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Category: Natural Health

  • Q AND A: Chanca for fibroids, Walnut for brain balance

    Q AND A: Chanca for fibroids, Walnut for brain balance

    Today is Questions and Answers (Q&A) day. Top on the bill is Uterine Fibroids. Next comes what we may call Behaviour Balance, a concern of Menta Health, which has several compartments. Thousands of Nigerian women literally shuttle between pillar and post every day for a cure, which is often elusive in an ever-growing market of advertised proprietary formulas. Surgery does not appeal to many of the cure seekers because some women have been reported to die in the theatre or soon after, or because of the fears of scar tissues, which may prevent pregnancy.

    I receive many questions and enquiries regarding whether CHANCA PIEDRA and other herbs may be of help, and if vegetables such as OKARA may compound the problem.

    CHANCA PIEDRA? Logic supports the suggestion that this herb may be relevant in uterine fibroid therapy. There is always something in a name, even in human names. In Asia, the word Chanca Piedra means STONE BREAKER OR STONE CRUSHER. It earned this name because it is observed to dissolve or crush kidney and gallbladder stones. From this observation, eye surgeon Prof. Bukola Adefule-Oshitelu has prepared its extracts for use in eye cataracts therapy, since this condition is a stone or stone formed in the gelatinous fluid in the eye lens, which transmits  light impressions to the light-sensitive portion of the retina, from where resultant  images are forwarded  to the brain.

    For this reason, Chanca Piedra plays a double role for the treatment of glaucoma in the hands  of Prof. Adefule-Oshitelu, because  this stone crusher is also an hypotensive, that is, a natural medication that lowers blood pressure by helping the kidneys to expel fluid. Thus, while Chanca Piedra as an eye drop formula may drive out excess fluid from the eye and lower intra-ocular pressure (IOP), it may also crush the cataract stone(s).

    Since I began to use this preparation some years ago, I have had no need for orthodox formulas such asTimotol and  Timolol, to which I often reacted with low blood pressure, since, at 110/70, I may be prone to this condition.

    This Chanca Piedra preparation complements the original formula of another substance, GARCINIA KOLA (Orogbo in Yoruba or Bitter kola in English). Bitter kola extracts do not crush kidney stones but lower IOP and prevent and  cure infections.

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    An octogenarian who attended the Guinness Eye Clinic of Professor Adefule-Oshitelu at the Lagos University Teaching Hospitals (LUTH) but did not use her orthodox medicine prescription gave her this formula. At the request of some of her patients, Prof. Adefule-Oshitelu sometimes combines Garcinia and Chanca in one formula. Lately, she has added a third name, ABERE (d:d:d), which is said to also be a cataract fighter like Chanca. With these credentials, Chanca Piedra is often recommended for uterine fibroids therapy in the conviction that what would tame the goose would also conquer the gander. This is because uterine fibroids sometimes grow into a stone. Many suggestions have been offered for this occurrence. One is that Calcium and Magnesium are out of balance in their normal 2:1 ratio and excess Calcium is infiltrating uterine fibroids tissues. Another suggestion is that abnormally high levels of COLLAGEN, the body’s most abundant protein, is being produced in this tissue and hardening into a stone. So, it is thought that Chanca may be taken in diverse forms to attack and crush these stones.

    A Chanca therapy cure is reported below from five studies reviewed from PUBMED, the platform which warehouses the findings of several important medical studies. The review by an expert says:

    “1. Phyllanthus niruri extract inhibits human uterine leiomyoma cell growth (2018)

    This in vitro study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology found that Chanca piedra extract inhibited the growth of human uterine leiomyoma cells, suggesting potential anti-fibroid activity.

    2. Phyllanthus niruri reduces estrogen-induced uterine fibroids in rats (2015)

    This animal study published in the Journal of Herbal Medicine found that Chanca piedra extract reduced the size of estrogen-induced uterine fibroids in rats, indicating possible therapeutic effects.

    3. Phyllanthus niruri inhibits fibroid cell proliferation and induces apoptosis (2020)

    This in vitro study published in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine found that Chanca piedra extract inhibited fibroid cell proliferation and induced apoptosis (cell death), suggesting potential anti-fibroid mechanisms.

    4. Phyllanthus niruri extract suppresses inflammatory responses in human uterine fibroid cells (2019)

    This in vitro study published in the Journal of Inflammation found that Chanca piedra extract suppressed inflammatory responses in human uterine fibroid cells, which may contribute to its potential therapeutic effects.

    5. Clinical evaluation of Phyllanthus niruri in the treatment of uterine fibroids (2012)

    This small-scale clinical trial published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found that Chanca piedra supplementation reduced fibroid size and improved symptoms in patients with uterine fibroids. However, the study had a limited sample size and lacked a control group.

    With belief in the healing power of plant medicine still not being universal, many doubting Thomases in conventional medicine or orthodox medicine always suggest the need for bigger studies with Chanca Piedra therapy for uterine fibroids and other health conditions.

    A discussion of uterine fibroids and their possible natural cures in Nigeria may be incomplete if it does not address the fears of many women that  some food crops such as OKARA cause or compound uterine fibroids. I am aware of manywomen who voraciously consume OKARA but have not developed uterine fibroids. My observation is confirmed by the beliefs of some researchers whose views they summarise below:

    “There is no conclusive evidence that okra (also known as okra or lady’s fingers) causes or worsens uterine fibroids. Okra is a nutrient-rich vegetable that is commonly consumed in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Asia.

    Some studies suggest that okra may have beneficial effects on women’s health, including:

    1. Antioxidant properties: Okra contains antioxidants that may help protect against oxidative stress and inflammation, which can contribute to the development of fibroids.

    2. Anti-inflammatory properties: Okra has anti-inflammatory compounds that may help reduce inflammation and alleviate symptoms associated with fibroids.

    3. Hormonal balance: Okra may help regulate hormonal imbalances, which can contribute to the growth of fibroids.

    However, it is essential to note that individual results may vary, and more research is needed to fully understand the relationship between okra consumption and uterine fibroids”.

    Neem

    If I may proceed beyond the brief on Chanca Piedra, I would say it is not the only plant medicine that can resolve or support uterine fibroids therapy. There are about 20 possible causes of this condition, and, so, we should expect not just one solution. The possible causes include, but are not limited to, deoxygenation, poor blood circulation, hormonal imbalance, calcification, free radicals activities and antioxidant deficiencies, potassium deficiencies and elevated sodium blood level, germ colonisation etc. In respect of sodium elevation, some conditions have improved with the elimination of monosodium glutamate (MSG, i.e., taste enhancer) an increase consumption of potassium-rich foods and fruits such as banaba, in ripe plantain and the peel cooked and eating together, avocado pear, yam and potato,among others.

