The Nation Newspaper

Category: Natural Health

  • Exceptional trying times for spirit, intellect and body

    Exceptional trying times for spirit, intellect and body

    i imagine that first lady Oluremi Tinubu is standing more solidly in spirit by her husband at this time than at any other. I hope, also, that the president is kitting his health well with the right kinds of food and drinks and, of course, food supplements for the brain, nervous system and the heart. For there is no doubt that the last two weeks or so have been the most stressful of his political career, challenging his indomitable spirit, astute intellect and the dependability of his body to wade through the blast furnace of international politics with a super power unscathed. I recall we discussed stress management tangentially when he was Governor of Lagos State in the early nineties, when I took Shakirat Adeoti to his office on a thank you visit. Although I have to recall that event for the purpose of a good testimonial for a leading Nigerian politician who is friend to christians and moslems alike, the stress load from the pay load of a Governor’s Office is nothing near the worries and burden of the President of a weak country against which a giant, super power nation has declared intent of war.

    Shakirat Adeoti was a microbiology graduate from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) who, at 33, had bleeding cancers in both breasts. She lived with her father, 92, and mother, 50 at 13, Opeloyeru  Street, off Babs Animashaun area of Surulere, Lagos. When Governor Tinubu heard of her travails in The Comet newspaper, he sent her a cheque for N1 million to clear her medical bills. His wife, Oluremi, added N250,000 to the N1million and provided her family with raw food, cooking oil and sundry other things for their living convenience. I had been taking Shakirat to church on Sundays and mosques on Fridays and secondary school assemblies on Mondays, to raise money for her. Sometimes, we went to those schools in the company of Alhaji Razak Adedigba who was the Managing Editor of The Comet newspaper at that time. I would like to add that, about that time, Edith Ike Okongwu, a former Public Relations Manager of Guiness, who bore the first child of Gen. Yakubu Gowon out of wedlock when he was Head of State, lay languid with breast cancer in an oncology ward of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). Before she passed, Gen. Yakubu Gowon (rtd) and Victoria, his wife, who took the place of Edith because he could not marry an Ibo during the war against Ibos, went to see her in hospital before she passed. Again, Governor Tinubu moved in compassion to help a dying person. He is a liberal moslem, his wife a liberal Christian pastor. They helped a dying Moslem girl and her distraught family, irrespective of their religion, and a Christian woman again irrespective of her faith. A hardened Moslem as President intent on annihilating christians would not permit that his wife be a Christian pastor and would not appoint Christian service chiefs and a Christian Inspector-General of Police! The generousity of Governor Tinubu and his wife, Oluremi, was not of “peculiar concern” to me at that my first and only meeting so far with him. What was of “peculiar concern” to me then were the stress lines I saw over his face and noticed in his voice. I would learn later from the then commissioner for Information and Strategy in Lagos State, who is now the Minister of Solid Minerals, Mr. Dele Alake, that Governor Tinubu hardly slept. He combined administration in daylight hours with political meetings at night. I did not know how to drive home the points I made about health better than by carrying coal to Newcastle, as they say. Newcastle is abundantly blessed with coal. So, why would I need to ship coal from Enugu colliery to Newcastle? That was what I did in a token obedience to one of The Laws of Nature, The Law of Balance, which demands healthy balance in “giving” when we “take”. So, I purchased some nutritional supplements for coping with stress and sent them to the Governor through The Comet’s State House Correspondent. At that time, I was the newspaper’s Editorial Director/Editor-in-Chief and had adopted Shakirat Adeoti and her parents to be looked after under an upcoming The Comet Cares Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO).

    READ ALSO: Seven online courses that can boost your career in 2025

    The stress of Office Governor Tinubu encountered in Lagos is incomparable with what he must have gone through in the past 30 months in the hands of all kinds of mafias in the Nigerian economy. But all the mafias combined cannot compare to the on-going bombardment of Nigeria as “a country of peculiar concern” over killings of Christians in the North. Only a carefree Nigerian would say this is not an exceptional time for him or her as it would be for President Tinubu and the First Lady. I have not slept well for 48 hours. I have friends and family members who live in the North and are considering relocation to Lagos. Some who have money are making enquiries about property they can quickly buy or let. I guess many persons are bombarded with similar enquiries. The Army had probably found it unstrategic to fight the Northern insurgents and bandits with soldiers of Northern descent and had probably relied more on Southern soldiers to minimise the havocs of moles to strategy and effectiveness. Southerners whose children are in the Nigerian armed forces are restless and sleepless. Would Donald Trump try to do in the North what President George H.W Bush did in Panama in 1989 when American troops kidnapped the defacto ruler, Manuel Noriega, and sent him for trial in the United States on drug trafficking offences? In 1992, Noriega was jailed for 40 years with cuts to 30 years and later 17 years on account of good behaviour in prison! The U.S. says it has information on Nigerian financiers of Gboko Haram which it brands a terrorist organisation! The Noriega news was far far away, and we never thought such things or semblances of them could happen here.

    Possible Nigerian Scenarios

    Many people are wondering about possible scenarios.

    1) Will Nigeria give American soldiers right of way to the North?

    2) If prominent persons in the North are kidnapped by American soldiers, will that not overturn peace in the region? Will the Americans be able to handle the spill overs and not create a real religious crisis in the country?

    3) Will China stand by or concede a share of the spoils of the Nigerian market to another country? Do the Chinese owe Nigerians their lives?

    4) What if the Americans are coming for a do-or-die fight? How will they come in? By sea, with troops and aircraft carriers and through Lagos? Will many people not flee to their homeland and abandon the aborigens to their fate?

    5) Will a Southern soldier lift a finger against the invaders? Will Northern soldiers, therefore, march down to engage the Americans in the South?

    6) An American war anywhere leaves a bad taste in the mouth after, whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. Will Nigeria be like them after?

    We never know what may happen until events begin to unfold. Some of the countries on the Northern border who let in Sahelian invaders upon Nigeria, with the connivance of some Nigerians, have not only shut their borders but also barricaded them with military tanks and troops to prevent Nigerian refugee and escapee terrorist influxes into their countries!

    President Tinubu

    I pity President Tinubu because the buck stops in his hands. This problem began not with him. Yet, he has carefully navigated the Northern mines fields, mindful of the explosions a careless step may cause, without losing sight of the goal.

    National Assembly

    The National Assembly had been too slow in segregating the various political zones into semi-independent regions to free the Federal Government of needless administrative pressure. In my widow’s mite contribution made in this column and elsewhere on political restructuring of Nigeria, I suggested that each of the six regions be permitted to elect a Governal General to govern it like a mini President, building upon existing structure in the regions, while the Federal Government is limited to Defence, Currency, Immigration, Customs, Foreign Affairs etc. Each region will keep 40 percent of the resources in its dormains and all local governments 20 per cent while the Federal Government, for now, takes 40 per cent. We may think President Trump is garrulous. But can we any longer when only two weeks ago Amotekun  announced a clear and present danger in Ondo State, one of the six South Western Yoruba states? Amotekun, the unarmed vigilante response to banditry and kidnapping, mentioned that 40 Yoruba men had been recruited by AK 47 bearing Fulani herdsmen and paid N150,000 per person every month to work for them. These 40 men had even been trained to bear AK 47. Wasn’t this a “clear and present danger” ?

    How it all began

    This problem is believed to have begun with the Obasanjo Administration, hidden at that time around the right to Islamic jurisprudence. Obasanjo passed it to Yar’Adua, and Yar’Adua to Jonathan. The world’s powers assembled in Nigeria then to destroy this nagging bed bug. But the North told Jonathan the bandits could not be called terrorists because they were their children , and almost every family could be bereaved if the international army struck. Why could they not speak to their children who were killing and setting up parallel governments in the forests to tax communities and farmers, causing food shortages, unaffordable food prices and probably famine in some circumstances? To worsen matters, some state governments have been reported to be negotiating peace with the terrorists. Americans have no quarter for terrorists. From their perspective, if Nigeria becomes a terrorist haven, terrorism could raise its head again, upsetting the laborious work done in various regions of the globe to subdue it.

    Questions begging for answers

    We should not deceive ourselves in this travail. Why was Borno State the focus of Boko Haram at the start of the proceedings? Why have communities in Benue and Plateau become targets? Because they are flowing more towards the South and abandoning the North? What is the dominant religion of the states? Was the Bornu Kanem empire ever conquered by the Jihadists? It is true Boko Haram, which translates as Western education is poison, targeted niches of Western education, that is christians and later defocused to attack and to murder without reason worshippers on open ground Jumat services and in mosques. The Islamic states of West Africa is unambiguously anti Christian. The burning of christians and moslems believed to denigrate Islam in no small measure added to the conception of a Northern Nigeria intolerant of the religion of other persons.

    President Goodluck Jonathan literally speaking fled from the North when he said he was “Not a Soldier” implying he did not wish to fight the Bokoharam. That was why some of his critics thought he deliberately abandoned the North to self- destruction, a charge he has debunked.

    Muhammadu Buhari

    Many people believe he caused the trouble because he always said he would make “the country ungovernable” if he did not become president. There is no palpable evidence as yet in the public square that he brought in the Fulani herdsmen from the Sahel who are now tormenting Nigeria.

     Some persons have wondered why he did not disarm them if he did not approve of them. To this, I always assume that he was held captive by the radical North who wanted to balloon the Fulani Population for vote power that would always give the North permanent control over the country.

    President Buhari gave credence to this supposition with his half hearted backing for Bola Tinubu even on campaign grounds. What, I always wondered, was the meaning of “Vote For Your Conscience”. Still, I do not think this is sufficient evidence to catch him by the wrist. For I do not think a Christian Southern president could have done with El Zaki what he did to him in the face of the law supporting this malevolent Islamic disciple of Iran. It was in respect of this case that the concept developed of THE STATE is BIGGER THAN THE LAW.

    THE CAN

    If an armed gang is in your home in the dead of the night and the police won’t come, would you not gladly accept help from another or a friendlier gang? It is a person whose life is not palpably endangered who refers to the CONSTITUTION. Even lawyers and judges flee at the sounds of bombarding guns. A man who has lost all members of his family doesn’t understand SOVEREIGNTY. He wants release, vengeance. Although the Bible speaks against vengeance seeking or taking and the Lord Jesus forgave His murderers on the Cross, the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) are human, perhaps not even fully evolved into human beings. They made so much noise about MOSLEM-MOSLEM ticket as if LATEEF Jakande and RAFIU JAFOJO, once Governor and Deputy Governor in Lagos, were not moslems and ran the best state government. How could they have so easily forgotten that MOSHOOD KASHIMAWO ABIOLA and Babagana kingibe who won the later annuled Presidential election that was the fairest in Nigeria was not another joint Moslem ticket. We must thank Rev. Fr Kukah, one of the lone voices in Christianity, who dismissed the Christian genocide claims of CAN. Dr William Folorunso KUMUYI of the Deeper Life Church, was reported to have made a statement in favour of Nigeria which the church later refuted. General Overseers of the big churches are keeping silent as if a shaky firmament that will not not hurt members of their congregation if it crashes. Religious highway men on radio are busy promising prosperity and dictating bank account numbers as if The Almighty Creator arbitrarily dispenses His blessings on creatures who do not deserve them.

    YOUNG NIGERIANS

    Their displeasure with Nigeria is palpable. They willingly support President Trump. They believe their country had failed them. They probably do not know that President John F Kennedy in his inaugural address on 20 January 1961 told Americans: “ THINK NOT OF WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU, BUT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY” . President Trump may be coming for WHAT HE CAN DO FOR HIS COUNTRY. He is probably focused on Nigeria’s huge lithium deposits which America needs to grow its economy. Elon Musk has come here several times for an export licence. Nigeria said no, set up a company here and export the products to America. Young Nigerians see their country as a blast furnace and America as Eldorado . President Trump may wish to edge China out of Nigeria’s market. What would that mean for Nigeria’s merchants? America doesn’t deal with people like them.

    THE NORTH.

    It has always been the problem of Nigeria or its sick baby. It denied the Government the political will to clear the insecurity mess it causes. When the Army managed to defeat some insurgents, they were not joyfully prosecuted, if they were at all. In the end, we are told they have “repented” ,have undergone psychotherapy and recruited into the armed forces. Hence, they became moles and endanger the lives of our troops. Now, the chicken has come home to roost … So, we should expect that the North would expect President Tinubu, to protect them. They know America knows them…

    PRESIDENT TINUBU

    There he goes, but not as a sacrificial lamb or martyr. He is a strong willed and street wise man with the tinge of heroism in his temperament. On top of that, he is courageous, strong willed, street wise and gifted as well with native Nigerian wisdom. Psychological war does not break him. He carries deep within the grains of diplomacy from his culture. He knows what to give and when to, and what to not take.

    OUR HEALTH

    I submitted a different column last Sunday, but had to write this one all through Monday night to Tuesday dawn when the crisis thickened. Many of us give too much of ourselves to our country. We have had sleepless nights, skipped heartbeats, experienced fear and anxiety since this trouble thickened. We may be close to brain questions, elevated blood pressure, elevated blood cholesterol, nervous system challenges, and other related health blues. For the President, first lady and cabinet, everyone who came to sleep over this “peculiar concern” is missing heart beats or rising blood cholesterol and hypertension, I suggest the following food supplements to be added to the diet immediately

    BRAIN

    Lecithin, Gingko biloba, Gotu kola, ginseng, Omega 3 fatty acid, magnesium threonate, co enzyme Q 10 or ubiquinol.

    STRESS MANAGEMENT

    Lavender, valerian root, kava, Ashwaghandah, chamomile, passion flower, Gingko biloba

    NERVES

    Lemon balm, high dosage Vitamin B Complex,

    HEART, BLOOD QUESTIONS

    Wheat grass, mixed tocopherols, selenium, chlorophyll-2, cayenne or black pepper, regenerating drink, CO Q 10 or ubiquinol. Although Nigeria has become a concern in the thinking of the American Presidency, many Nigerians are still confident to say ALO IRE O, ABO IRE O. (Goodness shall follow you to America and return with you).

  • 2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression, possession (2)

    2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression, possession (2)

    From the newspapers, radio, television and social media last week, it would appear that more Nigerians would suffer from mental health challenges, especially from Depression and Possession, in the coming years. Last week ( October 23, 2025) , we heard that no fewer than one in four or five Nigerians were no longer thinking straight. It was all part of the assesment of the mental health report of Nigerians estimated population of 220 million in which about 50 million or more could be down. The world’s brain doctors on October 10, 2025 reviewed their work and achievements in the past year. Last week, this column said there had been no paradigm shift in their conceptions of the brain and how it works. Nor have they been able to come up with better ways of treating brain troubles outside Anti-Depressantionant Drugs which often dehumanise their patients and make vegetable humans of many of them for life.

    The sky-line of mental health in Nigeria looks dimmer with reports that six governors of the South Western states planned to meet over information that primary school children were now using all sorts of hard drugs. The reports were followed by a call from the National Association of Nigerian Students(NANS), which covers the country’s 301 universities, that students be tested for drug use before they were enrolled or graduated. Additionally, education policy makers have agreed that mental health education be included in school curriculums at all levels of schooling. Just when I thought we could have some reprieve from the bad news, there were reports that drug pushers were fleeing from their dens being combed by the NDLEA and using the kiosks of petty trade mallams to circulate substances.

    READ ALSO: PDP Senator defects to APC, cites ‘Leaking Umbrella’, internal crisis

    Begun last week (23 October 2025), comments of this column on the present state of treating depression and possession in Nigerian hospitals is a widow’s mite contribution to help persons challenged with mental health problems by giving their doctors hints of what else they may add to the present treatment regimen. Its approach is from the stand point of Natural Medicine and the perspective that neither drugs but the right kinds of food and drinks bring lasting health. In particular, it revisits a teaching in the 1920s and 1930s that recomposition of the blood will heal brain problems, especially depression and possesion, to which are chained a long train of behaviour imbalances…

    Mystery of the blood

    In these matters, I am incorrigibly optimistic that the right foods and drinks can clear up such dysfunctions of the brain. The incorrigibility is founded on the propositions of a Wise One in the 1920s and 1930s which may have advanced and humanised psychiatry had the practitioners not remained tenaciously hooked on drug and injection therapies. The Wise One presented the propositions in a series of public lectures. Some of them were…Motion, The Physical Body, The Mystery of The Blood, The Mystery of Birth, Temperament and The Significance of Man’s Generative Power. The knowledge they bear is ever expansive as it unfolds with the growing maturity of the human soul, (nay )spirit. so I can only attempt as follows, a summary based on my understanding…

    1) Man, that is you and I, are not our bodies but another existent consistency which inhabits these physical bodies, the human spirit or the scriptural breath of life. Look at a mirror, and ask yourself if the physical body you are looking at is the real you. If you think the physical body is the real  you, ask yourself: Why do I say this is my body, these are my eyes, these are my fingers…those parts of the body that I own? Were we not taught all that in primary school? At the age of 24, I had an incitive experience. My younger brother slept beside me in bed. I came out of my body, which I saw lying beside him. I saw myself existing in another body that was not my earthly body. In that second or non earthly body, I was confronting a man in the same type of body who was trying to reach my body in bed. I recognise that was a period in my life when I fed my body with all sorts of rubbish which could have denatured my blood composition and radiation, made them unusable for me to control my body but made them usable by a lower and malicious person who probably had designs on the quietly sleeping body.

