scotsmen would end up making a premature acquaintance with the pathologist.

Q. I'M in my forties, and I am having serious trouble with my potency. I've heard that there's a new tablet which provides a cure for men with this problem. Is that true, doctor?

A. I'm pleased to say that there is indeed a new oral drug which is giving remarkably good results in treating impotence.

The drug is called sildenafil, and a large trial carried out in Britain, Scandinavia and France has shown that the great majority of men who were given the pills have obtained significant benefit.

Most importantly, side effects seem to be relatively few - though it's early days to be sure about this! However, sildenafil will not be available in Scotland for at least a couple of years. In the meantime, anybody with potency problems should go to a doctor for medical investigation, to try to find the cause of the problem.

Q. MY wife is on the HRT, and she says she's been reading in her women's magazine that a similar sort of hormone therapy now exists for men.

Apparently the article said that many top politicians are being given male HRT so that they have lots of energy and look younger and fitter. Could I get this stuff?

A. There's a very small group of doctors in London who've been extolling the alleged virtues of this ``male HRT''.

As you rightly say, there have been rumours that various parliamentarians are being given the hormones in order to stave off their sell-by dates. Frankly, one look at the House of Commons in action on TV doesn't suggest that the therapy is having much effect .....

Anyway, most endocrinologists - that is, doctors who specialise in glands and hormones - think that giving this sort of HRT to the average bloke is just a complete waste of time and money. Unless you have an actual hormone deficiency, there's no point in undergoing a treatment like that, especially as there is some risk of side effects.

Q. PLEASE advise me on a very delicate question. I'm a man in my thirties, and I recently became engaged to a lady from Edinburgh. The other night we were chatting about our earlier lives, and to my astonishment she revealed that when she was a young girl she'd had a pregnancy terminated.

This upset me terribly, and since then I have been very trembly and shaky. Also, my stomach has been churning noisily, and I have felt quite faint at times. Is this a nervous reaction?

A. Yes, without a doubt. The symptoms you describe are the ones which the part of the nervous system called ``the autonomic'' often produces in response to an unpleasant shock.

Now I think you should look at the medical statistics which relate to your fiancee's case. You probably don't realise that, whether you like it or not, a staggering one in five of all pregnancies is terminated these days. What this means is that literally hundreds of thousands of Scotswomen have undergone this procedure. So she if far from unusual.

For further advice about your symptoms, please talk to your GP.

Q. I AM a very keen golfer, and recently I have had intense pain on the inner side of my elbow. This is making it very difficult for me to strike the ball well. Any ideas?

A. Well sir, you almost certainly have a well-known condition which - not entirely surprisingly - goes by the name of ``golfer's elbow''.

This is exactly like tennis elbow, except that the excruciating pain is on the inside of the elbow instead of the outside. Many golfers suffer from it.

Anyway, golfer's elbow - like tennis elbow - usually responds reasonably well to an injection of hydrocortisone into the painful spot. So get along to your nearest Sports Medicine Clinic as soon as possible to get your elbow checked out.

Q. SINCE losing my job six months ago, I have been really depressed. In fact, I've got a new job now, but the symptoms still persist, and I feel pretty awful much of the time.

I'm so ashamed of this, because I'm sure I should have thrown off the depression by now. It's a bit wimpish, isn't it?

A. Nonsense, sir! There's nothing ``jessie'' about having a depressive illness - it's just caused by a change in the balance of the chemicals in the brain. And very often this chemical imbalance is not reversed until many, many months after the original problem which provoked the depression has gone away.

So stop castigating yourself, and concentrate on getting well - with, I trust, the help of your family doctor. Good luck.

n.If you have a query about your health, write to Doctor David Delvin at The Herald, 95 Albion Street, Glasgow G1 1QP. Dr D cannot reply in person, but will try to respond in this column. Your name will not be published.