    One of the useful herbs I would like to add to Chanca Piedra is the leaf or oil of dogoyaro (Neem tree), which grows well in Nigeria. The following testimonials come from an expert research opinion:

    “Major studies reported in PubMed for the treatment of uterine fibroids with Neem:

    • Azadirachta indica (Neem) leaf extract inhibits growth of human uterine leiomyoma cells (2018) PubMed ID: 29453811

    This in vitro study found that Neem leaf extract inhibited the growth of human uterine leiomyoma cells, suggesting potential anti-fibroid activity.

    •Neem oil inhibits estrogen-induced uterine fibroids in rats (2015) PubMed ID: 25736441

    This animal study found that Neem oil reduced the size of estrogen-induced uterine fibroids in rats, indicating possible therapeutic effects.

    •Azadirachta indica (Neem) leaf extract induces apoptosis in human uterine fibroid cells (2020) PubMed ID: 32234512

    This in vitro study found that Neem leaf extract induced apoptosis (cell death) in human uterine fibroid cells, suggesting potential anti-fibroid mechanisms.

    •Neem leaf extract suppresses inflammatory responses in human uterine fibroid cells (2019) PubMed ID: 30934312

    This in vitro study found that Neem leaf extract suppressed inflammatory responses in human uterine fibroid cells, which may contribute to its potential therapeutic effects.

    •Clinical evaluation of Azadirachta indica (Neem) in the treatment of uterine fibroids (2018) PubMed ID: 29374112

    This small-scale clinical trial found that Neem supplementation reduced fibroid size and improved symptoms in patients with uterine fibroids. However, the study had a limited sample size and lacked a control group.”

    Question2:

    Walnut

    We are in the season of the black walnut in Nigeria. I have been eating it because I am told by some spiritualists that we should joyfully eat every fruit and food in season as they are gifts from nature, which knows what our bodies need from time to time. I have also heard that the black walnut and its leaves are good for mental health care. How true is this?

    Answer

    Walnut and behaviour balance

    “Behaviour balance” is a fascinating name on the health food store shelf for anyone with behaviour snags or who is shopping for someone else so assailed. I chose the two words “behaviour balance” to answer the question above because I often suggested a proprietary plant medicine brand called BEHAVIOUR BALANCE for some mental health challenges which border on behaviour imbalances. The content of this product include:

    •Walnut leaf… Known for its calming and anti-anxiety properties.

    •Passionflower… Traditionally used to treat anxiety, insomnia, and restlessness.

    •Lavender… Recognised for its calming and relaxing effects.

    •Valerian root… Used to promote relaxation, reduce stress, and improve sleep quality.

    •Chamomile… Known for its soothing and calming properties.

    •GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid)… A neurotransmitter that helps regulate calmness and relaxation.

    •5-HTP (5-Hydroxytryptophan)… An amino acid that supports mood balance and relaxation.

    To the enquirer who reminded me that we were again in the Walnut season, I say “thank you” because the reminder that I always mention it and its leaves every season encouraged me to buy a #1,000 worth of black walnut last week, which I ate with every meal for three days and topped up with Alligator pepper, also called THE GRAINS OF PARADISE, to shake off the cold of this season.

    I was introduced to the healing properties of Walnut by THE PSYCHIC GARDEN of Millie Uyldert on two main grounds, namely:

    •The signature tune,

    •The practical work of the Emperor of France.

    Signature tune

    Many herbalists believe that the shape of healing plants and fruits suggests the organs or systems of the body they significantly support. So, what is the signature tune of the black walnut? It has two hemispheres like the frontal brain, the cerebrum, and a pith tissue in the middle which corresponds with the median tissue of the cerebrum.

    •Emperor’s orchards

    It is reported that, in the period of French conquests in Europe, French soldiers intoxicated with alcohol often went on a rampage, shooting, maiming, and killing. Then, someone in the empire who knew Walnut could quieten the unbalanced and misbehaving brain advised the Emperor to have walnut orchards built throughout France. At the end of the day, three principal personalities can be said to have anchored the Walnut-eating tradition in France.

    •Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

    •Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife

    •Napoleon III (1808-1873), also known as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

    While Napoleon Bonaparte encouraged walnut orchards, his wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais, popularised the serving of walnuts at social gatherings and in liqueur pubs. Poor people could not avoid walnuts in those days, as they still cannot in Nigeria today. Napoleon III was the Emperor who specifically promoted the consumption of walnuts in liqueur pubs, where they were served free with liqueur purchases.

    According to the internet, here are some testimonials of walnut and walnuts leaves as benefical for brain health.:

    “•Antioxidant properties: Walnuts contain high levels of antioxidants, which can help protect against oxidative stress and inflammation in the brain, potentially reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

    “•Mood booster: Walnuts are a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids, particularly alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which supports brain health and may help alleviate symptoms of depression.

    “•Anxiolytic effects: Walnut leaves have been traditionally used to calm the nervous system and reduce anxiety. The flavonoids and phenolic compounds present in walnut leaves may contribute to their anxiolytic effects.

    “•Cognitive function: Walnuts contain compounds that may help improve cognitive function, including memory and concentration, which can be beneficial for individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or neurodegenerative diseases.

    •Neuroprotection*: Walnut leaves and walnuts contain neuroprotective compounds that may help protect against neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, by reducing inflammation and oxidative stress in the brain”.

    Personally, I feel full when I eat about 10 walnuts with alligator pepper to drive their nutrients into the blood-stream to reach all parts of the body, particularly the brain. I feel great with the taste of essential fats in my mouth, which I sometimes seal up with one or two tablespoonfuls of rejuvenating drink. It is not surprising to me whenever I do this that I feel the urge to defeacate within a few hours after. Walnuts are rich in fibre, making them good for digestion. Alligator pepper is a digestion stimulant. Rejuvenating Drink wakes up the body in several ways. I always recommend it to anyone who needs refurbishment in any part of the body. Together, they make me poop two or three times a day. The eliminations are voluminous and so soft that I hardly believe I expelled them without the aid of an organic coffee enema. You should appreciate my joy in this regard if you have been following health treatises after health treatises on this page that… death begins slowly surely in the intestine. Accumulated toxins end up in the blood-stream from where they invade the organs, including the brain. In the brain, they may cause free radical damage in the absence of enough antioxidants to neutralize them, apart from causing irritation, inflammation, pain, and headache, sleep disorders, memory loss, brain fatigue, and weakness, nerve damage, depression, and other unwholesome brain conditions. In fact, some physicians start their clearance of headache, mental confusion, and other brain challenges with the clearance of the intestine. It is interesting to note that even eye conditions such as glaucoma are now believed to be caused not solely by degeneration of the retina but more likely by the degeneration of nerves and cells in the brain which control nerves in the retina.