    2) The physical bodies are lifeless on their own, and merely animated by the inhabiting or in-dwelling different consistency, the human Spirit.

    3) The other consistency is spirit or, in the language better understood, Soul

    4) The spirit is a traveller on earth for a task, like an astronaut on the moon for a purpose.

    5) Like the astronaut who needs a special garment for the different nature of the moon, the spirit needs a garment on earth, the physical body.

    6) On earth, the body is a tool or servant of the spirit which uses it as a motorist uses a motorcar. As the motorist learns to maintain the car and to control it, the spirit must care for and control his or her physical body.

    7) Many persons do not care for their physical bodies or control them. Only when they have problems with them do they remember to. Besides, they exercise no control over their bodies.

    8) Evidence of the lack of control is the manner many persons walk. They walk not in a straight movement, but in wavy motions. The steps are often heavy, ponderous , bobling or stumpy , and their movements are everything but beautiful and graceful , like an animal’s.

    9) The lack of control occurs because the spirit cannot connect with the body through the blood.

    10) In the Natural Design of the body, there are

    A) The frontal brain or cerebrum, seat of the intellect and B) The back brain or cerebellum, the spiritually receptive brain.The inhabitant of the body, the spirit, is meant to connect with its origin as the astronaut connects with earth, in the case of the spirit through intuitive radiations before it takes any action on earth. Whatever guidance is given is expressed by the spirit on the back brain, the cerebellum or the spiritual brain. The impression comes in pictorial messages, such as the ones received in dreams. That is why it is often said of dreams: The Lord gives to his own in  their dreams. Let us remember the dream of the Egyptian Pharoah, the interpretation by detainee Joseph and the action the frontal brain or intellect took therefrom. From the cerebellum, the images are rapidly transported through the blood radiation to the Solar Plexus and, from there, via blood radiation again, to the front brain, the cerebrum. This brain decodes the images, fashions them into thought, words, (spoken or written) activates muscles.

    11) In many persons, this process is haphazard. That explains why dreams may not be well remembered. From the outside, the reverse process informs The inhabitant of what is going on which can be forwarded by the spirit to the helpers and guides for advise as earlier stated. This process, which occurs faster than the speed of light, has become hazardous from the blood composition. If the blood is not well composed, its radiation will be dull and will not provide the spirit effective bridge to the brains and to the body, and from the body back to the spirit via the brains.This is one of the causes of Autism. The in-dwelling spirit is aware of its environment and wishes to connect with it and to impact it but has been hindered by a lack of appropriate bridge to the body through the blood radiation.

    12) The blood radiation is, therefore, also the problem of persons in depression and persons who are possessed.

    13) The series of public lectures of the 1920s and 1930s, which were originally espoused by the Theosophical Society, went beyond these limits. I halt here only to not digress too far.

    14) Evidence in the lecture series that the Spirit forms the blood are that a) the blood in the baby growing in the womb does not begin to circulate until the spirit or soul enters into the body. This is about the middle of pregnancy. b) The entrance or incarnation can be felt in the first kicks of pregnancy c) The blood stops to circulate when death of the body occurs and the spirit withdraws from the body.

    d) Were the spirit not responsible for the formation of the body and blood, both would not be different from those of animals. For the animal bears no spirit as its inhabitant but an animal soul

    15) The Wise One acknowledged the laborious and devoted work of gifted ones whose studies of the secrets of the blood have yielded beneficial results in the various blood groups. But he said the outcomes still scratch the surface, however beneficial they may have been to human health and happiness. Brighter would their paths be, he said, lit by the grateful prayers of their fellow men if they proceeded further to unearth more secrets of the blood. Such new revelations on the threshold of which we stand, would lead to the healing of more diseases hitherto thought incurable because really, there are no sick souls but sick blood and bodies. I believe psychiatrists will eventually recognise existence of the human spirit, as American surgeon Dr. Norman Sheally and intuitive spiritual healer Carolyn Myss ventured in their 1998 book, The Creation of health, which I had the privilege to review at that time for the present Millenium. I believe Dr. Abayomi Aiyesimoju, a neurologist and medical director of Healthville, on Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Lagos, also reviewed the book. He is not an “intellectual” doctor. By “intellectual”, I do not infer that he is not academic or erudite. I mean he has not submitted himself to his intellect in the frontal brain through a disconnection of the spirit from the body described above. In medicine, “intellectuals” are known as Mechanists. They believe only what they can see, hear, smell or touch. They also like to be called Realists. They, therefore, limit themselves to only that knowledge which earthly conceptions of time and space and the intellect can offer. On the other hand, The Vitalists are those doctors and researchers including lay persons like me who believe there is something within the physical body which is of a higher origin and has more potential than the intellect. It is these set of doctors who hold the potential to liberate mankind from the present malaise of blood and brain dysfunctions which impact depression  and possession on an increasing scale.

    16) The lecture series also distinguish between insanity, possession and occurrences of spookish activities. In lunacy, brain cells are damaged. In possession, which is evident in the Split Personality Syndrome, also called Bi Polar personality, an earth-bound human soul has taken over part of the brain or organ of another person, temporarily or permanently to materially manifest. This is possible where the original owner of the physical body has been careless with the composition of his or her blood and the radiation such blood gives off is found useful for earthly manifestation through a physical body by the roaming and invading earth-bound soul. An earth-bound soul is a human person on earth who, after his or her physical demise, does not move away from the earth environment but is attached through propensity or other causes to persons, places or events. The earth-bound soul seeks to manifest its nature in happenings on earth and, in his or her roaming about, may find an earth dweller with a suitable blood radiation which provides a good anchorage. In some alternative medicines and some traditional medicines, such invaders are cast out, but they may return if the protecting agent withdraws, as is seen in the warning The Lord Jesus gave the possessed man he freed of a legion of demons! The best protection and curative, therefore, is the recomposition of the blood to the consistency most suitable for the owner spirit.

    17) The Wise One acknowledged that many factors influence blood composition, but emphasises that, to the spirit concerned belongs the primary responsibility. The doctor, too, has leading role to play, especially if the spirit had become constrained in one way or another. Some of the constraining factors are a) diet b) radiations of the stars and earth in a particular zone of the earth. C) illness d) accidents e) temperament f) age.

    The intervention of the doctor would need to personalise therapies.Therefore, the doctor of this description will have to be rooted in nutrition as he or she is rooted in physiology, anatomy, biochemistry and haematology. Unfortunately, many doctors did not study nutrition in-depth or at all in medical school. Thus, not much is to be expected at this time from the present system of the practice of psychiatry.

    Nigerian psychiatrists may learn a lot from Nigerian Traditional Medicine (NTM). In the 1970s or 1980s, a man picked up so called insane persons on the streets of Lagos, made them live in a commune and healed them. He received no government recognition and the professional medical association looked derisively the other way. His methods were not dehumanising as are found in some of today’s rehabilitation centers. He may have died and taken his healing art with him. We hear reports of healers in Benue and Akwa Ibom states who give afflicted persons special water to drink and they often ask: Where am I and how didi I get here? In so far as these methods are not Hynotic, I believe they are worth being studied by psychiatrists.

    18) Spookish manifestations evidenced in throwing of objects, noise making etc near or in the vicinity of a person does not mean such a person is possessed. His or her blood radiation may only have enhanced such manifestations . In Oshogbo recently, a house owner commited suicide. Some of his tenants relocated to other places immediately. The ones who stuck around needed no prodding to leave when the family buried his remains on the grounds. It was clear he could come to haunt the house and torment the residents. Our people know of these things and address them appropriately.

    Conclusion

    Many ideas converge in respect of the composition of the blood. A spirit disconnected from his or her body leaves that body without control. An earth-bound soul may pick up that body. Two captains may, therefore, exist in the body giving it different instructions thereby producing a split personality. Some persons call this situation depression. Others name it possession. Still others assume erroneously it is lunacy. However, it is not lunacy but possession which is different as well from depression. Space does not suffice to discuss many possible causes of depression, a leading cause of which may be the consumption of naked sugars, chemical flavours, food additives, pesticides and herbicides and, lately genetically modified foods, to mention a few. The body must be detoxified, given high grade nutrition, many foods and drinks must be abandoned, exercise and rest must be serious watch words, negative thoughts must be abandoned and, above all, the spirit must become active within his or her garment.

    By the foregoing, I do not mean that the outward care of the physical body is less important. If I own a car I do not maintain but only look after myself, it would break down some day! The human body is even more than a vehicle for locomotion to the in-dwelling human spirit. The frontal brain(cerebrum) and the back brain (cerebellum) are meant to co-operate in their work far more than science and medicine have recognised today. The human Spirit is connected with its orign through an intuitive faculty. The values and guidance it draws upon from there are pictorially passed to the back brain, the spiritually receptive brain, according to the text of Care of the Physical Body. Thus, for example, the back brain is where inspiration breaks forth and where experiences of the human spirit, when the body goes to rest in sleep, are pictorially recorded as dreams. Whether we have a sharp memory of dreams or if the reception and remembrance are poor reveals how well or otherwise we are maintaining this part of the brain. If we leave it inactive through inner life inactivity it would athrophise from disuse. That is what has happened to humanity through over cultivation of the frontal brain and the intellect through the pressure of formal education and thinking out of the challenges for their situations. We are meant to not primarily be thinking but intuitive persons who, automatically, pass pictorial messages or guidance from the beyond from the back brain to the front brain, seat of the intellect, which fashions it out into earthly responses and actions. This way, there would have been no quastion of the big brain, and the small brain, as we describe the front and back brains respectively today. They would have been the same size, neither dominating the other.

  • 2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression possesion(1)

    2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression possesion(1)

    About 50 million Nigerians are believed to have mental health challenges, going by latest records from this year’s World Mental Health Day celebration on October 10. This is a frightening number because it means about one in every 4 or 5 persons is down upstairs. This number is about 22.73 percent of Nigeria’s 220 million population estimate by the United Nations. The ratio of persons in depression to persons who appear to be in control of themselves is likely to rise, going by assumptions that hospital data may have left out more than 20 percent of challenged persons. Even more worrisome is the observation that healing can be a mirage, that some hospital patients relapse one or two times in one year that more cases of depression are pouring into the wards and that there are not enough doctors and other medical staff, psychologists and psychotherapists to cope with the brimming over. Hospital beds are not guaranteed even in serious emergencies. Boarded patients may be prematurely discharged to pave way for patients with doctor or management connections. The churches and other establishments are coming to the aid of society with rehabilitation centers, but behind their goals is the profit motive. In the rehabilitation centres of the churches, the aim is largely to win souls for Christ. But as we shall see in the unfolding text, their proselytization does not address the root cause of DEPRESSION or POSSESION, which is the need to feed the body with THE RIGHT KINDS OF FOODS AND DRINKS and to RECOMPOSE THE BLOOD for more vibrant energy or radiation that will provide the soul or spirit they are trying to enliven a bridge to the brain and intellect and, therefore, absolute, effective control of the body. I do not wish to speak about the living conditions of some rehabilitation centres. Feeding is poorer than in the prisons or correctional centres, as prisons are now called to give them a human face outdoor, even if they are dehumanising within. I have heard of rehabilitation centres where boarded patients over crowd in rooms, have no bed, matress, mats or cover cloth. In their complexion and physical look, they are like living corpses exhumed from dunghills, almost skeletal and identifiable only by their voices. Between last year and this year, there would appear to be no significant advancement in the frontiers of mental health medicine abroad and in Nigeria. Conceptions or what we know about mental health are still rigid. Psychiatric doctors still prescribe dangerous drugs with terrible side effects, some of which may be life threatening apart from causing cancer. Some of these drugs are fluoxetine, sertraline, citralopram, valporic acid, lithium, lamotrigine, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, benzodiazepines, alprazolam, Clonazepam and buspirone .

    Space will not permit a discussion of how each one works, or of the negative side effects it introduces into the patient’s health matrix, and the new diseases these side effects impact on the body. There is hardly any patient who does not talk about them, who does not hate them, and who does not struggle to abandon them. That is why cases of relapse are many and, in some situations, followed up with suicide, in the erroneous belief that killing oneself takes away all problems one is fleeing from.

    At a psychiatric hospital in Lagos a few years ago, many of the patients in a male ward sought premature discharge en Bloc. Wise counsel suggested they be allowed to go, perhaps to prevent a violent escape.

    Some side effects of antidepressant drugs are excessive weight gain, slurry tongue, tremors, estrogen dominance in men which causes them to grow breasts, hormonal imbalances which subdue libido and may cause infertility, gastrointestinal issues, syndrome x (large abdominal bulge) which is a risk factor in hypertension, diabetes, liver and kidney disease, heart disease and heart failure and strokes, among others. Thyroid gland and kidney impact cannot be ruled out as well. That means health problems associated with thyroid gland disturbances may occur and, in the case of impacted kidneys, the bone marrow may become unable to produce enough red blood cells causing pernicious anaemia. So are metabolic changes, obesity and other amorphous shapes, drowsiness and sleepiness which can cause vegetable existence, dependence risk, withdrawal symptoms, and lack of competitive spirit, among others.

    Depression, not lunacy

    When many persons are told a neighbour is in hospital for mental health care, all they think about is lunacy. From the government, psychiatrists, parents, politicians, neighbourhood leaders right to the medical lay person in the street, and even persons in depression and the possesed themselves are perplexed about what is going on. Some commentators put it all down to drug or psychotic substance abuse. Others point accusing fingers at a mismanaged economy and poverty and the hurt or injuries they inflict on the mind, since not all cases are outcomes of drug or psychotic substance abuse. I have been aware of this since 1977 during my national youth service in Calabar when I paid my first visit ever to a psychiatric hospital. My NYSC primary assignment included visits to corps members in depression and boarded at the hospital. Since then, I have been close to some families who are distressed by one or more members held down by depression or possesion. Always, I found that, once the ailing persons stabilised on pharmaceutical psychiatry, they fared much better on nutrition psychiatry and psycho therapy. So close am I to many persons and families in these experiences that I will offend many of my acquaintances if I go beyond surface description of their events and experiences. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to mention, even if superficially, some experiences which always touch my heart.

    The first concerns a young woman who broke down after all her siblings had become married and left home. She would suddenly begin to scream at night that snakes were crawling all over her room. Her mother would rush in but will find no snake. She would spend the rest of the night peacefully in her mother’s room. This is telling a story which many psychiatrists and psychologists cannot easily decipher. I will explain it in subsequent parts of this column. Nevertheless, I will give a hint here. That hint is about something present in the mother which is not present in her and subdued something in the environment which was troubling her. Any inciteful Christian may easily pick up the story line from here. Did the legion of demons which assailed a man thought to be a lunatic not abandon him and flee into nearby swine when the Lord Jesus approached their victim? As we shall find out later in the course of this discussion, the intervening force was in the BLOOD COMPOSITION and in the radiation of the well composed blood of the Lord Jesus. It is also a secret of healing by touch during which power is transferred from the healthy person to the sick person as though from a functional and charging car battery jump starting a weak one. If we pay more attention to the scriptures, was the woman with the issue of blood not healed when she touched the garment of the Lord Jesus which was suffused with His Radiation? The scriptures also inform us that maidens stayed with aging kings to prolong their lives. Hematologists (blood doctors) and psychiatrists may discover in future that it was the radiation from the ANIMISTIC energy and blood of youths which suffused the bed chamber of the kings. Today, it has been proven that live plants give off RADIATIONS which may aid the recovery of sick persons. Does this have anything to do with the European culture in which bouquets of live flowers are given as get-well presents to sick persons? I cannot easily forget the scramble for rose flowers placed in altars during serious spiritual festivals. The rose flowers, on their own suffused with healing radiations are known to absorb alter RADIATIONS. When placed in a room, their capacity to emit RADIATIONS may subsist for more than one year. However, no radiation on earth surpasses the radiation of well composed blood. Therefore, composing and recomposing of blood through the diet and spiritual (not religious) activity is the duty of everyone during his or her life on earth.

    To continue this young woman’s story, she stabilised for a while. Later on, she was taken to a psychiatric home, perhaps to save the mother’s health from erosion. It was a counter productive effort. The psychiatric home was careless with security and its patient walked out… into the world till this day. She may have been upset by the drugs. The effects on her family cannot be described here.

