We think that it's because bicarb, or bicarbonate of soda, can change the acidity of things. The things that cause smells are generally very volatile chemicals. These are usually cyclical chemicals - ones that have carbon rings and things like that in them. Basically, if you can do chemical reactions between them and the bicarbonate of soda, then they might change their properties and become less volatile. This stops you getting so many smelly chemicals released into the air.

I reckon it's just down to the fact that when you want to see colour, you're reliant on a different population of photoreceptors in your eye, to those which see in the dark. In our eyes we have two different populations of light photoreceptors - in other words cells that can turn light into electrical energy that the brain can understand. In the day time, and in order to see colour, you use a group of cells called cones. Cones come in a number of different flavours, and they see colour. So in other words, when light comes in, (remember light is a mixture of all the different colours), the cones respond selectively to certain wavelengths of light. The light across the road is a flashing blue light, he specifically says that. This means that it might be at a wavelength which he needs his blue cones to be able to see. Now, when we actually look at things very very closely and fixate on them, you're using the part of the retina referred to as the fovea which is where there's the greatest concentration of photo receptors, that's why your vision there is very acute. But also, that's where all the cones are, and where colour vision is, mostly. Now during the night time, and also when you look in your peripheral vision, there are fewer cones in the periphery, and you mainly use what are called rods. Now rods are much more sensitive to light and that's why they're only used in the night time. But they don't tend to be able to decode colours. So when you look at this light out of the side of your eye, you're probably seeing it using rods that are helping some of the blue cones a little tiny bit, because we know that rods can help cones a bit under low light conditions. When you look straight at it, there are fewer of these very sensitive cells and more of the less light sensitive colour specific cells so I think that's probably why you can see things more acutely in the dark, out of the periphery of your vision when they're under low light conditions, but you can read things much more accurately in the centre of your vision.

Basically, there is a natural anatomical cleavage plane between the retina, which is a nervous tissue, and the pigmented layer, which is the back of the eye. Retinal detachment is a different situation. That's when a hole develops in the retina, and fluid goes in between that space and the retina collapses, very much like having a puncture in an inner tube, the retina collapses down. Unfortunately that's just a natural property of the way the eye's been made.

It's very difficult for me to answer that question because your retina may be detached, and there may be other reasons why you can't see out of the eye. Certainly if your vision's changed recently then I would advise you to have an eye check-up with your local ophthalmologist. I think unfortunately though, with regard to stem cell treatments and anything like that, I don't think there's going to be anything available for the next few years. I would be more inclined in your situation to make sure that your other eye is checked on a regular basis, and that we make sure to maintain the vision that you have at the moment.

Well it's very difficult to change the connections within the brain. In a lazy eye, we're looking at a relatively normal retina and optic nerve. It's actually the connections in the brain. And there are some 10^10, to 10^11 neurons in the brain, each of these may have 50 or even 100 different connections. You can imagine how many potential connections there are, to rewire and remodel. And I think really at the moment that's beyond what we can do.