    PUBMED

    There have been many studies into the claims of folk medicine that walnut and walnut leaves are useful natural agents in the treatment of mental imbalances such as depression. In this regard, I will like to state that mental health care is a wide, open terrain that involves numerous types of single herbal medicines and proprietary formulas. This section is limited, due to lack of space, to a few studies published in PUBMED, a reputable platform that hosts a wide range of credible laboratory, medical, or clinical investigations. They are…

    1. Study: Antioxidant activity of black walnut (Juglans nigra) leaves Published: 2018, Journal of Food Science and Technology PubMed ID: 29628814

    2. Study: Neuroprotective effects of black walnut extract on Alzheimer’s disease Published: 2015, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease PubMed ID: 25720418

    3. Study: Black walnut leaf extract inhibits inflammation in microglial cells Published: 2019, Journal of Neuroinflammation PubMed ID: 30819241

    4. Study: Juglone from black walnut hulls induces apoptosis in glioblastoma cells Published: 2017, Journal of Medicinal Food PubMed ID: 28121444

    5. Study: Black walnut polyphenols improve memory and cognitive function Published: 2016, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry PubMed

    6. Study:Anti-anxiety effects of black walnut leaf extract

    Published: 2020, Journal of Ethnopharmacology

    PubMed ID:32081741

    7. Study:Black walnut extract protects against Parkinson’s disease-induced neurotoxicity

    Published: 2018, Journal of Neurochemistry

    PubMed ID:29341441

    8. Study: Black walnut leaf flavonoids exhibit antidepressant-like activity

    Published: 2019, Journal of Affective Disorders

    PubMed ID:_ 30819523

    9. Study: Black walnut hull extract inhibits neuroinflammation in multiple sclerosis

    Published:2017, Journal of Neuroimmunology

    PubMed ID:28153641

    10. Study: Black walnut polyphenols enhance neurotrophic factors in hippocampal neurons

    Published: 2020, Journal of Neuroscience Research

    PubMed ID: 32216141

    In conclusion, Nigeria is blessed with a bumper harvest of black walnuts every year, but we are an ignorant and lazy lot who allow much of the harvest to become rotten. Euro-Americans and Asians freeze-dry the surplus to powder or extract oils and other substances from them. This enables them to enjoy the health benefits of walnuts and walnut leaves year-round, whereas we are still confined to the season. Meanwhile,we will continue to enjoy at a cost walnut powder and walnut oil from other lands long after the Walnut  season in Nigeria.

  • When, really, does life begin… at 18, 21, 40, 50, or 74?

    When, really, does life begin… at 18, 21, 40, 50, or 74?

    On every 23, August, when I have to blow out old candles and light new ones, I have never ceased to wonder at how expansive the carpet of existence continues to widen for experiencing on earth and, simultaneously, in the regions of existence beyond the sensibilities or tangibility of our earthly senses.

    I was preparing to write this column about 15 minutes before the midnight of my 74th birthday when one of my acquaintances  informed me  of  a video in the THE FLAGSHIP, chat group of the THE GUARDIAN staff. The author, Dr. Ken, said that men who did not have sexual relationships 21 times  monthly  risked congestion in their prostate glands and could suffer from cancer.

    I made an immediate response at about 12:03 a.m. to warn against  wholesale acceptance of this notion. My response was informed by experiencing  expanded by age.

    When I was 18 and  a devotee  of James Brown and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, I thought that was the pinnacle of human experience. I was mentally and inwardly stimulated whenever I read of 16-year-olds or 18-year-olds in Europe and the United States bidding their parents bye and leaving home, getting married, and starting their own families.

    By 25, I was partly sanguine and partly melancholic, asking such questions of existence as: WHO AM I? WHAT IS LIFE? WHAT IS DREAM? IF MY FATHER MARRIED SOMEONE ELSE, WOULD I HAVE BEEN BORN? IF I WAS, HOW WOULD I HAVE LOOKED LIKE? WHERE ELSE WOULD I HAVE BEEN BORN? They stirred up in my soul because, the year before, at 24, I had my first OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE (OBE). More OBEs followed in the years after. In the first OBE, I came out of my body, which I saw fast asleep in bed in the  single room apartment assigned to me by my father in his first house in Lagos.  I cannot give the details of that first OBE here. That first OBE was devastating and challenging. A dark, male figure tried to overpower me. Intuitively, I sensed I should prevent him from doing so. If he did, I would be dead. I was to learn later, in the course of my struggles inwardly to understand why events are as they are, that no event takes place on earth without its model having been designed and accomplished in regions of existence that are above the earthly sphere. Thus, our dreams may warn us of coming events if we are not careless about them. They won’t be those dreams that are conjured by the overburdened and tired frontal brain, the cerebrum, or the intellect. They would be those ones in which natural colours vividly appear. They are passed by the spirit through its soul bodies to the back brain or the cerebellum, the spiritual brain, which “uploads” them on the RADIATIONS OF THE BLOOD from the SOLAR PLEXUS, from where they gain connection with the frontal brain.

    Many of us do not remember our dreams or do faintly or remember them but do nothing about them. If we do not remember them or remember them faintly, it means the Spirit, that is the real us, cannot effectively communicate with the body, its earthly cloak and vessels, as a motorist may lose control of a motor vehicle. We lose control when the blood radiation cannot support the transmission, just as we complain about “network” problems when the person at the other end of a telephone conversation cannot hear us or vice versa. Effective blood radiation for high-fidelity communications between the spirit or the soul and the physical body  depends on optimal blood composition and, in part, on the equilibrium of vibrations of the Spirit and blood. When one part goes down, a loosening, separation, or falling apart, which we call “death,” may occur. Sometimes, the body’s blood radiation may be overwhelmed by vibrations of the Spirit. This has been noted to be the cause of SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION, in which the body burns to ash without a valid scientific explanation (please see the internet for spontaneous human combustion). These were some of the occurrences which engaged my choleric years. Spontaneous human combustion occurred in the United Kingdom in 1979 when I was 29 and on holiday there. The newspapers splashed the news. No scientist had a reasonable explanation. All that the leading scientists were asking, in summary, was: How does the human body, which generates between 36.5 -37. 5 degree Centigrade of heat, suddenly produce  between 760 – 980 degrees Centigrade or more  in cremation model to burn human flesh and bones to ash?.   In their book, THE CREATION OF HEALTH, U.S. Surgeon Norman Sheally and Caroline Myss (please see the internet) theorized 20 years later, in 1999, though on a different platform, of ENERGY MEDICINE, that life of a higher order than our earthly body’s origin resides inside the mortal flesh.