    The second case is that of the first child of his parents who broke down because two of his younger siblings gained admission to higher institutions and he did not. His mother is an illustrious woman. Everywhere he went, she followed him in spirit. He, too, rejected anti depressant drugs. He even left Nigeria for a neighbouring African country to be free of her and his siblings. About three countries away, he was attacked by robbers who abandoned him in a state of coma. Good Samaritans took him to a Catholic hospital where humane doctors and nurses took his case over without financial reward. When he came round and the doctors learned he was a Nigerian, they raised money for him to return home. His mother almost jumped out of her skin one morning when she went to answer a knock on the door and stood face to face before her son who had been missing for months. He looked unkept from head to toe. She thought he had returned to kill her. The next move of the young man was shocking to her. He went down on all fours in prostration, appealing for forgiveness. In the dysperception of depression which presents white as black to the sufferer, he had seen his mother as a witch who preferred his siblings to him. Experience and holistic medical care which involved not only pharmaceuticals but love of the spirit revived him. We would read later in the other part of this column how doctors and psychologists can use nutrition, even water, love and knowledge of the spirit, to recompose the blood and heal depression and possesion without resort to killing anti depressants.

    Read Also: ‘People with mental health challenges need empathy, not stigmatization’

    If, again, I may give a hint here, the human body is made up of about 70 to 75 percent water and the blood almost 90 percent water. Dr. Samora Emoto of Japan has shown that, in most samples of water, the structural arrangement of water molecules is unnatural, and the unnaturalness can be impacted on them by the spoken and written human word and by music. He also showed that certain spoken words and written words beautifully rearranged the ugly structures and forms of denatured water samples. This is a hint which psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and nutritionists may wish to explore by incorporating into their practice Dr Emoto’s work which is on the internet, if, seriously, they wish to help persons in depression and POSSESED persons and are not merely interested in festering the nests of big pharmacy. Nutritionists, too, can explore on the internet the work of Semyor Kirlian who discovered a way to measure how much living power exists in the food we eat in the course of its journey from the farm to our dining table. Since the food will end up in the blood and since how vigorous or weak the blood is will determine if a person will slide into depression or not, it is important to pay serious attention to nutrition when we attempt to heal depression and possesion cases. However, this is not the case, going by the standards of Semyor Kirlian, in our psychiatric hospitals and rehabilitation centres. The tendency is to believe in, and to rely largely on DRUGS AND INJECTIONS and not on…THE RIGHT KINDS OF FOOD AND DRINKS and herbs as was recommended to humanity in the 1920s and 1930s. I will speak elaborately on this in the second part of this article.

    The reunion of mother and son mentioned in this second case has been a beautiful story ever since…he has married and is now a proud father of three children. His mother offers counselling services to parents who are grappling with the traumas of children in depression.

    The third case got me to write this column. As I write, I have just made a mother in her seventies to visit her son who is about half her age. His challenges began with hallucination about 16 years ago in junior secondary school. This could very well have been an astral or ethereal experience. Unfortunately, no one around him knew about such things. I suspected either experience because everyone I spoke with about him, including the subject himself, ruled out any case of substance abuse, and because, at 24, I had my first OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE (OBE) which no one could explain to me until the age of 27, three years later. Only psychiatrists and other brain doctors such as Dr. Abayomi Aiyesimoju, a neurologist, who are not intellectual in their practice of mental health medicine will understand and appreciate what I am saying. By “intellectual,” I do not necessarily mean “academic” or “erudition”. Intellectual here means delimiting one’s receptive capacity to only what the human brain can fathom, forgetting that the brain is limited to earthly conceptions of time and space, being of dust itself and cannot perceive existence and life beyond the earthly realm. The young man I am discussing had been looking up to me as a father for a life-line in about 10 years of our acquaintanceship since his mother and siblings connected us. They and his doctors have not allowed him go off these debilitating drugs for 16 years. Then, he was a university student. He is very versatile today in nutrition psychiatry. My intervention this week was to get his family to let him try nutrition for his condition as I noticed that anything short of this may drive him around the bend. Persons in depression do not discuss suicide for nothing.

    The third case in reference is assailed by many of the side effects of psychiatric drugs mentioned above. However, in Europe and America from where these drugs were introduced to Nigeria, patients have the right to reject and discontinue anti depressant treatment. Health care providers respect their autonomy in medical decision making. Doctors may be penalised for negligence or malpractice if they fail to properly inform patients about potential risks and side effects.

    As stated above, many persons reduce a variety of mental health questions to lunacy and stigmatise the challenged persons as such. For the avoidance of doubt, the following, according to an enlightened opinion on this subject is a number of challenges that may fit into the description of mental health:

    “DEPRESSION (Persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.),

    ANXIETY (Excessive worry, fear, or anxiety that interferes with daily life.:)

    INSOMNIA(Difficulty sleeping or staying asleep.)

    MEMORY LOSS ( Difficulty remembering recent events or learning new information) (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, dementia).

    ANGER ISSUES: (Difficulty managing anger, leading to conflicts or aggressive behavior.)

    FEAR OR PHOBIA ( Excessive or irrational fear of specific objects, situations, or activities.)

    AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER ASD: (Neurodevelopmental disorder affecting social interaction, communication, and behaviour.)

    BIPOLAR DISORDER: (Mood swings ranging from manic highs to depressive lows.)

    POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD): (Symptoms following a traumatic event, such as flashbacks, anxiety, or avoidance).

    OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER (Recurring, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviours) (compulsions).

    ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER (ADHD): (Difficulty with attention, impulse control, and hyperactivity).

    SCHIZOPHRENIA (Disrupted thought processes, perceptions, and emotions).

    EATING DISORDERS: (Abnormal eating patterns, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating disorder).

    SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER (Dependence on or addiction to substances like drugs or alcohol.)

    PANIC DISORDER: (Recurring panic attacks, which are intense episodes of fear or discomfort.)

    SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER ( Fear or anxiety in social situations).

    BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (Difficulty regulating emotions, leading to unstable relationships and impulsive behaviour.)

    TRAUMA: (Emotional or psychological distress following a traumatic event.)

    DEMENTIA: (Cognitive decline affecting memory, thinking, and daily life.)

    CHRONIC STRESS: (Ongoing stress that can impact mental and physical health.)

    Memory loss can be a symptom of various conditions, including dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Anger may arise from anxiety, depression, or trauma. Autism, a neurological disorder inhibits communication by walking in the OVERSELF”.

    How many of us, from the list above, do not have a mental health challenge or the other? Is it the man or woman who cannot easily sleep or sustain deep sleep to stage 4 or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep?

    Is it the man or woman who easily forgets where he or she kept the house or car key five minutes earlier?

    Is it the man or woman who hates to eat, who vomits on eating? Is it the man or woman who cannot control his temper and easily gets angry? Is it the man or woman who is hyperactive and, in addition, suffers from attention deficit to the point that he or she has become what is termed a scatterbrain? Is it the man or woman who is afraid of a crowd or cannot easily breathe in a bus or small enclosures such as a toilet room? The list is unending.

  • Hypertension: Shout out to Nigeria’s ‘walking corpses’ (2)

    Hypertension: Shout out to Nigeria’s ‘walking corpses’ (2)

    Alhaji Alade Odunewu a.k.a Allah dey, that great columnist of the Daily Times newspaper of bygone years, gave us the idea of Walking Corpses. He was one himself, he wrote in one of his columns so titled. He was terminally hypertensive but did not know he was dying because his hypertension gave him no such warning signs. Thanks to his doctors when he went to hospital for unrelated reasons. They detained him on bed rest for a while, and he learned that he and many persons, especially journalists, hopping around in daily hustles could be best described as Walking Corpses.

    Surprisingly, I was not hypertensive in real terms, and I am not now, in my years inside journalism’s hypertension-predisposing newsroom infernos. However, I came off with Intra Occular Pressure(IOP), a term for elevated tension in the eye and a cause of glaucoma which, interestingly, a new hypothesis is suggesting may be caused by diabetes among cells at the back of the brain which control vision and may be confronted with coconut oil in the diet. This is a subject for another day as the hypothesis unfolds. Today, the curtain will fall on some causes and potential cures for hypertension, begun last week to invite attention to The World  Hypertension  Day

    Since I have been checking my blood pressure about 35 years ago, it has averaged 110/70 or 120/80. Only when I am on pharmaceutical medication for glaucoma does  it crash to about 90/60 or 85/55 or thereabout, so I gave up the drugs to avert low blood pressure.

    Read Also: Lokpobiri, Wike, others okay Diri’s exit from PDP

    My father was not as lucky as I have been by the time he passed in 1998, aged 76, due to congestive heart failure. This is one of the repercussions of enlarged heart, often a derivative of hypertension. It may be suspected in aging or old persons who manifest persistent cough the presentation could be that hypertension caused enlargement of the heart, the enlarged heart becomes weak, the weak heart pumps blood to the lungs for Oxygenation but is too weak to bring back oxygenated blood for circulation to all parts of the body. Meanwhile, the blood that does not  easily return to the heart becomes an irritating unwelcome guest in the lungs which try to expel it, through the cough process.

    For my father, hypertension was a pay-off for 35 years of dreadful and dangerous police work which often involved policemen predisposed to hypertension performing hypertension predisposing tasks such as the pursuit of armed robbers or the quelling of civil riots. Hands up, policemen who are not hypertensive! The mob captured my father and some of his colleagues for hours during the Olowo of Owo chieftaincy crisis in Ondo State. He and his colleauges suffered raw deals from mobs during the Adelabu crisis in Ibadan and the Taxi Drivers riot also in Ibadan. During the taxi drivers’ riot, he was hit in the corner of the right eye by a stone fired from a catapult, a problem he managed till he passed but which did not stop the police from sending him on equally dangerous duties. I was not too young at 16 to note the toll on police health of the Western Region political crisis and the Wetie  in Ibadan. It did not matter to the police boss that a subordinate was hypertensive. A job had to be done. No one went out of the barracks without permission. Once the trumpet sounded an emergency, every one assembled in riot gear, a roll was taken, the absentees noted and marked for punishment while the ones present were taken away, far away from home, often to another town for weeks or months with little or no money in their pockets, food and water irregular. One of my friends who is now among the top brass policemen in Abuja today will laugh  on reading his story here. He is hypertensive. A few years ago, soldiers cleared up a region in Borno State of Boko Haram insurgents. They had to move on. As there were not enough soldiers,  policemen were asked to hold the fort in the liberated area. My friend was among the policemen drafted from different parts of Nigeria. When they heard the sound of guns fired by the insurgents, the policemen fled. Who would not? My friend had been hypertensive for years before he was drafted from Lagos.  

    Of all potential causes of hypertension, space would permit discussion of only a few of…poor diet,…stress… Sleep deficit… Obesity… Alcoholism… Smoking…Sedentary lifestyle… Kidney disease… Hyperthyroidism… Sleep apnea… Diabetes… Genetics…some medications and age. I would discuss them later.

     Stress

    It is a huge family which parades cousins as physical, metabolic, psychic, environmental and bio chemical stressors etc. They work through a number of pathways to cause hypertension. Some of these routes include a) the hypothalamus/pituitary adrenal b) sympathetic nervous system c) renin-angiotensin system (RAS) activation behaviourism.

    They work synergically. The pituitary, known as the “master gland”, controls the endocrine glands …glands which place their hormone secretions directly into the bloodstream. In some ways, the hypothalamus influences the pituitary. It controls the autonomic or automatic nervous system. This regulates activities we cannot physically control such as the beating of the heart or filtration process in the kidneys. It controls hunger signals, the circadian (sleep-wake) cycles, hormone regulation, including control of the pituitary gland. The adrenals are known as the anti-stress organs. When, for example, fear of the landlord, or of an impending examination we are ill prepared for or even the possibility of separation or divorce in marriage confront us or there is a risk of losing a job, the adrenals produce hormones which embolden us and enable us to face the challenge. These hormones temporarily or permanently alter the biochemistry and functioning of different parts of the body. Adrenal hormones which cause the alteration are known as cortisol and adrenaline  (also called epinephrine). These hormones constrict the blood vessels , thereby increasing blood pressure. When we are under stress for too long, the adrenals may “burn out” .  This means they can no longer produce enough stress hormones which are like the shock absorbers  of a motor vehicle. The shocks of a motor vehicle do not allow impact of the bumps on a road to be transmitted to the chassis of the motor vehicle and, from there, to the passengers comfortably seated inside it. So, stress hormones from the adrenals each of which is located on top of the two kidneys, do not make us know we are undergoing stress when we are… if they are healthy. Therefore, eating for the adrenals or supplementing the diet with food supplements for them is important when we are undergoing stress. My favourite food supplements for the adrenals were Siberian Ginseng and Black Peruvian Macca. There are red macca and yellow macca as well. They are for other purposes. Siberian Ginseng is adaptogenic. This means it restores normalcy. When we are under stress and, therefore, literally speaking heated up, it is like water in the radiator of a motor vehicle. Radiator water cools the engine. When we are low and lethargic, Siberian ginseng, which is indicated more for men, fires us up to keep us moving. Black Peruvian Macca stabilises the brain like Gingko biloba or gotu kola and also helps men to remain fertile, producing healthy motile sperm and bigger sperm counts without necessarily raising the count of testosterone, the male hormone which gives men their male characteristics. It is popular among athletes because it helps them to build and to sharpen muscle tone and improves their endurance capacities. It is also adaptogenic in several ways. On the other hand, Red Peruvian Macca helps women to balance their hormones, particularly estrogen and progesterone, ease or prevent Pre Menstrual Syndrome (PMS) and see them comfortably through the ravages of menopause and perimenopause. Red Peruvian Macca can be exciting news for men as well because it may help to reduce prostate gland size in Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH). Yellow Peruvian Macca is considered an “all rounder,” improving fertility, balancing the hormones, improving physical endurance and mental balance, especially in anxiety and depression.

    This is especially important for men. When stress knocks out the adrenal glands, the brain will instruct that the SEX HORMONES be converted to STRESS HORMONES. The following is important for flaming Romeos and Juliets. When the adrenals are burnt out, that is when these anti stress organs are themselves overstressed,  Is it not better to be alive with no sexual responses than to be a Romeo and be dead? This is how stress takes away the libido in men and women. They can avoid libido problems caused by giving unto Peter and unto Paul what belongs to each of them. Therefore, people who work under stress of any kind should take care of their adrenals and their libido as well. I took care of mine. Another person I suspect must have been taking care of himself the way he knew was MR ONOJOMO ORERE, The Guardian’s health correspondent in those days. For almost every year, he invited me to a naming ceremony of his children and, till this day, I always teased him how he managed the feat despite the pressure under which we all worked.

    In respect of other possible causes of hypertension, the thyroid may over work the heart with  rapid heart beats, the condition called TACHYCARDIA which may be misplaced as plain PALPITATION. A professor at Lagos State University (LASU) treated palpitations to no avail for several years until his wife showed him this column’s discussion of HYPERTHYRODISM and a line editor of The Nation newspaper who was following developments in natural medicine facilitated our meeting. Till this day, plant medicines such as Co Q10 or ubiquinol, Hawthorn berries, lecithin, vitamin E, Magnesium, Kyolic circulation or Kyolic heart support and the likes of them are never absent in his medicines chest.

    In acute or chronic stress, cortisol makes the liver to produce glucose for the blood stream, while adrenalin gets the liver to convert glucose stored as Glycogen back into glucose. The net effect is that there is enough glucose for “FLIGHT or FIGHT” energy response to stress of any sort. When stress becomes chronic, too much glucose in the blood stream may cause Insulin resistance , a condition in which the cells reject insulin and glucose. Insulin is meant to drive glucose into the cells. However, unknown to many persons, insulin cannot effectively do this when there is not enough chromium in their company. Many processed foods have had their chromium removed or significantly reduced. Many nutrition authorities believe the losses may be up to 96 percent. About 86 percent of zinc is also lost. Yet, zinc is required for immunity, good vision and prostate gland health. Rejected by the cells along with glucose, because of chromium deficiency, insulin stays in the blood vessels where it causes soft muscles to multiply and reduce passage for blood flow. Such vessels are described as “ muscle bound”, and their situation may become impossible to remedy. It is a cause of hypertension. Too much glucose in the blood vessels not only thickens the blood but further narrows and damages the blood vessels,  thereby causing or worsening hypertension. When these hormones impact what is called the Renin–Angiotensin pathway, constriction of blood vessels and retention of sodium and fluid occurs. Too much fluid means a heavier work load for the heart to push, and hypertension persists. Furthermore, chronic stress may combine with glucose overload to cause inflammation and oxidative stress. In the end, METABOLIC SYNDROME, an evidence of which is abdominal pouch and fat around the belly, may emerge, signalling that a train load of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, heart attack and stroke may not be too far away. Incidentally, October has been designated stroke awareness month by the world stroke organisation.