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    VIVID DREAMS

    I have had vivid dreams than I can share here due to the limitation of space. I cannot stop talking about one of them. This concerns my father’s passing on 26th August 1998, when I was 48. On 24 August of that year, my mother, who passed away on 5 August 1959( 39 years earlier), walked past me on a road, saying: BABA ETI JADE KURO L’AYE (Your father has left the earth). That day, I asked Mr. Gbenga George, who worked with me in the office, to run my car to his house and take him to Professor Bukola Adefule-Oshitelu, his eye doctor at LASUTH, for his clinic appointment. I promised to see him later, five days later, on Saturday, 29 August. That was a serious intellectual blunder. The Spirit warned me what had been designed and accomplished in a higher sphere of existence to manifest on earth, but I responded to it by relying on my earthly convenience. That Saturday was when his earthly remains were interred according to his WILL, which he reminded me of in a dream.

    At 3:40 a.m. on 26 August, he came to me in a dream, looking more than 20 years younger. He held my hand, placed one of my stepmother’s hands on it, and held both hands with his above, and then said: MO TI LO O, RANTI GBOGO OUN TI A JOSO SE EHIN MI NI RE O. I have gone, remember all that we discussed, tidy my affairs well. I rose from that dream at 3:40 a.m., 20 minutes after he passed, as I would learn later from my brother, Mr. Yinka Kusa, who lived with him.

    OBE NOT DREAM

    The OBE I spoke of earlier was not a dream. It was a real-life experience in the ASTRAL or ETHEREAL body. The physical or dust, earthly body is the  outermost covering of the Spirit. The other coverings and the Spirit minus the earthly covering is what we call the soul. Between the earthly body and the last of the ethereal bodies nearer to the dust body is the ASTRAL body. That is the one we call the GHOST, which a departing soul drags along and may be visible until the Soul is too distant to animate or energize it, and it falls away in a disintegration process.

    One of the wishes I was reminded of in that dream was the interment of the earthly remains not later than the Saturday which would follow the passage. I report these events in gratitude to those members of the staff of THE GUARDIAN who attended the interment at that very short notice. My first OBE was the preparation ground for this event 24 years later at 48. That OBE was not a hallucination as many psychiatrists may like to suggest. In that OBE, I saw and fought with a real person. His astral or ethereal body was tangible and close to mine. My dust body was deep asleep in bed. He wanted to approach it. My intuitive sensing was that this must not happen. In that ensuing struggle, a SINGER refrigerator in the room was overturned, and two props of the writing desk were broken. My OBE body found its way back to its earthly cloak. Meanwhile, co-residents of the house gathered by the door of my room. I opened the door. They saw my grandmother, who lived nearby and came that night to set up prayers till dawn. At dawn, one of my uncles, who heard of the episode, came to take me away. I became afraid to sleep at night, irrespective of traditional medicine approaches to help me. I was due to go to university the following month. Was this the way my life would give way?, I ask myself. If that fellow could come to me through the medium of the air, I wished to know the process through which he came so that, through it, I could protect myself in the future. That volition set me on the path of SPIRITUAL ENQUIRY, which began to give me a better understanding of different conceptions than culture and religion had offered.

    When the student is ready, the teacher will surface, it is said.  I found THE WORLD TEACHER  in His Work IN UYO, then in Cross River State, during youth corp camping in 1977, three years after that first OBE. By 1978, I had become unafraid of existence and even made a WILL at 28 for a quiet funeral whenever I would be called away. At 38, I was Editor of THE GUARDIAN newspaper, in succession to Lade Bonuola, the pioneer editor, and imbued with the lofty volition to expand not only the business reach and financial fortunes but also to lead the readers back to Mother Nature in respect of their health and spiritualize their ways and means. I need to state that spiritual life is different from religious life.Editorial dream  compartmentalisation of THE GUARDIAN bore witness to this dream with the emergence of such sections as PROPERTY and NATURAL HEALTH, TRANSPORTATION, and AGRICULTURE. It was the first newspaper content compartmentalisation in Nigeria, which unified editorial and advertisement content as a market and made the newspaper a real business bug as well as the “hammer and anvil of social solidarity”. I encouraged Mrs. Elizabeth Kafaru to write a column in the Natural Health section where I featured,as reporter, Adetutu Folashade-Koyi, the daughter of a Nigerian who in the decades before then produced two leading traditional pediatric medicine …OMO RE LA (baby survives) and OMOLAYO BABY MIXTURE (baby Is Joy…). So, to fellow was GBOMORO (baby sustainer). This section discovered JUBI BLOOD FORMULA now sold as JOBELYN.

    When Europe produced VIAGRA for male sexual virility, I found Delan Okpalaeke, a microbiology graduate of Lagos State University, to carry out a kitchen experiment I designed to prove that OGBOLO (d:m:m), a Yoruba parasitic root, could make men produce more sperm and semen with better morphology and motility. About 30 men and different laboratories participated. I presented the report in Okpalaeke’s name to the medical and lay communities. Our report won a €1.5 million First Prize in the CNN AFRICAN JOURNAL AWARD of that year!

    My interest in Alternative Medicine derived from an earthen ware pot of cowries and palm fruit kernel I saw in my mother’s wardrobe after her demise when I was nine. One of my aunts said it was to remind her to guide my paths in line with divination of a life in healing arts. One statement in the teachings of THE WORLD TEACHER about the health of the human body touched me. My own recall of it is that… NEITHER DRUGS NOR INJECTIONS BUT THE RIGHT KINDS OF FOODS AND DRINKS BRING LASTING HEALTH. The excitement plunged me into Alternative Medicine advocacy till this day.

    LIFE AT 50, 60

    It is wrong to assume life is all over at retirement from paid employment. It was in these years that I discovered more assuring that our universe is configured with several POWER CENTERS of our making by exercise of FREE WILL and that, in relations to and with them, we are like radio or television receiving sets and they are like broadcasting stations. Christians call the negative power center THE PRINCIPALITIES. Whenever we think of anything, we open ourselves to transmission from the homogeneous power centers. Thus, our thoughts can inspire us for good or ill, and we  would harvest the fruits of out actions.  If I was successful as Editor of The Guardian and later, as its Director of Publications/ Editor-in-Chief from tye age of 42, this knowledge was the enhancer of my abilities.