      Smoking

    Stress and smoking go together. Many journalists do drink and smoke. I was drinking moderately but did not smoke. I never exceeded two bottles on a work day and only went to three when we gathered at the joint for pepper soup, never forgetting my medicines which replaced potassium losses through urination. Nicotine in cigarette smoke constricts blood vessels , inflames them and worsens their constriction, increases heart rate and output, thereby stressing blood vessels.

    Inactivity

    Sedentary lifestyle may cause INSULIN resistance and blood vessel stiffness and obesity, which overtasks the heart. Unused calories build up into fat, blocking  blood vessels, particularly in the heart itself or form around the heart and weigh it down. That is why it is always suggested that every person walk no fewer than 10,000 steps everyday. Even 30 minutes walk a day in measured steps are believed to be enough to help the body to produce enough lipase, a fat- burning enzyme, which will help the body burn fat non stop for the next 24 hours. People who have more brown fat cells are luckier than those who have more white fat cells because white fat cells are rigid and hardly burn on their own. Many persons who think they have low grade fever because their bodies are always warm may simply have more brown fat cells which burn on their own without external push. As for women with heavy-duty buttocks which they regard as sex assets and seductively brandish before men may not appreciate that those hips are one of the body’s dustbins for hiding poisons. When the buttocks are filled up, the tendency is for the abdomen and the breasts, in that order, to step in line to help out as waste and poison storages. That is what excess fat does in the body…to store excess poisons. That is why Europeans do not eat the skin of fish or that of any animal because they know excess fat is a toxin storage.

    Sleep Apnea

    Nigerian sufferers believe village people or their enemies such as witches “press” them “down” during sleep, making them unable to breathe, whereas the air passages are blocked by inflammation and they are not getting enough air and oxygen into their bodies. Chronic sleep apnea narrows the blood vessels through oxidative stress and other pathways.

     Poor diet

    High sodium consumption, especially through monosodium glutamate (MSG), poor potassium intake, deficiencies of calcium and magnesium and other minerals may cause water retention, heavier blood load, more work load for the heart and…hypertension. In 1984, my wife and I resolved to remove MSG from our meals at home. A good campaigner against MSG is Mr Hyacinth Uzor, who may be approaching 90 years now, and who may speak for hours on end about its dangers to health.

    Kidney disease

    Deceased kidney(s) may cause sodium elevation, potassium depletion, heavy blood, insulin resistance and hypertension. Hypertension, too, may cause kidney damage through some complex mechanisms

    Conclusion

    Hypertension is preventable, can be well managed and even reversed in some cases, using plant medicines. Some cases have responded favourably to increased dietary consumption of potassium and avoidance of dietary sodium overload through MSG taste enhancers. I have been probably luckier than many persons of my age, 75, because I have been precautionary for more than 25 years now. From my diet, I nullified white flour and whole wheat bread, cow’s milk, poultry egg and chicken, fried and processed food, white rice, sugar and I have never eaten noodles. Besides, I have been taking herbs for kidney, liver, blood and blood vessel cleansing, as well as plant medicines which energise the heart. The kidneys and the liver are poison filters and, like fuel filters in automobiles, need regular cleansing to remove blood and blood vessel contaminants. My suggestions for cleansing with which I have worked for more than 35 years are:

    LIVER: milk thistle, carqueja, Jerusalem artichoke, dandelion, common club moss, turmeric etc

    KIDNEYS: corn silk, dandelion, cilantro, parsley, uva ursi, hydrangea, papaya leaf, horsetail, cranberry etc

    HEART AND BLOOD VESSELS: CO Q 10, ubiquinol, Kyolic heart support, Kyolic circulation, vitamin E, cayenne, gotu kola, Gingko biloba, butcher’s broom, magnesium, coral calcium, Cardiotonic pills (CP), selenium, calcium + vitamin D3 etc.

    I believe that we can have fewer walking corpses in newsrooms and in society generally if we learn to take care of our bodies even better than we care for our printing presses and broadcast equipment or, for policemen, the riot gears, the rifles and the uniform. The policemen in Agege, Lagos, who fled into safety through the windows of their offices during the END SARS rebellion and pulled their uniforms in street corners will appreciate what I have just spoken about. Many of them used to congregate in KEYSLEY’S pharmacy shop near the fly over bridge to check their blood pressure, random blood sugar levels and buy anti-hypertensive and anti-diabetic drugs. Sadly, I have lost touch with them all because the pharmacy store has given way to development and relocated to Surulere also in Lagos. Nevertheless, this is a rememberance shout out to you all in the expectation that you have all migrated from the ranks of WALKING CORPSES

  • Hypertension: shout out to Nigeria’s ‘walking corpses’ (1)

    Hypertension: shout out to Nigeria’s ‘walking corpses’ (1)

    As a trainee sub-editor on the Daily Times newspaper in 1971, I did not pray to become an Editor. There are several rungs of a step ladder between the sub editor and the Editor. Very early in my professional career, I discovered each of them so pressure packed that it could shorten human life. Who would like to become deceased by a job, live a life of pain and then die young? In those days, journalists lived rough lives and were said to have short life spans, often dying from hypertension and related diseases. I am hypertension free and alive today probably because I learned very early how to cope with the stress which is inseparable from the profession. In the beginning, I worked for between 8 and 10 pressure-packed hours, hardly had time for lunch and dinner, lived on unwholesome, on-the-go meals and developed such abdominal discomfeitures which almost took my life. It is somewhat difficult for one to flee from what may be one’s destiny so, I hung on, and ended up as an Editor on two start up newspapers which imposed about 16 hours intense work schedule on me for more than 20 years. Surprisingly, I was not hypertensive, perhaps because I loved the job and the biochemistry which love makes in the blood favoured me. It was possible, also, that I am hypertension- free because, later on, I knew what foods to eat and which ones to avoid, and what food supplements to add to my diet. As a hint, I have completely avoided Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) in my meals cooked at home since 1984 that is for 41 years. MSG adds taste to food, no doubt. However, it is overloaded with artificial sodium. Many doctors ask their hypertensive patients to avoid sodium as best as they can, but neither the doctors nor their patients worry enough about MSG. Therefore, it was not surprising to me that cardiologist Prof Dike Orji, of the University of Abuja, warned recently that about 38.1 percent of NIGERIA’S’ adult population are hypertensive.That is a whooping 83.82 million persons in an estimated 220,000000 population. Thankfully, I am not hypertensive. Today at 75, my blood pressure hovers between 110/70 and 120/80. In the second part of this two part series, I will share some of my food supplement experiences. Many men should like some of these food supplements which protect the libido against ravages of stress and prevent stress from causing hypertension. Some of them improve brain power, address anxiety and depression, improve muscle tone and strength and enable the consumer to cope better with stress. Some of the others improve conditions of the heart, clean up blocked blood vessels, make calcified or hardened blood vessels to become more supple and, thereby, make more blood to flow easily and reduce hypertension. There are, also, herbs for cleaning the kidneys and the liver, for crushing kidney, liver and gall bladder stones, ridding the crucial organs of stones forming in them, as well as for shrinking a troublesome prostate gland. The editor’s job is often sedentary, easily allowing for lipid build up in blood vessels, enlarged heart and , sometimes, prostate gland challenges from the pressure of sitting for long hours through meetings and poring over almost every line of text in his newspaper. Of all the editors I worked under, only prince Tony Momoh indulged in a game, squash, every Saturday! Even then, he still returned to work in his games paraphernalia! Meanwhile, I would like to return to my days as a stress tormented trainee journalist.

    My colleagues and I resumed work at about 2 pm and called it a day at about 10pm or 11pm. That seemed fair enough, except for the content of those eight or nine hours. Hardly did I arrive home before midnight. My biological clock or the circadian rhythm altered. I hardly slept soundly for more than one or two hours at night, and did not know how, during day hours, to compensate the for the sleep deficit. Nature removes sunlight from particular parts of the earth at definite periods to enable man, beast and plant to take a break from the hustle and bustle and submit themselves for recuperation under a different regime of energy provided by the moon and stars. Newspaper work did not, and still does not, permit this. I had to eat supper terribly late when, between 12 noon and 8pm is the time nature permits the digestion of food and 8pm to 4am is for absorbtion of nutrients from digested food. Already, I was breaching a Law of Nature. I would break more in a journalism career which, at that time and even now, was recognised world-wide to count journalists among the shortest – living professionals.

    My night sleep could never be deep, refreshing or enable the organs to properly recuperate themselves with changing circadian radiations. That could mean premature biological aging well beyond calendrical aging. The intestine could be overstuffed with food digesting too slowly, unable to be voided within 18 hours of ingestion, thereby promoting microbial overpopulation and gas, among other disturbances of late dinner. One of these disturbances was that I was asking the body to be digesting late meals when it was programmed by nature to be absorbing nutrients from early meals. That meant I was giving my body two jobs to do at a time. It would then either perform half of each, leaving dangerous deficits, or perform one task and dispense with the other.

    As a crown on my lifestyle challenges as a trainee sub editor, I did not know how to sleep during day light. So, I bore several hours days and weeks of sleep deficit. I hardly had breakfast because my intestine became bloated. Lunch was out of the question because the sub editors’ desk of those days had no room for lunch break. We all made do with sausages, meatpies, buns or puff puff, soft drinks. At 21, that is 54 years ago, I was installmentally dying, and could have been gone but for my maternal grandfather in the village who got a herbalist there to rid my intestine of its gas overload. The gas had built up so much that one slice of bread was enough to impact me with shortness of breath for hours.

    Read Also: Skitmaker Kasala named ambassador of Ondo College

    Henry Odukomaya

    I returned to work soon after, wondering how Mr Henry Odokumaya, the Editor, was coping. I did not realise that he, too, was suffering beneath his well-cut suits and that, a few years ago, it would be my lot to help him to avert surgery caused by heavy, late dinner. I discussed this in a chapter I contributed to a book by some journalists to mark his last well celebrated birthday.

    In 1971, he made me pray never to become an Editor. What kind of job was the editor’s?, I never ceased to wonder. He arrived the office at about 10am, read all page proofs for editions due for printing but took a break at 3pm or 4pm for lunch at home and returned to the office at about 9pm to work again till goodness knew when! Prince Tony Momoh who succeeded Mr Odukomaya worked like that. The other cases which made me think of quitting journalism were those of Mr Animashaun, news editor and Alhaji Alade Odunewu, an Editor in the Times group and the popular columnist known as ALLAHDEY, who wrote the instructive column, WALKING CORPSES, two words I borrowed for the title of this article.

    Animashaun

    My last work contact with him was on the Federal Budget of a particular year. The Daily Times of those days could break the budget down to how much it would cost you in terms of bath soap to have a good shower in the morning and another before bed, or the cost of rice and beans or okro soup on your dining table. It was not garbage in garbage out budget reporting. Comparisons were made with previous budgets so that a definitive statement could be made. That day’s job was hectic. Mr Animashaun and I were about the last persons to leave the newsroom. I was behind him as we descended the stairs on 3,5,7 Kakawa Street. It was late. I headed for the bus terminus on Nnamdi Azikiwe Street, near Tinubu Square. He boarded his car. I did not realise he wasn’t heading home but straight to a hospital. He must have been experiencing severe headaches or a pounding heart or both. These are among several symptoms which hypertension may prevent, if at all it does, but which many persons do not pay serious attention to or take for granted. Many persons confront these warning signals with self medications. They are lucky, or so they assume, if the tide ebbs. Often, however, the problem goes underground and resurfaces, packed with more vigour to strike harder on a doom’s day.

    As I said, Mr Animashaun and I went out different ways, unknown to me…for life. We had to return to work on a Sunday. I bought a copy of the Saturday paper to review our work the day before. On Sunday morning, I almost collapsed when I bought a copy of the Sunday Times, saw Mr Animashaun’s photograph and beside it a report which announced his death the previous day!

    Allah Dey

    I did not work directly with him, but I always read his column. One of the most fascinating to me was the one he titled WALKING CORPSES. Apparently, he had lived with HYPERTENSION for a long time, raising the bars of the risk factors without realising he was installmentally dying. What finally got him to hospital, I do not remember. I recall, however, the account that his doctors detained him in the hospital, explaining that it was a miracle he had not died. The degree of his hypertension at that time was better imagined. Alhaji Odunewu, who would later become chairman of The Nigerian Press Council(NPC), would later pay more attention to his health. It was on this platform I interacted more with him when I was Secretary General of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and a representative of the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO) at NPC meetings. At that time, I had swallowed the journalism bait and became an editor, overcoming the frightening images of my journalism suffered progenitors, but learned to become more adapted to facing the challenges with nutrition and herbal medicine. It was a privilege and honour for me, as in the case of Mr Henry Odukomaya, to also be in support of Alhaji Odunewu. Apparently, his hypertension challenges had not completely effaced. He despised being on a medication which, he said, made him feel as though red pepper was in his eyes. I suggested some remedies for it and other complaints. For some time, I heard nothing from him. Then, he went to either the United Kingdom or to the United States. His doctor there referred him to a doctor in Egypt who was said to be a good authority on the ailment(s). So, off to Egypt Alhaji Odunewu went. He was such a humble person that, on his return home and right from the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos, he telephoned me to ask that I re-advise him of my suggestions. When I did and he checked his hand bag, he discovered that he had brought back from Sokoto what were in his “Sokoto” pockets. Thereafter, we often discussed health matters until he passed.

    June One Hospital

    This hospital in Lagos was situated on Opebi road Ikeja, opposite Salvation Road junction with Opebi road. It was the official medical facility for staff of THE COMET newspaper, a start up venture at that time. One day, the medical director, Dr Abiola, held a meeting with some executive directors of the company to appraise them of the health of the staff and to ask what the company could do about it. As a doctor, it was the first time she would be seeing a large number of journalists diagnosed with hypertension. Sadly for Dr Abiola, journalism couldn’t re-adjust itself from pressure and stress. Till this day, the news machine is driven not just by deadline but more by the sense of responsibility of its practitioners which leaves no stone in today’s work unturned for tomorrow’s work men. Investor confidence in the business is too high to be taken for granted as is the risk of lateness to the market. If one page of advertisment costs N300,000 and there are 20 in an edition which misses the market, that is not only N6 million lost in one day, but more from the newsprint, ink, other printing materials, energy and labour costs. Advertisers may sue a company if the newspaper causes them to lose their own market. Consistent lateness will cause advertisers and readers to flock elsewhere. Thus grows the stress traditionally, with the search for invisibility or exclusivity in the news industry, when newspapers seek to beat one another to a great story. Imagine what Segun Osoba, as a young reporter, would have gone through to be the first reporter to discover the body of Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, prime minister of Nigeria, after the January 1966 military coup. On the day the American president George H.W Bush’s deadline to Iraqui president Saddam Hussein to quit Kuwait expired, I was Editor of the Guardian newspaper and made senior editorial staff work all night. Thus, we were able to be the only newspaper which reported the outbreak of hostilities in full. Photographer Oseni Yusuf aka Zoom Lens captured from CNN still photographs of rockets and gunfire which lit up the Baghdad night sky. CNN journalists Peter Arnett, John Holliman and Bernard Shaw risked their lives to report the event to the world as their country’s president was bombarding even the hotel in which they lodged. Imagine their cortisol and adrenaline blood levels and the risk of hypertension and the corollary diseases to them while many husbands and wives wrapped around each other in bed, exchanging RADIATIONS and cooling off the tensions of the day’s work. In The Guardian newsroom that night, work pressure of the previous long day did not abate. These were men and women who had been working for 24 hours non stop and had to stay on another long night, without sleep, eating and drinking anything that came their way. On the day scud missiles were fired on Israel, I jumped into my car at 6a.m, barely two hours after I arrived home from 15 hours of work, after listening to the news on BBC, to stop THE PRESS for a newer edition of that report. Many reporters go through health challenging experiences at work. MR Ted Iwere, who would become Features Editor of the start up THE GUARDIAN newspaper, was received at the airport in Lagos by his friends and family on his return from the United States with a Master’s degree in journalism. He decided to stop over at THE GUARDIAN and to announce his plan to join us one or two weeks later. OYINLADE BONUOLA was the Editor. He had been worrying about a competent reporter to send to Gboko, where the National Party of Nigeria(NPN) was to begin his 1983 presidential election campaign. Ted Iwere knew the rules of the game. He couldn’t say “NO” despite long hours of air travel and possible jet lag. His beautiful report on the campaign was titled THERE’S NOTHING GOING FOR GBOKO. By that, he meant that Gboko was a sleepy town which was woken up and lit up by the political campaign of some of NIGERIA’S’ biggest money bags and noisiest politicians. Till this day, I tease him it was his best! His family and friends, probably wondering what kind of profession he was into, had returned home without him!

    Dr Abiola heard many more of such stories of deadlines and sense of commitment to the profession. Perhaps only in the military and in radio broadcasting do you find such life. Most radio stations open at about 4.30 am. The staff are not well paid. They run their shows till about 3p.m , find something else to do till midnight for a living. Those who run love doctor shows are on till about 3a.m and still manage to feature on daytime shows.

    Hypertension, The Silent Killer…

    It is so called because, often the sufferer experiences no warning signals before the axe dangles or strikes. That is why, in this season of global enlightenment about HYPERTENSION, this article is dedicated to JOURNALISTS and persons who work under stressing conditions. Alhaji Odunewu did not see his hypertension coming until his doctors made him see himself and many of us as… WALKING CORPSES. Mr Animashaun probably saw it coming too late …and he died.

    Next week: some possible causes of hypertension, their risk factors, and how to prevent, reverse or successfully hold this problem in check.

  • Lymphoma: far from the ‘belu belu’ razor sharp curved knife

    Lymphoma: far from the ‘belu belu’ razor sharp curved knife

    Every September 15, reminds me of the neighbourhood surgeon of the 1950s and 1960s and his dangerous but seemingly unblemished surgical prowess. Mothers and fathers invited him to remove enlarged lymph nodes from the necks and armpits of their children and drooping tonsils from their mouths. The Yorubas call a swollen or drooping tonsil “BELU BELU” . They believed contents of the swellings were poisnous enough to kill anyone who swallowed them if the “belu belu” bursts. So, they invited home any mallam who specialised in the art of surgical removal of an infected tonsil. I witnessed some of these surgeries between the ages of nine and 10, but escaped them. Often, the local surgeons were malams from the north of Nigeria. They came in with unsterilised curved, sharp knives and other implements. The children who were to be operated upon were tricked indoor and forced down by about three hefty men. One sat behind him or her, and, with hefty muscular arms, arrested the child and tightly bound the young one’s body to his own. Another man steadied the head which was, also, under arrest. Finally, the third man sat on the child’s legs to ensure they did not move during the operation. The man who had the child’s head manipulated the cheeks to force the mouth open. Before these procedures, the mother and other females were forced out of the room. Outside, the women paraded the environment, praying or crying. The children who saw their sibling or playmate abducted and knew what was going on fled to safety. The native surgeon pressed down the tongue of the child with a wooden or bamboo appliance, and probed the distended inflamed tonsil or a drooping one with his knife to the root, on the plate of the upper jaw. He strikes. And down comes the infected organ, which is a member of the immune system of the body. Blood erupts. The surgeon’s aids force the patient’s head down and warns him to not swallow the blood or the excised tissue. He spits all out. He is given plenty of water to rinse his mouth and rid himself of remnants of the dismembered parts of his body. His mother is summoned into the “theatre” which often times was the family’s single room tenancy. Her job was to immediately provide hot peppered soup she had been advised to keep on stand by. The patient will snack on it all day or for several hours until the post surgical bleeding was arrested!

    Procedures for removing enlarged lymph nodes in the neck and armpit were similar except that the patient’s lot was not hot peppered soup plastered on open knife wound. I do not know the mechanism for stopping bleeding in these surgeries, but they were equally dangerous procedures in which blood vessels and muscles were often exposed. I do not recall now if the patients fell ill afterwards from infections or anyone passed as a consequence.

    Read Also: Lagos condemns Obi’s ‘misleading’ tirade on Trade Fair demolition

    My childhood memories were lit up by announcements that  September 15, 2025 was yet another global Lymphoma Day.

    Lymphoma is what medicine calls a dangerous disease which may cause some of this swellings in the neck, armpits and groin which the crude medicine men of those days treated according to their limited understanding of the construction of the body and of how it works. Their “patients” probably survived because their conditions were not full blown Lymphoma. I told Udeme Edet James that she was a lucky girl in the 1990s when her father, a palm wine tapper and Brewer of local gin, ogogoro used razor blade incisions on growths or swellings in her armpits and swellings below the ear lobe to aspirate through finger pressure whatever pus and fluid they haboured. She is from Ekwere Itam, near Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. She grew up in a culture in which children and adults alike often developed swellings around the neck which, today, are known as MUMPmumps. Pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors often did not help the sufferers much. They recovered more, as I witnessed a case weeks ago, on a therapy of White Cocoyam meal at a special ceremony beside a plantain plant.

    Lymphoma

    As it is known today, lymphoma is a cancer in the Lymphatic System, a part of the Immune System. That is why surviving it may be difficult because it weakens the immune system which is meant to destroy it. It is like the bombardment of a military defence headquarters!

    To make a challenged person appreciate what is going on, I often play around the question: What is the colour of blood? I guess you too would say it is “RED”. Absolutely, the colour of blood may not be RED. It only appears so because red blood cells are plentiful in what we call blood and , therefore, give it its red colour. What gives the red blood cell its red colour is haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment of red blood cells.

    Blood, or the River of life as many physicians call it, is the liquid transport system in which are to be found such components as red blood cells, white blood cells, platelet cells, nutrients, hormones, oxygen, antibodies and PLASMA, the liquid portion of blood. Blood circulates in blood vessels such as arteries, capillaries, veins and organs.

    Lymphatic System

    Side by side with the blood circulatory system is the Lymphatic Circulatory System. This is leading to the realm of theLYMPH, which circulates in the LYMPHATIC system where LYMPHOMA takes place. Many persons know of blood vessels but not of lymphatic vessels.

    PLASMA, a pale yellow or straw coloured liquid in the blood circulation which accounts for about 55 per cent of the total volume, separates from the blood and leaks out of the vessels. It leaks into the spaces around the 100 trillion or so cells known as the INTERSTITIAL SPACE, forming the interstitial fluid. Plasma is about 92 per cent water and comprises proteins such as albumin, globulins, fibrinogen, Hormones, nutrients (such as proteins, glucose and lipids). It transports waste products as well. There are as well electrolytes such as potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium etc. Gases such as oxygen , carbon dioxide and nitrogen are in the mix, too. These nutrients diffuse into the cells through various mechanisms. Toxins and wastes from the cells also diffuse from them into the interstitial fluid outside.

    The interstitial fluid carries away the wastes and toxins into special cells, the LYMPHATIC CAPILLARIES which take them into primary lymphatic vessels called AFFERENT. The drained waste loaded interstitial fluid is now known as THE LYMPH. The AFFERENT drains into larger lymphatic vessels. In this system are LYMPH NODES which filter the lymph of wastes and toxins, causing triggers of immune responses when the toxin load is overwhelming.

    Lymphatic vessels pass filtered lymph to lymphatic ducts from where it enters the blood circulation through certain veins. The returning fluid may be described as BLOOD PLASMA which has completed its cycle or journey which is to take nutrients to the cells, remove their wastes and toxins for removal by the lymph nodes in the lymphatic system, thereby supporting fluid balance, living process, immune function and, if we like, homeostasis.

    Lymph Nodes

    They are among our STOP OVERS in the exploration of LYMPHOMA or cancer of the lymphatic system. There are about 500 to 800 lymph nodes in the body of an average person. They are in the head and neck, behind the ear, in front of the ear, arms, armpits (40-49 nodes), above the elbow joints, chest , abdomen, groin , behind the knee . Where are they not present in the masterpiece construction of the human body, each group servicing a specific area of the body?

    The lymph nodes often mentioned in lymphoma are those in the neck , armpits and groin. As a child, I often had swellings in the groin which the Yorubas call PETELE(m:m:m). It often came with bad, open infections in the lower limbs, was painful and caused restricted mobility, but was easily resolved with warm or hot water presses. Those in the armpits cause women some extra worry because the armpit is connected to a breast and terminal breast cancers sometimes present large lymph node swelling there.

    In the neck, the swellings were surgically defused through extraction by crude surgeons of the 1960s and perhaps 1970s as well. They did not realise they were thus removing road blocks against poison overload. Many doctors believe a cancer in this region, known as non Hodgkin’s LYMPHOMA, is a death sentence. However, herbal medicines sometimes prove them wrong. TINA ADUGBE can bear testimony of the case of an Editor who survived it. A director-general in Lagos State who later became provost at the College of Education at Ijanikin fared well on Amazon A-F until the medication became scarce. It was a proprietary blend targeted at bacteria and fungi while AMAZON A-V went straight for viruses. On his hospital clinic days, the doctors wondered if a mistake was made about his diagnosis. Sadly, he passed after the resurgence, shortly after a pilgrimage. Mrs. Folake Sanusi and I reminisced recently about the younger brother of one of her close friends, a woman from the Southeast of Nigeria who is a teacher in Lagos. The young man was dying in Enugu from chemotherapy and other pharmaceutical drugs when her sister contacted Mrs. Sanusi. Amazon A-F, guakatonga and Bell’s supreme immune booster were among the several herbal recipes sent to him. He came alive, filled with energy enough to continue his treatment in Lagos. His problem was that he had no money. His half siblings sister, a conventional medical consultant in England, was picking his hospital bills while his father was taking care of his wife and four children. His sister in Lagos could do only very little. His doctor sister insisted on chemotherapy. She and I spoke on the telephone. She agreed the herbs could help him from the descriptions of the chemistry of their actions. Nevertheless, she insisted on chemotherapy, if she would continue to fund his protocols. He obliged her. He died…

    Lymphoma Types, Presentations

    A hallmark of lymphoma is that LYMPHOCYTES, a group of soldiers in the immune system, become uncontrollably cancerous.

    LYMPHOCYTES are found in different parts of the body, including the lymphatic vessels, blood stream, lymph nodes, adenoids, tonsils and spleen, for example. We may speak of two types of lymphoma… HODGKINS LYMPHOMA and NON-HODGKINS LYMPHOMA. Both may affect LYMPHOCYTES and lymphoid immobile lymph tissues such as lymph nodes, tonsils, adenoids and spleen. Non Hodgkin’s is differentiated in terms of the systemic manner by which it spreads.

    Some of the presentations of both include swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, fever, itching, weight loss, coughing and chest pain, loss of appetite, abdominal swelling and pain, shortness of breath, inexplicable weight loss. However, not all swellings of lymphoid tissue are due to lymphoma. Other causes may be irritation, infection, inflammation and immune response. My generation of children whose swollen lymph nodes were invaded by “crude” surgeons using unsterilized knives may have survived infections and death largely because the swellings were not lymphoma, that is not cancerous and the tormented tissues were deadened with hot spices.

    Lymphoma in Nigeria

    According to the GLOBAL BURDEN OF DISEASES, a comprehensive research effort which examines 459 health outcomes and their risk factors, 5,194 cases of non Hodgkin’s LYMPHOMA hit Nigeria in 2022. The rate could have been higher but for under reporting of cases. This was about 4.1 percent of all cancer cases which numbered 127,763. The others were breast cancer 32,278 cases; prostate cancer 18,019 cases. Children are more susceptible, especially to burkitt lymphoma, which affects B lymphocyte cells and grow rapidly. The symptom may include swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, abdominal pain, swelling, fatigue and fever, among others. Survival rate is poor, largely because of inaccessibility to medical care and treatment abandonment which, in Kano for example, a study said could be as high as 85 percent. In respect of Non Hodgkin’s LYMPHOMA(NHL), survival rate may be as high as 11 years, according to another study. Even then, disease groups within this ambit exhibit different time lines.

    Herbal Remedies

    The starting point is to remember that LYMPHOMA is a cancer and to treat it as such. In such a matter, I always remember DR MAX GERSON who taught us that tumours such as uterine fibroids and cancers develop when the cells lose potassium and are infiltrated by sodium. This alters their existence from oxidative (oxygen dependent) life to fermentative (non oxygen dependent) metabolism. Out of touch with the body’s signalling systems, tumours and cancers defy control and grow rapidly. They poison surrounding cells and incite them into a possible death-causing rebellion. Thus, Dr. Gerson suggested massive dietary infusion of potassium into the body through the consumption of fruit and vegetables juices which are potassium rich. He came by this idea when he used them, on the advice of a medical lay person, to cure his terrible migraines which knocked him out of work for about two weeks in one month. He later prescribed them to cure some cases of cancer and other debilitating diseases. (Please check his work online under Dr. Max Gerson or the Gerson Institute).

    Dr. Gerson also advocated organic coffee enemas. The coffee must be organic, please. It detoxifies the liver and the colon. A liver and colon may breed toxins which consume metabolites such as potassium which the body recalls from the cells to neutralise ACIDOSIS in the bloodstream. Acidosis causes de-oxygenation, a cause of cancer, and irritation, a cause of INFLAMMATION, which is present in cancers.

    Dr. Gerson also improved the nutrition of his patients to neutralise free radicals with anti oxidants and to boost immune function.

    Modern herbal medicine therapies against cancer have built on foundations provided by physicians before and after Dr. Gerson. Thus, today, it is possible to speak about a SEVEN-STEP THERAPY. These are 1) detoxification 2) oxygenation 3)anti-oxidation 4) immunity boosting 5) energy boosting 6) anti- inflammation and 7) nutrition and healing.

    Certain herbs are specific for each of these therapies. I have mentioned Dr. Gerson’s ORGANIC COFFEE ENEMAS. The entire body requires DETOXIFICATION. Milk thistle is a super protector of the liver against toxins. Jerusalem artichoke, too is good. So are common club moss, dandelion root, cleavers, bitter cola and bitter leaf among several others. Carqueja clears out this organ. On the Nigerian market today, there are many proprietary medicines for DETOXIFICATION. Among them are EDIMAS DIFFENS, a 12 herb warehouse which kills bacteria, viruses, fungi etc always found in cancer tissues. There are also, several colon cleansers .

    As for oxygenation, I doubt if we still have OXYGEN TABLETS on the market. The HYPERBARIC OXYGEN CHAMBER may be trickling in. Green plants, in liquid, tablet or powder forms, provide OXYGEN molecules through their CHLOROPHYLL, as does a chlorophyll powder supplement itself.

    There are many antioxidants on the market, some of them specific in action, others multilateral. CoQ10 provides energy to cancer cells to not grow but to have the strength to commit suicide (apoptosis) by activating their P.53 gene, as Dr. Karl Folkers did in a landmark Finnish experiment which resolved about 30 hopeless terminal breast cancers. Vitamin C at about 6000mg daily in divided doses is an antioxidant which boosts production of white blood corpuscles.

    In the days of the SUPREME IMMUNE BOOSTER, it was a first choice supplement for this purpose. Upcoming now is REGENERATING DRINK, designed to activate STEM CELL production. These cells replace damaged, aging, dying or dead cells . It also combats inflammation.

    Among my favourites in the nutrition category are ANTI AGING 247, which is contra indicated for persons below 30 years of age, and DAILY BUILD. They come with more than 50 nutrients which the body requires everyday to keep itself in top form.

    Anti oxidants are everywhere in nature. The trouble is that many people are not aware of them. Banana peel for example is a richer source of potassium. Avocado pear is potassium dense. Unripe plantain are. Its peel, are similarly, potassium packed. Banana peel may be eaten raw with meals. Plantain peel may be cooked. ORANGE PEEL is a blood cleanser and anti microbial. STINGING NETTLE leaves and root are alterative, that is blood cleansing herbs. Burdock root, yellow dock are also worth trying. Sugar should be cut off or minimised as cancers feed and grow on it. The more alkaline the diet is the better are the chances of victory. Bitters help the liver and the kidneys. The Yorubas say OTA ENU NI ORE INU. Enemies of the mouth are friends of the organ. Any wonder my generation of children developed “dirty “ blood hemorrhoids and lymph node swellings and lymphoma. We ate too much sugar and carbohydrates as many children still do today, with some coming down with leukemia very early. The message of LYMPHOMA DAY is: report any growth early to your doctor or healthcare provider.

  • Welcome to table…and to a rat poisoning meal!

    Welcome to table…and to a rat poisoning meal!

    Often, I write that we live in a world of poisons. Some, if not all, of the foods we eat have naturally occurring poisons in them. These are defence mechanisms through which the plants and food crops protect themselves against pests and other environmental hazards. Today, I feel urged to write that we live in a poisoned world, that mankind has willfully added dangerous poisons and toxins to the food we eat, air we breathe and the water we drink. We encounter them everyday in pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and rodenticides, among others. Now, new brands of food poisons are coming to our dining tables through genetically modified foods. If you doubt that man has poisoned his world and food, and that almost everything we now call food is heavily laden with rat poison type chemicals, please ask Koffi Bartel and Maria Okon. They are programmes presenters on Nigeria Info 90.3 FM radio station in Lagos. Recently, and on separated programmes, they interviewed Dr. Segun Adebayo, a natural food advocate , and, literally speaking, the air waves were filled with Worms!