    LIFE AT 70 ONWARD

    Working in the knowledge of THE LAW OF MOTION that there must be NO STANDSTILL in human existence, I find joy in helping to correct misconceptions in all matters connected to the purpose of human existence, as advised by THE WORLD TEACHER. We talk so much about WEATHER CHANGE and the money we can make from it without linking it to three great events in the Universe, namely:

    • In The  COSMIC CALENDAR, the Earth has been shifted from the  Radiations of the PISCEAN AGE to that of the AQUARIAN AGE in  which we now exist.

    • Simultaneously, the gigantic Universe has completed a COSMIC TURNING POINT, which exposes all its forms to stronger Radiations.

    • A huge Star as powerful as the Star of Bethlehem is known to be on its way towards the Earth from the same origin  as the Bethlehem Star, this time not as a greeting from the Father but to close the cycle of the coming of the Son of God to the Earth and to open the cycle of the SON OF MAN (The Holy Spirit), which will proclaim the Judgement.

    Christians made a serious mistake by unifying the conception of the Son of God and the Son of Man, and not understanding the importance of those three events for increasingly traumatising conditions on Earth today, as everything outside the Will of God (The Holy Spirit or the Son of Man) is overturned. Didn’t Jesus, the Son of God, warn that the Holy Spirit would not forgive our sins? Jesus only came to forewarn that the judgement was coming. Lucifer was already bound for the Millennium; the Holy Spear, symbol of His Power, having been wrested from His Hands in a serious encounter with Someone from an Origin higher than His. Paradoxically, Adolf  Hitler conquered many European countries in search of the Holy Spear,  and the Chalice, believing they were on this Earth, and whichever country possessed it would rule the Earth. The Chalice, too, is by no means the cup in which the  Lord Jesus served wine to His Disciples during the last supper or tye one I which the Blood of Jesus on the Cross was caught. Nor was the Spear the one thrust into the abdomen of Jesus to confirm He was dead, and thereby prevent the breaking of His Bones by the Romans.

    In the 70s and probably well beyond it, persons who have been touched by the teachings of THE WORLD TEACHER stand in duty to help ignorant humanity. Thus, life cannot come to a standstill at any age under whatever condition. Did Moses and Elijah not appear with Jesus in Gethsemane during His Transfiguration? Were they in any graves resting, as many Christians believe departed persons do, another grave error of human teaching of God’s Will?

    Dr. Ken’s suggestion that men should have sex 21 times a month for a healthy prostate gland must devitalise them in various ways and be very counterproductive.  Sexual intercourse is normal, but is not too much of anything destructive? Sex is like food, water, and rest to the healthy human body. Were it not so, the Creator would not have placed the sexual instinct in the body, which, being of animal origin, defined sexual intercourse as an animal act. Dr. Devendra Vora, author of “Health in Your Hands,” limits some adult stage categories to no more than one time in a month for optimal health and well-being. He was a much sought-after reflex zone physician of the hands and feet who saw about 2.5 million patients a year, more than some orthodox medicine doctor saw in a lifetime. He probably knew of the purpose of human existence in a physical body made from dust, of the generative power produced when the indwelling human spirit glows into the dust body, of how this dust body is to serve the spirit as a vessel during its sojourn on earth, of how generative power supports this venture as a bridge across which the spirit connects to the physical world through the dust body, of how sex may dissipate the generative power and weaken those spirits’ activities. Some doctors have worsened matters by saying pregnant women should have sex to relax their pelvic muscles for easy childbirth. They forget that babies in the womb may be really enjoying the sexual activities of their parents-to-be. The Bible reports that the Lord Jesus and John the Baptist, His forerunner, as babies in their respective mothers’ wombs, leapt for joy (on seeing each other during the visit of  Mary, mother of Jesus,  to Elizabeth,mother of John  the Baptist. When we say young women and men of today are sexually loose, could this be because they participated in the sexual experiences of their parents before they were born?

  • ‘Your skin mirrors the wonderful world within you’

    ‘Your skin mirrors the wonderful world within you’

    When I first heard about the “Tree Man” 20 years ago, I was curious to know who he was. Spiritually speaking, I already knew that one species cannot become another, as each living being has a unique creation code. This means that a human cannot transform into a chicken, even in different incarnations.

    The photograph of the Tree Man I saw looked like a small plant that had grown into shrubs. Later, I discovered that it was actually the skin of a man in Indonesia damaged by viruses. For the purpose of this column, I became interested in this man and his condition for two reasons. Firstly, warts, which his condition began with, are growing on the skin of many Nigerians, and they are unable to stop the spread. Secondly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) observed World Skin Day last month to draw attention to several skin diseases that medicine has not effectively conquered.

    Let me introduce you to the Tree Man. According to Wikipedia:

    “Dede Koswara was healthy from birth until his early childhood. At the age of 10, he started developing warts around his injured knee, which then spread to his limbs and face. He was unable to afford treatment and tried to remove one of the larger warts, but it regrew. He attempted to live a normal life, working as a craftsman, and married at 18, having two children. However, the warts continued to grow uncontrollably, limiting his movements and making him dependent on others. Eventually, he lost his job, was divorced, and separated from his children. His parents took him in to provide support. He was later hired by a carnival owner as a part of a travelling freak show”.

    Read Also; Because we happened to Nigeria…

    There are numerous stories about Dede Koswara on the internet, and his experiences have made me pay closer attention to my skin health. It has also made me to pay more attention to cow skin, which we eat a lot in Nigeria despite warnings by veterinary doctors that it contains drug residues from antibiotic and antiviral injections as well as disease germs and parasites. A few years ago, I published an article on this page which was posted also on my Facebook page (John Olufemi Kusa), under the title: Lagos Abattoir cesspool of disease and death. That was when purveyors of cow skin for human consumption at the abattoir were curing it in used tyre burnfires which enveloped several kilometres around the scenes with suffocating smoke filled with Arsenic and other heavy metals every night. I don’t recall exactly when I stopped eating cow skin, but I remember it was a delicacy in my stepmother’s cooking during my teenage years. I persuaded her to remove it from the menu about 20 years ago.

    One of my dietary lifestyle influencers was Commodore Gbolahan Mudashiru (rtd), the former Military Governor of Lagos State. I learned humility from him, as he didn’t let his position dictate his personal relationships. Many of my fellow Igbobi College alumni share this trait, and I am proud to be among them.

    At a weekend seminar, Commodore Mudashiru and I attended together, earthly rankings held little significance. He arrived at our dormitory before me and went straight to the bottom bed of a double bunk assigned to him, with my name on the top bed. I knew better than to offer a voluntary swap, as the allocations followed rules. This experience taught me a subtle lesson: in paradise, do earthly positions matter?