    Dr. Adeyemo is a champion of growing efforts to protect Nigeria against the invasion of GMO foods, to which some government officials are yielding. He revealed in that interview that the Director-General of NAFDAC (National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control), Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, described GMO foods as hardly better than pesticides or rat killers. At that time, her counterpart at the NDLEA, (National Drug Law Enforcement Agency), debunked NAFDAC’s arguments that GMO foods were unsafe. That meant two federal agencies which decided the safety of whatever went into our mouths did not know what to tell us to make of GMO foods. Such differences are not unique to Nigeria. Globally, there are protagonists and antagonists of any new cause. Did we not witness this with COVID-19 vaccination? Both sides of the divide in any encounter bring up scientific evidence to push their agenda. In such a battle situation, I “borrow myself sense”, as we say in Nigeria, by avoiding the bone of contention. As a student of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1977, I stopped eating white flour bread after I read the 196-page 90 days to  a better heart, by John X Loughran which I bought from the university’s library. It was the story of hypertension, high blood cholesterol, damaged blood vessels, low stamina, weak heart etc reportedly caused by white flour to make bread from which Lecithin,Vitamin E and Chromium, among other food nutrients, had been removed. It was the story, also, of regeneration to health through the replacement of white flour bread with whole wheat bread. In the 1980s, I became one of the faithful patrons of a Lagos food facility which made wheat bread and in which a younger Mrs. Florence Fusi was a baker. We would lose touch later for about 30 years during which I had also abandoned whole wheat bread after the news broke out that wheat had been genetically modified and had become dangerous to human health. Providentially, Florence Fusi and I would meet again through the auspices of Simeon Ekor over an ailment probably related to flour foods and baking which, by her admission, may have set the stage for her departure from the flesh. Fleeing from white flour and GMO wheat is simple. Who can flee from the whole gamut of tomato, potato, rice, yam, beans, cassava etc?

    That was why I found interesting, if not worrisome, the diametrically opposite positions of NAFDAC and NDLEA on the influx today of GMO foods into Nigeria which the likes of Dr. Segun Adeyemo are challenging. The worse case scenario could be that NDLEA could clear them for importation and NAFDAC could impound them and prosecute the importers for trying to imperil public health. Thankfully or regretably, the Ministry of Finance, which supervises both agencies, unified their positions in NDLEA favour, and NAFDAC withdrew into its shell. I accept the NAFDAC position that GMO foods could be germicides, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and rodenticides.

    READ ALSO: Priscilla Ojo, son reunite with Juma Jux in Tanzania

    I  moved forward from there to suggest that they are even more dangerous to human health because the radiations they generate are not in harmony with human radiations. This is speaking from the realms of the knowledge that everything which exists is radiation at the immaterial level, and that radiation may be friendly, upbuilding or antagonistic, disintegrating of one another and, therefore, annihilating. I have written here several times about radiations. Now, I will be brief. As an animal farmer, I learned to not pick the kittens of cats, the bunnies of rabbits and the piglets of pigs with naked human hands because their mothers would reject them upon smelling human hand (radiation on them). Farmers prevent this by wearing hand gloves. A house uninhabited for long deteriorates and may collapse in the absence of human radiation to maintain it. Anyone who doubts the existence of radiation or the fact that everything which exists announces its existence to others may wish to revisit the Chernobyl nuclear plant reactor leakage on 26 April 1986 in Ukraine, a member state of the then Soviet Union. In THE PSYCHIC GARDEN of Nellie Uyldert, we learn of friendly plants and of unfriendly plants, just as there are friendly humans and unfriendly humans. Friendly plants grow well when they are planted together because their radiations further one another. Unfriendly plants do not do well when grown together because their radiations are inhibitive or disintegrative. Tomatoes and basil grow well together. Basil repels pests such as white flies and aphids which target tomatoes. Marigold, too, repels nematodes and other pests harmful to tomatoes. Beans, corn and squash do well together. Beans climb the corn stalk. Squash shades the soil preventing moisture loss and preventing weed growth. Onions and carrots are friendly. Onion keeps carrot flies away from carrots. On the other side, tomatoes and potatoes are unfriendly. They have common enemies such as late blight disease which grows wings in the absence of a plant to inhibit it. Onions may stunt the growth of beans.

    I do not know how far Dr. Segun Adeyemo and his colleagues can go in their efforts to not only educate Nigerians about the health dangers of GMO foods streaming into Nigeria, and if they would be able to get the government to be on their side. The dangers of GMO foods to human radiations and health appear to be not yet well understood in Nigeria. Yet, it is as simple as ABC to the inwardly childlike person. We did not create ourselves. Nor did we create our world. The Bible teaches that the Creator knew us before he formed us in our mother’s wombs. Plants, food crops, fruits, seeds, nuts and herbs predated our arrival on earth. From the radiations of the sun and the stars they fruit and fructify through the auspices of chlorophyll and photosynthesis. That is why some plants are called sun plants, moon plants and star plants. Some absorb little bits of radiations from all of them. Certain constellations of stars give rise to certain plants. Certain plants nourish certain human organs best. According to the Chinese circadian rhythm, certain stars nourish certain organs when the body goes to rest through a process of radiation. This means such organs are best presented in those times to be best nourished by these radiations. Organs which are too busy to open themselves up for this nurture miss it and become radiation and vigour famished. It is reasonable, therefore, to say that it is not the solid in the food that we eat but the radiations within them which our bodies extract for nourishment of the organs in dietary nutrition. Therefore, a genetically modified food is not creation food based on the creation plan and must be deficient in its nurture of the human body because its creation plan radiation has been altered by man. Monsanto, an American company, genetically modified wheat in the early 2000s to make it resist weed killer glyphosate also known as round up ready wheat but withdrew it from the international market in 2004 due to widespread protests. Nevertheless, GM wheat contaminations were discovered over the years on many wheat farms in Europe and America. Argentina in 2020 became the first country to legally approve GM wheat for cultivation and consumption. The Argentine wheat, called HB 4 wheat, resisted drought and provided yield higher than natural wheat, and, in future, was to be grown on one third of the country’s arable wheat land. This was a beginning of the global GM wheat scourge with exports to Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Nutritional and political controversies trail the exports. Protagonists of GM wheat consumption say it is safe. Antagonists say it is not. They say, for example, HB 4 uptakes and tolerates Glufosinate Ammonium, a herbicide which may cause “brain damage, developmental disability and developmental defects, glycogen storage disease IV (which causes enlarged liver, cirrhosis, abnormal cell growth in the small intestine, gluten intolerance, bloating and gas, abdominal pain and cramping, diarrhoea and constipation or irritable bowel syndrome), fatigue and lethargy, headaches and migraines, joint pain and inflammation, skin rashes and itching, brain fog and difficulty concentrating etc”. Monsanto, in which Bill and Melinda Gates hold 500,000 shares of stocks worth 23 million U.S dollars, is criticised as pushing GM wheat on poor nations through various means, including bribery of public health regulatory authorities.

    I stopped eating whole wheat bread when this controversy began to rage. Some Nigerian doctors advised their patients with intestinal problems to discard wheat from their diet. There is no doubt that some persons can withstand the genetic alterations in wheat. There is evidence, also, that many persons cannot. It is all a question of antigenic reactions. I can eat a whole pot of fish and feel no exertion. I have a niece, the daughter of my cousin, Mrs Grace Olanrewaju, who can vomit her intestine if a drop of sauce in which fish was cooked touches her tongue, not to mention eating fish. I have friends who fall ill if they drink honey sweetened tea.

    Another conquest in motion

    Debates on genetic wheat are unending. Protagonists say antagonism is not evidence based. Thus, the NAFDAC/NDLEA positions are not unique to Nigeria. The debates also important to watch are claims of dispossession or disinheritance of seed crops inherited from our forebears in exchange for crop seeds which yield more crops bigger and faster but cannot reproduce themselves. There are allegations that the region of the earth which conquered other regions in multifarious ways is devising food conquest as yet another means to emasculate and absorb victim regions. The protagonists of this argument lead us back on the memory lane to the starting point of the African and Nigerian conquest: the gun boats came and took away the slaves. As we fought back and some of them found their deeds reprehensible, they abolished slave trade and encouraged religious evangelism. Then came colonisation and economic bondages. As political independence became the norm, mutual trade and import substitution and whatever else still favoured the conqueror. To worsen matters, the age of the internet has made the economies of poor nations worse tributaries of richer economies. Imagine , for example, how much foreign cash Nigeria expends everyday on FACEBOOK, WHATSAPP, TIK TOK and other social media platforms. Now, it would appear only natural food crops and a growing population are all we have left. Persons like Dr. Segun Adeyemo would tell you the devouring nations are coming for them as well.

    Warfare in the soil

    How possible is this? Simple, they say. In the soil, there are naturally occurring bacteria which protect planted seeds and seed crops against the ravages of devouring bacteria. WARFARE IN NATURE is a natural phenomenon. When you desire to do something, an antagonist force opposes you. This on its own is not evil as many persons superficially assume. Rather, it is a mere obstacle which is meant to be overcome to make the struggling person stronger when he overcomes. That is why, against the force of gravity, the planted seed sprouts, to germinate,  pushing soil and stones apart, to reach top soil, seek the sun’s energy and, through photosynthesis, flower and fruit, fructifying its natural abilities. Mothers do this with babies who are learning to crawl. They place a toy as a goal before these babies. As the babies attain the goals, the toys positions are shifted. Babies who do not give up, that is overcome, are able to crawl in periods commensurate with their efforts.

    One adamantine law rules the universe. As in the human baby or adult, there resides in the seed and seed crop natural abilities for struggle towards fructification and for self-defence in the process. When I am dealing with bacteria (such as staphylococcus aureus or the Helicobacter pylori of stomach and intestinal ulcers) or even fungi, and viruses and parasites in the human body, I do not ignore the Amazon brand of herbal medicines.

    Amazon A-F

    It is a combination of several herbs which have exhibited very serious abilities to protect themselves against bacteria and fungi. Amazon A-V warehouses plant abilities against some viruses while Amazon A-P does the same against parasites. In the soil, bacteria friendly with certain plants mediate these abilities to them for their protection against unfriendly microforms and even pests.

    What genetic re-configuration or modulation of plants and seed crops is all about is the infusion of certain anti-microbials or anti-pest genes or gene extracts in friendly bacteria into a seed. With the genetic order or command of a seed altered, it becomes a different entity within but, outwardly, its good, old self. And since it is the life within which governs the exterior, the transformed seed crop can no longer perform the natural function for which it was created. It becomes like a DISTORTED HUMAN SOUL who is male or female in the kernel but the opposite gender in bone and flesh, a potential candidate for surgical sex change, and in terms of his or her usefulness in Creation a complete misnormer and a totally useless being. In the seed crop, genetic modification is a matter of the transformation of its RADIATIONS. Thus, genetically modified seeds and their plants and crops are often better looking, bigger, more resistant to draught and other adverse conditions which threaten their existence, repel adversary pests and have bigger yields per acrage. However, they have a grave disability which makes them enemies of poor peoples worldwide. They cannot reproduce themselves!. This means the recepient nations will become enslaved for seed crops to supplier nations and become food dependent, their political independence also thereby enchained. If such poor nations politically derail from the tracks of supplier nations, they may be denied seed crops, become hungry and starve. Nigeria’s debaters on both sides of the divide may wish to evaluate yet unclarified claims that Monsanto may have been sponsoring a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) to surreptitiously fund Boko Haram activities against about 40,000 farmers with a view to creating food shortage and introducing faster growing and bigger yielding seeds to fill the food shortage gap.

    In Akwa Ibom, natural cassava seed crops are almost going into extinction. The GM cassava seedling grows wide and deep in the soil and is, accordingly, named GIVE ME CHANCE cassava because it pushes all else aside to grow and matures in about six months, about half the tenure of natural cassava. GIVE ME CHANCE is also called FOLLOW ME TRAIN MY CHILDREN because it brings bigger harvest and money for school fees. I was shocked when, at the training of ANCHOR BORROWER’S maize farmers, I learned that ears of corn were treated with AFLASAVE to protect them against rodents and fungi. Tomato, pawpaw, cotton, potato, 94 per cent of the soybeans eaten in the United States and 92 per cent of maize in the U.S are genetically modified. They are fed to cattle and poultry, the by-products of which may end up in Nigeria. Some fish are GM. Nigerians consume a lot of imported fish. Studies are ongoing to genetically modify many farm products including yam, peanuts, cabbage, coconuts. Many more GM foods may be on the way. Sooner than later, man may discard the CREATION ORDER for the nurture of his body. Will the radiations from these foods be able to maintain the radiations of his body? Already, LEAKY GUT SYNDROME has been linked to GM foods and is linked to such diseases as those of the prostate gland, immune system disorder, depression, nerve damage and many more including all sorts of cancers. As NAFDAC says, as Dr. Segun Adeyemo affirms, and as I believe, the meal on the Nigerian dining table today could be a load of rat poisons in small dosages, though, for the large kilogram weight of the human body but, nevertheless, dangerous and poisonous when they accumulate in the tissues everyday. This is a consequence of the world of poisons in which we live or, better still, the world poisoned by man.

  • Which fruits will Southwest traditional religion day bear?

    Which fruits will Southwest traditional religion day bear?

    Every human thought, word and deed is a seed which bears multiples of fruits, I reminded myself last week as I remembered that  August 20 of every year in South-western Nigeria was now a traditional religion day and a public holiday as well in those six Nigerian states.

    The governors of these states are no strangers to the traditional religion of their people which, literally speaking, were conquered by Christianity and Islam. Chief priests and priestesses of traditional religion had been asking these governors for several years: If the country is now liberated from the political forces which brought these religions, and if South-Western Nigeria is always pre-eminent in the battles for freedom and democracy, why should traditional religion still be in bondage?, For now, what largely constitutes the “bondage” is that Christianity and Islam are accorded official public holidays for their adherents to celebrate important festivals whereas adherents of traditional religion have had no such privilege until August 20, 2025. Besides, some states did not allow them to carry out their practices in public. Some of these practices are considered fettish and backward, trample human rights and dignity. Nevertheless, encouraged by August 20 public holiday for traditional religion, the priests and priestesses are pressing for August  21 to also be a public holiday, even if both days do not yet add up to the four a-piece enjoyed by christians and moslems. I expect another demand in future for state financing of some of their activities, to balance with subsidised pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem. Beyond the  August 20, 2025 recognition and holiday, I wonder if traditional religion will now be taught in schools and if some of its fall-outs such as traditional medicine will mount higher pedestals.

    As I contemplated these questions and more, I remembered I had a rare privilege of a conversation on Natural Health and traditional beliefs with Dr Abayomi Aiyesimoju. He is a neurologist and chartered homeopath, the Medical Director of Healthville on Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Lagos, a natural medicine advocate on the platform of Partnership With Nature public presentations and consultant to Forever Living Products (FLP), an American multi-level marketing company which sells Aloe vera-based nutritional supplements globally. Arguably, he brought High Colonic Irrigation medicine to Nigeria. Soon, our conversations drifted into some conceptions of health and disease in Yoruba traditional medicine which derives from the cosmic realities of these people in Nigeria’s South-Western region.

    Read Also: Police arrest self-proclaimed “Obi of Lagos,” foil installation ceremony

    Here, as in other parts of the country, many sick or invalid persons do not limit themselves to one or two healing therapies, but to as many as they can find, trust or afford. Thus, several persons besiege allopathic doctors, and from them to herbalists and native doctors. Initiates know of serious differences among the herbalist (dispenser of herbs), Onisegun ( pharmacist, pharmacologist, pharmacognocist, compounder of medicines, native doctor), Babalawo (diviner), ifa(a profound system of divination and spiritual wisdom governed by Orisa Orunmila), orunmila (a deity reverred for wisdom, knowledge and ifa divination), Olorun (Owner or Lord of Heaven) and Olodumare (The Supreme Being). Whereas the herbalist dispenses herbs, the native doctors often go beyond the visible to the invisible as the causes of problems besieging the visible. I am not at sea with such descriptions, having had an Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) at 24, as I often describe in my writings, and being sensitive as well to some departed persons if bonds of love held and still hold us together, a situation many persons also experience.

    What intrigued me in those conversations with Dr Aiyesimoju and which I believe we may now be hearing a lot more of is that disease may not always be manifestations in tissue, blood, nerves, or bones but what we cannot see, that is astral or ethereal factors or prototypes which bring them about. South Western Nigerian traditional religion and traditional medicine healers believe, for example, that strokes and heart attacks may be caused by demons and phantoms which attach themselves or dig deep into organs which there toby lose their balance and fail, bringing the occurrences about. They employ a number of traditional religion and medicine methods bound to exorcism to free these organs of their assailants. Where they succeed, the patients recover. I have witnessed presentations which suggest that not all the practitioners are schooled full score in these protocols, and this may be why some of them are more reliable than the others.

    Where I am heading is the possibility of the development of a machine which is believed may help even orthodox medical doctors to appreciate what the traditional religion and traditional medicine healing value chain have been describing for ages but which, intellectually are not believed to be realities. For example, as I stated above, while the allopathic doctor and the herbalist treat strokes as blockages of blood circulation in the brain in their respective therapeutic ways, the native doctors see the blockages as the resultants of Astral or Ethereal events. This subject is heading towards the realm of the spirit, and of Creation, more of which I believe we should soon be hearing of according to the conceptions of them by Yoruba traditional religion. Before I come to this, I would like to conclude the outcome of my conversation with Dr Aiyesimoju. He is a versatile and researching doctor even in old age at close to 80 or slightly over. Last week, he replied to a follow up question by me in respect of our conversation:

    “ What I think you may be referring to is the PIP machine by Harry Oldfield. I have here some links relevant to it: https://www.matrixenergetics.com/pip.aspx

    PIP link

    https://www.electrocrystal.com/pip.html

    PIP link

    https://www.hypnosisresearchinstitute.org/blog.cfm/2021/6/1/Dr-Harry-Oldfield?utm_source=chatgpt.com

    PIP link, Seeing Spirit in morgues and people’s spirit guides

    PIP link Phantom limb

    I have indicated in the links some of the things particularly pertinent to what you said in your message like seeing phantom limbs, seeing spirit guides and spirits in morgues. Of course there is a great lot about what the PIP does basically, which is to reveal something of the energy radiation of the body and its organs in health and disease. PIP is Polycontrast Interference Photography. I have never contacted users or manufacturers but I am sure that from the links and references should you want to , you would be able to. Should you have further wishes please let me know. With kind regards Aiyesimoju”

    In addition to some of those links, I checked the internet for the PIP machine of Harry Oldfield and found the following literature:

    “The machine the doctor is referring to is likely the Polycontrast Interference Photography (PIP) machine developed by Harry Oldfield. This device uses a digital video camera and unique computer software to capture and process images of the body’s energy field.PIP works by capturing the energy field around the body, revealing patterns and frequencies that can indicate areas of imbalance or disease

    – It uses a colour-coded system to represent different energy patterns, allowing practitioners to identify areas of inflammation, stress, or other issues

    -It can be used to assess the effectiveness of treatments and track changes in the energy field over time

    PIP can help identify energetic imbalances that may be contributing to physical or emotional symptoms

    – Practitioners can use PIP to assess the impact of treatments on the energy field and make adjustments as needed

    PIP has been used to capture images of phantom limbs, which can be helpful in understanding and treating patients with amputations

    – Some practitioners have used PIP to capture images of spiritual guides, energies, or other non-physical phenomena.”

    Doubt And Belief

    I do not believe this machine can see or image ethereal matter but do not doubt the capacity of any machine to behold the lowest fringes of astral matter. Ethereal matter is of a different consistency from gross matter to which the earth belongs. Gross matter is delineable into three… Coarse gross matter, which human eyes and other sense organs can feel and see, unaided or aided with sophisticated gadgets; medium gross matter is much finer than coarse gross matter and is where the spoken word is formed into villages, towns and cities of like nature for the experiencing of their authors when they are called over; fine gross matter, much finer than medium gross matter, is where the human thought is similarly formed into corresponding habitations. Ethereal matter is another world altogether. If the physical body and all the machinery its brain can develop cannot cross the gross material barrier or penetrate medium and fine gross matter, it is impossible for them to see ethereal matter because ethereal matter is tangible to only ethereal matter. Since the earth-man bears ethereal matter within his make up, however, that part of him can be tangible to that part of the ethereal spheres it has developed sensitivity for, or maturity to experience. It is impossible, therefore, for coarse gross material machines to see ethereal matter.

    I am aware that some spiritists and occultists during seances and elsewhere do establish some forms of contact with the lowest fringes of intermediate zones between gross matter and medium gross matter with corresponding bodies in their make up which they may have forcibly or naturally developed to be sensitive in these regions. I am aware also that there are a few persons whose ethereal bodies while they are on earth have developed to the point of being sensitive to corresponding areas of the ethereal world consistent with the maturity of their ethereal bodies. Thus, I can assume that these machines may produce fine images of gross matter where gross matter transitionally phase into the coarsest areas of fine gross matter. This zone will be just half a step or one step outside gross matter because the vibrations still resonate with gross matter. This may confirm possible effects of fine grade coarse gross matter on coarse gross matter, or “astral” prototype impact on the physical body which suggests what traditional religion and traditional medicine are saying about disease having origins beyond the physical body.

    I cannot doubt this because Semyor Kirlian in his Kirlian photographic techniques had shown us that there is nothing which exists on earth which does not have a prototype finer than gross physical consistency. This is demonstrated in almost everything photographic using this photographic technique. Can we now not explain Ghost Pains under this conception? When a finger or a limb was severed years ago and the person with this dismembered part of his or her body feels they are still there and actually feels harrowing pains in their supposed “empty” spaces, what may be going on? I take a cue from all of these that I am not my body and you are not yours, that between us and our bodies there is even an intervening layer many persons call the Astral form or the prototype after which our bodies were formed. For me, Kirlian photographic technique and the machine Harry Oldfield developed merely confirm the Biblical statement…I knew thee before I formed thee in thy mother’s womb.

    What the healers of diseases such as stroke in traditional Yoruba medicine and this machine may be confirming is that…nothing can happen on earth which had not had an astral or even ethereal prototype after which the earthly event merely formed itself. Does the foetus in the womb not develop after its astral prototype? So, if in a disease we call a STROKE in which the machine reveals a demon-like structure with its claws dug into the astral prototype of the patient’s astral body, how can herbs and pharmaceutical drugs help this patient? Could this be why many cases of diseases appear incurable? I have painted these pictures to suggest that a vast curative energy may be released in Yoruba traditional medicine with the recognition by  Yoruba Governors of Yoruba traditional religion and by granting the adherents an August 20 public holiday, every year to celebrate conviction in which is embedded a cosmologinity about health. However, this will depend on how traditional Yoruba religion grows itself towards the recognition of God. Meanwhile, with all due respect, there would appear to have been a stagnation and retrogression in this endeavour. This will take us to the question:What is religion?

    The meaning of religion

    An intrinsic ability in the nature of man is the quest for self-discovery, self conciousness and development…and the longing for God. He may grope from below upwards or be guided from above. Guidance from above comes in form of divine messages which have always been distorted or mangled by man after the bringers have gone their own way. Thus, everywhere, we encounter these caricatures of the original messages which have become religions.

    The God willed recognition of him is through the Laws of Nature which bear His Creative Will.

    The early man began his spiritual education in this earth-school by familiarising himself with rivers, brooks, oceans, forests, rocks, the earth, sun and stars. Later, he learned they were all formed in the creative Will of God by Nature Beings and Elemental Beings. If he was ill and a being in the fields showed him a herb which cured his ailment, he carved an image of this being and worshipped it. Thus, he knew of the water sprites, gnomes, elves and salamanders. Later, he knew they had leaders and Lords and began to worship them, too. The tutons, an ancient Germanic tribe found today largely in Northern Germany and in Denmark, grew in their recognition to know of Valhalla and Olympus, Lords of the elementals. They believed Valhalla was a land of honour up, up in the universe where honourable humans were permitted to reside who worked, walked and fought on the side of the gods. They saw Olympus as the homestead of the gods, particularly Zeus and other olympian deities. These were the realms of animistic beings. Had their recognitions continued to grow upwards, they would have recognised the existence of paradise, their orign and home and, beyond there, received tidings of substantiate divinity which they can never personally behold, that is of the Queen of Heaven, the ArchAngels, the Angels and the 24 elders. Beyond this recognition also, would have come tidings of the Unsubstantiate God Almighty Who can never be seen in His Unsubstantiality by all His creatures.

    When St Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon missionary also known as Winfrid, over-ran them with Christianity, he had their idols confisticated and imposed belief in the Supreme God. This was contrary to the spiritual plan of education under which man was to grow in the knowledge of his primary environment and upwards to the knowledge of nature beings and elemental beings, their leaders and Lords , upwards into Ethereal spheres and into the Animistic spheres from where elemental beings, nature beings and the souls of animals derive their orign. It is from here man was to progress his education into The Spiritual realm his origin and through Grace learn through Divine messages of the Divine Substantiate spheres which are the abodes of the Queen of Heaven, the ArchAngels, the Angels and the 24 elders. A substantiate being is one with a known form. After the knowledge of Divine Substantiate comes knowledge of Divine Unsubstantiate…God, whose form no man will ever know or see.

    Missionary work obstructed this schooling plan. It became like taking a primary school child straight to the university and preventing him from experiencing intermediate education. Thus, today, Faith is not Living Conviction and therefore artificial. When the average Christian is seriously ill today, he ends up not in a church but in the home of a native doctor! For that is where the living conviction of his spirit is, not in the Supreme God, because he has not progressed inwardly to even Olympus and Valhalla to not mention paradise and substantiate divinity.

    Before now, the Yorubas attained the recognition of God without Euro-Americans and Arabians. Their traditional religion, in which is rooted their traditional medicine, anchors this conviction in their language. For example, they affirm… ASE GBE KO SI, ASE PAMO LO WA; ESAN KO GBO OoGUN, ESAN NI AKOBI OLODUMARE. This means…No deed is lost. It can only be hidden. Esan (Justice) defies remedies; justice is the first child of God. What is the Justice of God, if not the Holy Spirit who the Lord Jesus warned was coming to judge the world? The Bible also forewarns that the  Spirit of God hovered over the land. Olodumare means Olodu omo Aare. Odu is secret. Olodu means owner of world secret. Omo AaRe means Son of the Light. God is the light. The son of the light who is Esan (Justice) is the Spirit of Truth, The Holy Spirit.

  • Mother of dad’s baby nurses medical school ambition

    Mother of dad’s baby nurses medical school ambition

    I feel impelled today to short circuit my way to 27 May 2026, the next CHILDREN’S DAY. None other than the 18-year-old girl I code named SG in the children’s day column of two years ago is the cause of it. I heard good news about her this week which I cannot hold until next year. SG was one of three girls whose story touched my heart in 2023. They all attended Lagos secondary schools. The first passed in annoying circumstances. She was troubled by sickle cell anaemia, was chronically anaemic and was continually pressed by her parents to make schooling her priority when they should have first attended to her health. Surprisingly, too, was the fact that neither her class teacher nor the school counsellor saw her death coming, even when she physically looked terribly ill and weak and, as her friends said, sometimes fainted in school. Her teacher and the counsellor would arrange for the sickly girl to be taken home to her parents. A few days later, she would return to school and her health would again regress in that vicious cycle. Why the school did not take her matter far more seriously I still do not understand. Was it a case of overpopulation in her school where about 100 girls huddled in a classroom and the teacher was overwhelmed with work everyday?

    The second girl became pregnant at 15 for a boy aged 23 she thought was her hero. She was intelligent and gifted in the understanding and handling of technique driven ways and means of existence. She has very little to eat and to feed her baby with. Money is not easily forthcoming. She abandoned home to live with friends because she is fed up with the “drama” of aunts and uncles who now find almost everything about her reproachable. She is a listening girl, otherwise she may have abandoned the baby somewhere or, as she once suggested she could, sold her and gone her way. I kept reminding her that her parents did no such thing to her and she should refrain from such an act whenever the baby came. She is all alone today with her baby in a village, still unsure of what to make of her life. Periodically, I get in touch with her to motivate her, to prevent her from drowning in depression, as her circumstances became more precarious. She is learning that, for the female gender, there are few heroes among today’s men, that most are predators!

    SG is a different kettle of fish. She is the third girl I mentioned in that year’s CHILDREN’S DAY column. She is the one this column is discussing. I learned of her when she was 17 and in SS 3. Her father and mother never married. Her mother married another man, and her father another woman by whom he has four children. SG was always tops in her class. Her teachers and friends did not know her father had been seeing her, and that she had become pregnant for him. SG thought she could conceal the pregnancy until she would be through with her Senior School Certificate exams. She was sure she would make the grades for medical school. Alas, the bubble burst and she had to leave school in shame before the exams.

    Her father made her pregnant when she was barely 18. Generative power, the highest energy profile of the human body, had broken forth in her, bringing along the spur of puberty and the urge to sniff, taste and enjoy the offerings of her environment. But she had no knowledge of how to contain the sexual urge or instincts, a problem for many adults even in their fifties, sixties and seventies today, as we can observe in many cases of defilement and rape. Additionally, she could not stop her father or tell on him because she did not know where all of that could end. The sexual instinct is natural, otherwise it would not have been an intrinsic part of the human body. To enjoy it and to use it aright, we must understand the reason it is implanted in the gross material body, which is not necessarily for procreation alone. Maybe I should quickly add that SEXUAL INCONTINENCE is wrong and may generate uncontrollable explosions under the counter pressure it would engender. I am not by this also advocating the PRINCIPLE OF LETTING YOURSELF GO. As in this case of father and daughter, the principle will suggest that resistance is troubling, and that the best form of living is bowing to nature or to nature’s call. While this may be true for animals, we should not forget that man is not an animal but a human spirit from the spiritual realm of existence who inhabits an animal body specially prepared by nature beings for his use on earth to which he has descended to perform a special task. Therefore, what is relevant to the animal is not to man whose orign in creation is higher. For man, a different law applies. By this law, which must be a litmus test for all of us in whatever we do, we are free to enjoy everything placed in our way, but under two conditions. The first is that what we seek to enjoy must be enjoyed in the sense in which it was given to us. The second is that… we must not bring harm to other persons  while we enjoy our desires.

    This story is unfolding. A father who enjoys sex with his daughter who is afraid to tell on him has not, in my view, enjoyed sex in the sense in which creation offered it to him. Also, in my view, enjoyment of his desire has negatively impacted the life of his teenage daughter and threatened to damage her striving for education.

    In my twenties, I discovered in a spiritual teaching connected with THE COSMIC TURNING POINT in which we stand today an Almighty formula which may enable every serious minded person to overcome sexual entanglements or dirty sex, even as the Biblical Joseph was able to crush it, provided we are ready to summon this power to our defence and rescue when we are assailed by our weaknesses or those of other person’s. We must also understand what processes activate it and energise it and how the processes may be aborted to save us from inimical consequences of bowing to them. This would require another column. Suffice it to say that the alarm bells to watch out for in this process include

    1)(Thought volition, that is deep or fleeting) which react upon

    2) The instincts to produce

    3) Feeling which, further reacted upon by thoughts will produce

    4)IMAGINATION. This is a crucial stage when the spirit begins to construct an astral form of what it wants to do. The astral form is a prototype for the physical form. Even the physical body derives from an astral form. When the astral form is well configured, the next stage is

    5) OPPORTUNITY. This is when a man and a woman find themselves alone…and anything can happen. The Biblical Joseph aborted the process at this stage. SG could not with her father several times…and the baby came!

    I doubt if this process is taught in SEX EDUCATION at school. The process can be aborted at any stage. Even opportunity can be denied an action by ensuring that two persons of the opposite gender who cannot hold themselves should NEVER BE ALONE TOGETHER.

    THE SG STORY

    She was a studious girl set to write her final SS 3 exams when her bulge could no longer be hidden. So, she dropped out of school but determined to not give up on her education. When I heard her story, I decided to support her dream in whichever way I could. She was moved from her father’s residence to her aunt’s. The father insisted his daughter return home, but the request was rejected. When he began to steal in once a while even when everyone else was away at work, it was thought he was going too far and may strike again. Some persons thought his case was better reported to the authorities. A successful prosecution could earn him life imprisonment!

    SG appealed against this. She loved her father, not as the father of her baby, but as someone who facilitated her coming to the earth. That touched me. Would I want my father jailed for life for whatever infraction he may commit against me? Did the Lord Jesus on the cross of crucifixion not pray that His assassins be forgiven their deed and misdeed? SG also said she liked her father to be able to look after her four half siblings. Again, this was consideration for one’s neighbour, however much inconvenience he may have strewn on her path. SG brought every-one, thereby, to the province of LIFE and earthly LAW.

    In life, which needs nothing else to be, gives existence to all things, lies THE LAW out of which everything came into being and is maintained. These are the inviolable and unswerving natural laws or The Laws of Nature. They are very simple to comprehend and to appreciate, need no university education to understand. They are different from earthly laws which a thousand lawyers and a thousand judges would interprete in thousands of divergent or parallel directions. In natural law, only the person who is directly hurt by another can FORGIVE the offender. Once this is done genuinely, the guilt on the offender falls away from him or her and a once crimson -red person thus becomes white as snow. So, if the state punishes him after the injured person has forgiven him, the state commits a sin before the Laws of Nature. For those officers of the state who may assume they are acting or acted according to the constitution, legal process or some other “legitimate” instruction, there is NO HIDING under The Laws of Nature. They undergive our existence, bringing us reward or punishment, and the health of our bodies. In this regard, I share the views of this subject of Commodore Gbolalahan Mudashiru (rtd), former military governor of Lagos State(in the days of the Federal Military Government of Gen Muhammadu Buhari and Gen Tunde Idiagbon).