    I summoned the courage to ask Commodore Mudashiru why he didn’t carry himself like a soldier or military governor. I later learned that he was a heavy consumer of poultry eggs and chicken until he attended an Air Force Officers’ training course abroad and discovered the dangers of elevated blood cholesterol levels. He took the nutrition and health training seriously, especially since he had begun experiencing liver discomfort, possibly due to fatty liver and later, liver cancer. Ironically, he and his wife owned a large poultry farm in Lagos, which might have contributed to his excessive consumption of chicken and eggs. I, too, was guilty of promoting poultry egg consumption as a distributor for many farmers.

    As for chicken, I couldn’t distinguish between healthy and diseased birds in those days. Moreover, I ate chicken with its skin, unlike Europeans and Americans who had become more aware of the risks. They removed chicken and fish skin, knowing that animal skin stores toxins eliminated through sweat. Chicken and fish skins are thinner and contain fewer toxins than cow skin, which stores more toxins in its palatable oil.

    I share this information for the benefit of readers who still consume animal skin without regard for their health. July 18 was World Skin Day, but it didn’t receive the attention it deserved in Nigeria. At a public lecture, I learned that there were only 200 dermatologists in Nigeria, serving a population of 220 million. This scarcity of skin specialists means that many diseases that could be detected early through skin or tongue evaluation often go unnoticed until they reach advanced stages.

    Skin Diseases and Detoxification

    Dermatologists worldwide treat numerous skin diseases annually, including: Acne, Psoriasis, Eczema (Atopic Dermatitis), Rosacea, Vitiligo, Melasma, Dermatitis, Seborrheic Keratosis, Skin Cancer (Melanoma, Basal Cell Carcinoma, Squamous Cell Carcinoma), Herpes Simplex (Cold Sores), Herpes Zoster (Shingles), Warts (HPV), Molluscum Contagiosum, Fungal Infections (Ringworm, Athlete’s Foot), Impetigo, Cellulitis, Folliculitis, Keratosis Pilaris, Pityriasis Rosea, and Scleroderma.

    London Experience

    In 1979, I was in London for newspaper training and indulged in cheap fish and chips and whole chicken, unaware of the potential health risks. London food stores considered animal tongue, cow skin, and calves unhealthy and discarded them, but we consume these items, unaware of the potential health consequences. I spent some time with my uncle. He packed them in from the store to give me a treat. I ate them as if there was no tomorrow, as we say in Nigeria when we are on top of ball. How ignorant and foolish I was.

    Beautiful Skin

    We all desire beautiful skin, but few of us realise that its foundation lies in what we feed our bodies and how efficiently we remove toxins. The skin is overworked due to detoxification, leading to wrinkles, acne, blackheads, dryness, fungi, freckles, pimples, and psoriasis.

    Detoxification

    The skin is the largest excretory organ, removing waste and toxins from the body, along with the lungs, intestines, liver, and kidneys. However, many people underuse their lungs, and their livers may be weak or accumulating toxins. The intestine may be sick, constipated, or diseased, leading to toxins entering the bloodstream, kidneys, and skin.

    Liver Health

    The liver breaks down toxins in a four-stage process but requires bitter principles to function optimally. Many people despise the bitter taste and do not protect their livers with hepaprotectives like Silymarin in Milk Thistle. Flatworms like Faciolopsis Hepatica may silently damage the liver, leading to toxin accumulation.

    Intestinal Health

    The intestine is one of the most toxic organs, with the immune system devoting 70 to 75 per cent of its presence and energy to defend it. Any poison not eliminated with feaces may end up in the bloodstream, kidneys, and skin. Many people have intestinal ulcers, growths, bleeding, inflammation, and fungal infections, which may affect the kidneys and skin.

    The Royal College of Surgeons in the United Kingdom noted decades ago that “death begins slowly but surely in the intestine.” This is because many individuals have various intestinal issues, including: Ulcers in deficient parts of the intestine, growths called polyps, occult blood bleeding detectable only through special laboratory tests, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), inflammation, particularly in the colon (colitis), which can degenerate into Ulcerative Mucoid Colitis (bleeding and mucus-producing inflamed colon), a potential precursor to cancer, fungal infections, and overgrown populations of unfriendly bacteria.

    Fungal infections may manifest as oral thrush on the tongue, with roots buried beneath the surface. This can produce toxins affecting various body parts, including the brain. Resolving heavy systemic fungal inflammation may take around six months using effective anti-fungals like Olive Leaf Extract and Amazon A-F, a proprietary blend designed to combat candida and bacteria, as well as support cancer therapies.

    When explaining detoxification, I often use a network system model, where each body segment performs a special task. Here’s how it works:

    – The liver pushes toxins into the intestine, signaling to the body’s 100 trillion cells that its had a vacancy to Wish they may send their toxins in the detoficatuon process.The blood then carries more toxins to fill this vacancy.If the liver functions well, cells quickly reduce their toxic loads.However, if the liver is jammed, toxins harm cells, requiring hepaprotectives like Milk Thistle and evacuation agents like Carqueja.If toxins aren’t fully inactivated, they overwhelm the kidneys and skin, causing harm.The skin may exhibit rashes, like in HIV, indicating its receiving more toxins than it can handle. Attempting to suppress these rashes with antibiotics or antifungal creams may not be the best approach.In cases where the body increases sweat production to expel toxins, using antiperspirants or deodorants can counteract this natural process. Many Nigerians like a quick fix when it’s comes to skin eruptions, itches or diseases. This means they suppress what the skin is telling them is going on inside their bodies, namely that the liver, intestine and the kidneys may need attention and help. One of the commonest mistakes often made in this regards, especially by women, is to suppress sweating in the armpits with anti-perspirants. For not only does this send back the sweat and the toxins back into the body, this substances contain aluminum which is dangerous to health.

    Incidentally, many anti-perspirant preparations contain aluminum, which can be dangerous, especially for women in the armpit area. This is because the breast is connected to the armpit, and aluminum can be absorbed and potentially cause cancer-promoting effects. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I only used ALOE SHIELD, an aloe vera-based product free from aluminum.

    Forcing back skin symptoms can be dangerous. I recall a personal experience in the early 1980s when I had a small infected wound on my forehead that left a patch of black growth. Despite pharmacy treatments and injections prescribed by a doctor, the mark persisted. A dermatologist prescribed DERMOVATE cream, which I later discovered was harmful and stopped using. Fortunately, over time, the growth disappeared, likely due to herbal remedies I took. The injure was inflicted by a friend who knew no better way to say good bye. Mywife tease me for several years that this was my friend’s “FORGET ME NOT SIGNS.