    Read Also: Winning cybersecurity war without losing Nigerians

    We all can recall how brutal the Federal Government of that time was, and of how unsparing of human life it could have been. Against that “psychic” pressure, Commodore Gbolahan MUDASHIRU (rtd) refused to sign papers for the execution of convicted armed robbers. Successive governors in Lagos State and in some other states have followed his footsteps. Aren’t the thoughts which governed his world-view worth knowing and followed? For me, he simply said “I did not create this fellow, so I cannot take his life, irrespective of whether my fellow humans, hiding behind the protection of earthly law, have carried out what they believe is fool-proof investigation.

    So, if SG said she had forgiven her father, and we believe what we tie or loosen on earth is simultaneously tied or loosened in heaven, what offence has her father committed against us? As lovers and disciples of goodness, which is a quality of life in whom we believe, as LIFE is GOD, should we rather not rally round SG as she joyfully, radiantly and devotedly pick the pieces of her life and is re-assembling them? What has she done to make her deserve empathy from us?

    A FORWARD LOOKING SG

    She gave her baby to her aunt, who sent her to work as a cleaner in a private primary school to eke a small living to take care of the baby. When the budget became tight, the aunt thought of sending the baby to an orphanage and ending the story. I advised against this. SG did not throw her baby away. I put myself in the place of this baby. How would I feel today, even at 75, if I did not know my father or mother? I have been helping several persons to stabilise themselves in this boat. A well known person in our country denied paternity of the first child in a boy-meets-girl relarionship. The boy, at 18, looked every line like him. His half siblings knew their own father. He made their mother’s home a hell to live in, not out of hate but out of desire to know his father. So, I spoke to this gentleman who agreed the boy could see him. This was after the boy’s graduation from the university. They met… and this man still categorically denied paternity of the young man. He also rejected request for a DNA test. His wife told him the son was his. He threatened to end their marriage if she had dealings with him. His mother and uncles pleaded to no avail. However, the young man was very happy I got them to meet.

    So SG’s auntie kept the baby while SG went to work. From her meagre income, she re-registered at school for the SSCE which she had missed . Those of us who could make our widow’s mite financial contributions to her dream did so. Meanwhile, her baby was sent to her step mother in the village to stop her father from coming near her, under pretence of coming to visit the baby. SG told me she wished to study medicine. Her results in the West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) released about two weeks ago shows she can. Please, see them below

    Economics A1

    Civic Education C4

    English Language C4

    General Mathematics B2

    Agricultural Science C5

    Biology. B3

    Chemistry A1

    Physics. B2

    Unfortunately, she did not write the last JAMB exams. She was too shy to ask anyone for money to purchase the registration form. I was upset and resolved it would not happen again. This is the sort of young woman women’s development organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations should seek out and help, protecting their identities and privacies while doing so. I wish I still have the contact telephone addresses of Mrs Nkiruka Okoro and Mrs Benedicta Kole James. They are good at such things. They worked with me in The Guardian newspaper and at The Comet newspaper. I hope that by or before or shortly after May 27, 2026, I should be able to update this beautiful progression of SG story.

    This story will continue to be a troubling story to all the parties involved. SG’s father must still be a restless man. I do not think there is a sane man who likes to have a baby by his daughter. I do not know how I would feel today if I am a son of my paternal grandfather by my mother. As for SG, how would she put it to her heartthrob of the future that she had a child early in life by not a boyfriend but by her own father? How many men today will not develop cold feet when they hear the story? However, these may be mere human expressions for as we always discover in life, what will be will be. For now, my prayer is that SG be blessed with Good Samaritans who would bring to fruition a great dream on which she is working so hard irrespective of her shattering experiences.

  • June 12 Honours…knocks on Bayo Onanuga and Co, Alex Ibru (5)

    June 12 Honours…knocks on Bayo Onanuga and Co, Alex Ibru (5)

    I am back again in a newsroom examination hall. The chief examiner is Mr Kingsley Osadolor, my deputy when I was Editor of The Guardian newspaper, Editor of The Sunday title when I was Director of Publications and Editor-in-Chief and, after my retirement, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper. Mr Osadolor said I abused the privilege of an editorial platform to write a column on natural medicine by publishing on that platform this series of articles on June 12 Democracy Day National Honours.

    Over the years, I have learned to not make comments on what I am not acquainted with. I comment only on what I experience, or what have become experiencing for me. When I write about herbs and their healing potentials, Iam encouraged to do so by literature in more than 200 books in my study written by leading figures in this art world-wide, who back their claims with verifiable clinical expertise. I personally use many of the herbs as well. Outside this field, I have learned to ask myself; How much of myself do I know ? Saying we know someone , when we are only familiar with him or her, is an abuse of language. The same happens when we give the impression that we know what someone is doing or has done, because, thereby, we are vouching that we know the A-Z of that person or process.

    I believe Mr Osadolor made this mistake when, categorically, in his limited view, he said I abused the privilege of this publication in a column designated as NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY. Superficially looking at this title or designation, Mr Osadolor would be right. However, he is incorrect because he did not see through the depths, through origins of the conception. Everything has an origin, purpose or raison detre. I “RECEIVED” this LOGO, did not think it out. It came from INTUITIVE PERCEPTION, not INTELLECTUAL triffle. I will define the crucial words to distinguish the work of intuition from the work of intellect and, thereby, situate the perception of Mr Osadolor where it rightly belongs… in the realm of the intellect. As bright as intellectual work may appear to be, it is inferior to intuitive work, origin of the logo, which is more expansive because, in scope, the intellect is confined by earthly parameters of time and space and, therefore, cannot soar beyond this confinement.

    In the following definition of terms, four words are crucial for an in-depth understanding of what the logo and, therefore, the column seeks to achieve. They are NATURAL, REMEDIES, MIND and BODY.

    Read Also: IYD: Shun irregular migration, embrace skills for national growth, NTAC DG tells Nigerian youths

    NATURAL

    This word connotes living a life that is natural, and this means living in accordance with THE LAWS OF NATURE. These laws can also be termed THE LAWS OF GOD IN CREATION or THE LANGUAGE He speaks to His creatures and which they must strive to learn in order to understand His Will and not run into trouble with the machinery of creation. Creation is governed by laws which enforce adherence to His Will. Therefore, the laws of nature are like the manual of operations through which the designer of a motor car, instructs the owner or motorist about how to use the vehicle or maintain it. If the motor car is well used and well maintained, it will serve purposes for which it was manufactured. Several years ago, I gave home and public lectures based on natural lifestyles. I titled them THE KEY TO PEACE AND HAPPINESS. How pleasant will existence be for a child in the home of his or her parents if he or she does not understand the language of communication in that home? Everything which exists came through these laws and are subject to them. We know about those of sowing and reaping from the Bible, Gravity , (from science), the cycle (from blood circulation, evaporation and rainfall, sunrise and sunset, birth and death) , gradualism and Radiations among others. It is because we do not obey them that our world is upside down, whether in government, education, marriage, nutrition, management of states of disease, business, investor-worker relations, call to service as guardians on earth such as the founding fathers of The Guardian newspaper found themselves, and opposition to such calls, as THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN has sought to explain vicissitudes of this newspaper. Thus, it is within the province of the column to address questions relating to infringements of the laws of nature as foundations of troubles which assail human MIND and BODY.

    REMEDIES

    These are prescriptions of the laws of nature for anomalies created by disrespect for these laws. Two weeks ago or so, I made my widow’s mite contribution to the ongoing efforts to reform Nigeria’s Constitution for a healthier society. I suggested Nigeria’s present six geo-political regions become self- governing, each under a Governor General, while the office of the President be subsumed. The Governor General would superitend a wholesome, organic economy and cultural growth of his region. Currently, the states in a region are not harmonised by any authority and tend to drift hither and tither as national political waves blow them about. The regions have no unified goals, no direction, no serious purpose. If under the proposition mentioned, a region wishes to address food shortage and rail transportation, all the states must unify their thinking and budgets in favour of the agenda. Isn’t this what the arrangement of the human body teaches us? Is the human body not a product of the laws of nature, as human societies? There are many biological systems which inhabit from the human body, like human races and tribes which inhabit the surface of the earth and particular countries, such as Nigeria. In the human body, these biological systems include but are not limited to the skeletal, respiratory, digestion, reproductive, immune, blood circulation, the nerves, digestion, urinary etc. The cells and tissue of each are differentiated from those of others. They are like tribes of humanity. No one dominates or seeks to absorb or annihilate the other unless something is going wrong. How healthy would you feel, if teeth begin to grow in your eyes or brain, or if bones erupt in your heart or intestine?

    MIND

    We speak of mind-over-matter. Scientists cannot figure out what the “MIND” is, because it is weightless and unverifiable by research tools but they accept there is something more to earth man than blood and flesh. I discovered this at 24 in 1974 as I often write when I had my first OUT-OF BODY-EXPERIENCE (OBE). My brother, Architect Tunji Kusa, who shared a bed with me that night is a living witness of what I write. I came out of my body, and beheld my body fast asleep in bed beside him. An astral or ethereal soul was in the room to attack me. I do not “shake like a leaf” when confronted by adversity as Mr Osadolor suggested in his rejoinder. How much does he know about himself not to mention of another person and from which sources these other persons receive inspirations which energise and drive the visible works of his hands. It would be a Hallmark of presumption, conceit and vanity if anyone says he or she “knows” the other. What we call “the mind” is SPIRIT, the living ego in the earth-man , the I in the language who speaks, in the possessive sense, of “my head” or “my stomach”, that which came out of my body that great night in 1974 to defend his sleeping body. Since then, I have concerned myself seriously with the meaning of existence.

    BODY

    The body is the dust casing in which the spirit exists on earth. It has no life of its own , was animated by the spirit on its incarnation to set off foetal blood circulation and the first kicks of pregnancy. This body would later serve for the soul’s anchorage on earth for the fufilment of the task assigned to it in this part of creation. The highest capacity and tool of this body is the INTELLECT, anchored in the brain. It is meant, by the Laws of Nature, to be the tool or servant of the spirit on earth. In the majority of mankind, however, it has pushed the spirit aside and taken over the throne. That is why many persons no longer do anything right on earth. An active, soaring Spirit is different. It easily connects with the higher spheres of existence from where it received guidance which the subordinated intellect easily implements.

    I would have been electrocuted by high tension cables about 20 years ago, if my intellect governed me. I had parked my car on the road and gone into my residence to prepare for the office. Done, and set to go out, I approached the perimeter fence gate. As I was about to open it, the INNER VOICE, that is THE INTUITIVE PERCEPTION of the spirit expressed in the INNER VOICE, suggested I go to re-check the house entrance door. The intellect wondered why I should since I double checked it under one minute earlier. That quiet voice suggested…WHAT WILL IT COST YOU TO DO SO? I obliged. As I turned round, and before I took the first step, I heard sounds of cracking metals right on the road, in front of the house. I thought armed robbers were operating and tip-toed to the back of the house for safety! Later, I discovered fallen high tension cables on my car. I had not noticed that a wooden electric pole was beside my foot gate. Termites had eaten it up from the bottom. That morning, it collapsed. Had I not obeyed the inner voice, that voice of my Guardian SPIRIT to not let the intellect be my guide, I would have been electrocuted.

    I told the story to underscore the fact that we are linked to higher spheres from which we receive guidance and that it was through such guidance that I RECEIVED the idea for the logo NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY. This high guidance also provided the ideas which led to the editorial compartmentalisation of THE GUARDIAN and its profitability from the fifth year onwards. Everyone is linked to high guidance. Whether he or she strives to activate the network which spans the earth to Paradise is another matter.

    Long before I came to The Guardian, I had been steadily guided towards the knowledge of extra terrestrial existence. I mentioned some of these steps in the introduction of my website. My first OBE and several others which followed continually grew my interest in what many of us still call “THE BEYOND” that is a world beyond our physical abilities to experience and to explore. Such persons have not arrived at recognitions that they bear within them the material consistency of this world within them and that it is inert if they do not activate it. Everything boils down to activating every ability of the spirit lying dormant within and that was why The Lord Jesus admonished us to SEEK, promising that we shall find, to KNOCK, promising that the door shall be opened unto us, to ASK and it shall be given unto you. Active in these dimensions, I increasingly recognised that the human Spirit is on earth, a school of Life to grow from CONSCIOUSNESS OF EXISTENCE of the spirit germ to SELF CONSCIOUSNESS and, from there, to consciousness of its environment, the other beings who inhabit it with him, Creation and the Almighty Creator discern the purpose of all these as the recognition of The Will of God, unconditional submission to this Will and become privileged, upon its development, into a HUMAN BEING to participate in the further development of this part of creation through ennoblement by the Spirit.

    The picture I am painting for the definition of the task of my column, NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY, is not fictional as some doubting Thomases would like to imagine.

    One more example should drive home this point. On a Monday in August 1998, my mother who passed on 5th August 1959 told me in a dream my father had left the flesh. Two days after, a Wednesday, my father came to me in a dream to hold my hand and to announce to me that he had gone, that I should remember his discussions with me and that I should tidy his affairs. On that previous Monday, I had asked Mr Gbenga George in my office at The Guardian to take him to hospital, to see his doctor, Professor Bukola Adefule-Oshitelu of The Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) who confirmed him to be in good health for his age at 76. I was to see him on Saturday. After I rose from that Wednesday dream at about 3.40am, I went to my wife in her room to inform her I would leave home in Ikeja by six for Obanikoro where he lived. Before six, my brother, Yinka, who lived with him, and one of his tenants were at my gate, knocking. I knew what had happened. As soon as I let them in and I asked what happened and Yinka replied “Daddy”, I stopped him and informed him Daddy had come to tell me. Our “discussion” he wanted me to remember was that his body must not be kept in a refrigerator and should be interred on the Saturday that would follow his passing. Through the help of Reverend Adenugba, who heard this story, I was able to get the church in the village to comply with his will. If I had been a person who “shakes like a leaf” as Mr Osadolor imagines, I would not have done what I did next. My culture demanded that I report my father’s passage to his siblings and elders in the community who would hold family meetings that may delay the interrment for three months. I would not be trapped between culture and the man who as my father facilitated my entrance into this part of the world. I bravely stood on his side and carried out the interrment as he wished it be done without informing members of his family and the village elders. Some editors of The Guardian attended the funeral, despite the short notice. A vibrant inner life gave me the inner strength for this defiant activity.

    In the course of this inner growth, the divination of my birth as a healer in succession to my paternal grandfather who as a prince of the royal court of the Awujale of Ijebu land ministered to the health of the Awujale of his days, began to merge with my aspirations in life to help my fellow humans in the field of health. My grandmother’s breast cancer in 1980, two years after I returned from youth service, further activated this desire. I began to buy and to read books on ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE which were being written at that time by Orthodox medical doctors in Europe and America who were expanding the frontiers of MEDICINE into the ambit of herbs and spiritual medicine. Doctor Norman Shealy, a surgeon, and Journalist Carolyn Myss, hoisted the flag of energy medicine in the United States. Their book, based on their clinical experiences of healing even cancer of the breast without drugs, was titled THE CREATION OF HEALTH. In it, they even categorically stated that the human ego, the human Spirit, was behind radiant health or dis-ease . I continually reviewed such books and passed the reviews to persons such as Chief Bola Ige. In time, I was guided into expanding the reviews to encompass spiritual content, and then to the logo NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY.

    Each word bears a powerful radiation of its own. Together, they are a constant reminder to me of the field of activity IAM called upon to work with them. No one received them for me. So, Mr Kingsley Osadolor cannot de-limit their application. That would be presumptuous, vain, conceit and even garrulous murder of a living spiritual idea.

    Since 1999, that is for 26 years, I have published a column of varied content under the conception of the logo NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY. They range from CHRISTMAS, EASTER and PENTECOST to President Tinubu’s inauguration in 2023 and herbal medicines for various ailments of the human body, including cancers and uterine fibroids. So, why would THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN be an exception? The question Mr Osadolor did not answer include why he fled from home on learning of the GUARDIAN’s closure, and why he failed to share the information with his direct boss Femi Kusa, but with Andy Akporugo if there were no immediate and direct links with the publication INSIDE ASO ROCK. They lived in a block of six flats where five senior editorial staff of The Guardian lived. Two of them were senior members of the editorial board. Why did only two of them flee? Were these two not the only ones connected with inside Aso Rock?