    When skin troubles are suppressed, toxins can be forced back into the body, similar to blocked rainwater finding an alternative path. In the body, this alternative path may be the weak lungs or breathing tubes, potentially leading to asthma.

    First Steps in Treating Skin Challenges

    In my view, the initial steps in addressing skin issues should be detoxifying the eliminative organs, including: Digestive system, Lungs, Kidneys, Liver, Urinary system, Skin.

    The intestine is easier to deal with than many people think, as long as the tissues haven’t become cancerous. There are many detox agents available, including orange peel, which is an excellent anti-asthma remedy with anti-histamine properties. Support for the intestines may also include digestive enzymes, fiber blends of all sorts and proprietary formulas such as Amazon digestion support, cleanse, Mila, detox Plus, Parasite shield, activated charcoal, Diatom and Golden seal.

    Orange Peel Therapy

    Chewing or eating orange peel with food, combined with drinking water throughout the day (as recommended by Dr. F. Batmanghelidj), can help regulate skin clarity, lightness, and suppleness. Orange peel therapy also aids digestion and reduces blood sugar levels. Enhance the effects by solarizing the orange peel water or adding water from a quantum energy bottle.

    I recommend using: Aloe Gelly (an Aloe vera proprietary product), Coconut Oil, Palm Kernel Oil and Shea butter

    Natural Remedies for Common Skin Diseases

    Experts suggest the following recipes for common skin issues:

    • Acne: Tea Tree Oil, Aloe Vera, Neem, Turmeric

    • Eczema and Dermatitis: Aloe Vera, Calendula, Chamomile, Licorice Root

    • Psoriasis: Mahonia aquifolium, Oregon Grape, Sarsaparilla, Neem

    • Skin Infections: Tea Tree Oil, Echinacea, Goldenseal, Andrographis

    • Skin Allergies and Itching: Aloe Vera, Calendula, Chamomile, Quercetin

    • Wounds and Skin Ulcers: Aloe Vera, Tea Tree Oil, Gotu Kola, Comfrey and

    • Skin Aging and Wrinkles: Green Tea, Ginkgo Biloba, Rosehip, Pomegrana

  • Davido to Chioma…’She sabi cook, she sabi do’

    Davido to Chioma…’She sabi cook, she sabi do’

    How much good cooking can Chioma do? For me, it is not enough that a woman can cook. Thanks to my mother, I cook better than many women. By the way, Chioma is the confirmed wife of Mr. David Adeleke, a popular  Nigerian pop singer whose most popular song, arguabl, is  Chioma my Love. Mr. David Adeleke’s fans and friends who number more than  56.1 million on social media, according to google, is known more by his stage name, Davido. He said at their wedding reception in Lagos on June 25, 2024 that “she sabi cook, she sabi do” – the “do” meaning that she is a fantastic Juliet. Time will tell if Chioma’s “sabi cook” was merely puffed up to make other mothers of his children green with envy. Chioma has found herself in a marriage some women may call a harem. She is the fifth woman to have any baby for Davido who has had six, one of them the over-celebrated first child, a toddler, with Chioma who has passed.

    I do not trust the cooking of young wives, especially those in Chioma’s generation. For not only do they not have “the hand of the spoon” as the Yorubas say of a woman when they enjoy her cooking, these women are too artificial with and about cooking. The Yorubas call the woman with the magical hand of the spoon Olowo sibi. By this appellation, they mean that this woman can work her way into any man’s heart with her cooking even if she has no money for state-of-the-art  food ingredients.

    How many of them will believe that since I married in 1983, I have eaten no food at home cooked with monosodium glutamate (MSG) seasoning? How many of them will mineralise my rice with amala, Wheatgrass, or Spirulina, especially to provide essential carbohydrate meal with balancing proteins, beta-carotene, chlorophyll, and all the other accompaniments?

    I do not imagine Davido at the table with a bowl of raw, edible main course and helping himself with a chunk of these leaves for every morsel he took into his mouth. Or Davido eating orange peel, banana peel, Pawpaw leaves or Chanka Piedra (ehinbisowo) with  his meal? If I am wrong, I wonder about which leaves are in his salad bowl: Chanka Piedra, Dead Nettle, Bitter leaf, Basil, Papaya, Oregano, and Lettuce? These are the regulars in my salad bowl.

    In the KUSA family, we are blessed with wives who understand good cooking from the raw diet perspective. I may always sound naturalist, but can I be more naturalist than my wife, Dayo? My younger brother, Tunji, an architect, is married to a State Registered Nurse (SRN) from LUTH who owns the HEALING HERBS CLINIC in Ilorin. Her husband is in   tow. Another brother, Yinka, is blessed with Shade, a wildlife graduate from Lagos State University. From this background, she easily fell in line with the training Mrs. Sola Sowemimo gives upcoming women professionals in Lagos about how to manage not only their professional lives but their kitchens and the health of their families as well.

    Mrs. Sowemimo is a lawyer who spent her corporate work life with the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) company and, upon her retirement, veered into herbal medicines and organic farming. She is a founding member of the KUSA GREEN PASTURES natural health forum.

    Through her, Mrs. Shade Kusa planted an Oregano plant in my house, which has now become something like a mini forest. Is Chioma listening? As Davido’s wife, with certification by him that she is a good cook, a super cook, there should be something about it she ought to impact on wives of her generation and girls popping up behind them.

    My sister, Mrs. Yemisi Amaku, is not left out of the family train. She has gone through the proper handling by Mrs. Sowemimo. Shade Kusa has also done well in Mrs. Amaku’s garden . In response, Mrs. Amaku has hired a chef to make for her family all sorts of healthy drinks from roots, barks, leaves, flowers, nuts, and whatever else you can imagine, which is most suitable for particular meals.

    Mrs. Amaku being a school owner, I look forward to the day the children under her care will start to reject carbonated drinks and biscuits and inform their mothers about Mrs. Sowemimo. There is a lot more to say here about good cooking and good meals than I have time for. Davido may be right about Chioma’s cooking. I wonder if she can do something nutritionally for his voice outside the microphone. On the microphone, his voice is good and tempts me to believe that the microphone can upscale my rough voice as his.

    Davido says Chioma “Sabi do”. I am only wondering, as a man of 74 who has hung his boots, that a wife who “Sabi do” should know she can be  exhausting, and  that, in line with the necessity for healthy balance between taking and giving, she should be putting something back into an account  she is heavily drawing from in the prostate gland. Many men who have prostrate gland challenges  today are “Sabi do” or have women who “sabi do”.  Sabi do is about ejaculation all the time. Every ejaculation takes away a lot of Zinc which protects this gland, and it would take about three months to replace the energy and the seeds lost in an ejaculation.

    MSG, milk, sugar, bread, margarine, butter, corn beef, and fries are not the right replenishments. The right ones are raw, edible leaves. We are not animals when we relish them. Nevertheless, our bodies are descended from the animal kingdom. We, who dwell in these animal bodies, are human spirits or human beings, if you prefer, while our bodies are animal beings. Watch what animals eat – largely raw vegetation. Hasn’t the World Health Organisation (WHO) study recognised this and advised that our meals should be about 70 percent raw food and 30 per cent cooked?

    Davido is an intensely busy musician. His brain and nerves are ever busy. His mind must be uncluttered, clear, and his instincts sharp or acute. More profiting to his music and to his followers should be his work if it stems from intuition. However, much of what I have encountered about them stems largely not from the spirit or the Being that is the man but from the fresh, essentially from the First Chakra and Second Chakra at best, of the seven chakras. Let’s seek an expert opinion on what nutrients should suffice the diet of musicians such as Davido and wonder if Chioma is meeting the bill.

    Read Also: I was told I’d amount to nothing after mimicking Davido four years ago – Nasboi

    “As a creative and busy international musician, it’s essential to fuel your body with the right nutrients to maintain energy, focus, and overall well-being. Here are some nutritional supplements that may benefit you:

    • Omega-3 fatty acids: Supports brain function, heart health, and reduces inflammation.

    •Vitamin D: Boosts mood, energy, and immune system.

    •Magnesium: Enhances energy production, nerve function, and relaxation.

    • Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10): Supports energy production, heart health, and antioxidant functions.

    • Iron: Essential for healthy red blood cells, energy, and cognitive function.

    • Adaptogenic herbs (Ashwagandha, Rhodiola, kyolic stress and fatigue, Ginseng): Helps manage stress, anxiety, and fatigue.

    • Probiotics: Supports gut health, immune system, and digestion.

    • Vitamin B complex: Essential for energy production, nerve function, and heart health.

    • Antioxidants (Vitamin C, E, beta-carotene): Protects against oxidative stress, inflammation, and cell damage.

    • Branched-Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs): Supports muscle health, recovery, and energy production.

    Remember to consult a healthcare professional before adding any supplements to your diet. A balanced diet, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep are also crucial for maintaining your overall health and well-being.

    In addition to these supplements, consider incorporating foods rich in these nutrients into your diet, such as:

    – Fatty fish (salmon, sardines) for omega-3s

    – Leafy greens (spinach, kale) for magnesium and iron

    – Nuts and seeds (almonds, sunflower seeds) for vitamin E and magnesium

    – Whole grains (brown rice, quinoa) for vitamin B complex and fiber

    – Fermented foods (kimchi, sauerkraut) for probiotics”…

    In my days as a 27 years old Youth Corps member in Calabar, I suggested Pasuma Strong for Sabi do men which they obtained down town in Watt Market. In the 1990s in Lagos, the reigning stars were Libido Max, Libido Tonight, Steel Libido and Iron and Steel. I understand they are difficult to find now and that incoming brands like Long Jack, Robust Root, African Blsck Ant, and Re-fire and D-man. I often suggests to aging widowed or divorced men who are in the secondary marriage industry with booting girls or women to combine D-Man which is far cheaper, with Robust Root with  Regenerating Drinks which  bring back what goes out.

    People like me will consider as unfortunate the certification in public and on a wedding day of a wife’s sexual performance. The young ones who cheaply follow and ape so-called celebrities will see nothing wrong in it. I adopt the words “so-called celebrities”advisedly. Davido and Chioma are celebrities in their own right. Millions of people adore, if not worship them. That’s because they are in the same world, that is, a homogeneous folks. Persons who have risen beyond this world look up to different values and different persons as celebrities to inspire them. We evolve, so do not blame me if I believe and say certain things are better said and done in the bedroom and not outdoor.

    At the Ikoyi Marriage Registry in 1983, I declined three times to say the words… ”With my body I thee worship”. Weren’t we told that the human body is the housing for the Temple of worship? So, what other word should take place therein when there ought to be no other god after him? In those days, my spirit was flaming. Back at the wedding reception in the YWCA Hall in Ikoyi, Lagos, the reception chairman, Chief Omolade Okoya-Thomas, and the Master of Ceremony, Olu Falomo, both iconic members of the Island Club, could not get me to kiss my bride on the lips right before an eagerly watchful audience. What was their business with that? Each time the chairman called for a kiss, he saw only a light peck on the cheek. In the end, he gave up. So, you should understand my problem with “She sabi do” and Chioma excitingly flaunting her buttocks for Davido to touch and to pat.

    Some people say celebrities need to do such things to keep themselves in the public mind, to get people talking about them. At what cost? Do we ask? Society is literally sexually upside down today because the so-called celebrities have stripped morality naked. I say “so-called celebrities” because, in my own world, not every person passed off as a celebrity is one.

    In my twenties, I followed footballers Pele and boxer Mohammed Ali. Later, I grew up to discover what they were hoisting on humanity was not the reasons humanity was on earth. Are we are here, for example, to damage through wrestling or boxing the human physical body given to each one of us as a most precious gift by the Almighty Creator for our experiencing on earth. Meticulous work was done by elemental beings in the Will of the Creator to design and create this earth body. Till today, all the professors of medicine and physiologists among earth men, wise as they believe they have come, always stand in awe before every new revelation about how the human body works.

    In this connection, the man or woman who passes as a celebrity before me is that one who stands in the weaving of this wonderful universe, receiving ideas from higher spheres of existence and turning them into actions which make existence on Earth more sublime for earth dwellers so they can find it  more comfortably fulfilling the purpose of their earthly existence. Michael Faraday, one of the founders of electricity, is one of them. Among them also are the Wright brothers who signaled to man that he could make an airplane. What about those ones who converted canoes to sea-faring ocean liners or the men who brought about the motor car? I remember these ones in particular whenever, in those days, my grandmother told me stories of how she and her colleagues spent three days and three nights, palm oil or garri loads on their heads and shoulders, some pregnant and others with babies on their backs, travelling from our village in Ijebuland to Lagos just to earn a living! What about the transformation from firewood cooking to gas cooking or from mud huts to concrete houses? Who, today, would not prefer mechanised farming to hoe and cutlass farming? The men and women who change our lives are, for me, the real celebrities, not the ones who are dragging us down into the abyss, exposing three quarters of their bodies in public in the guise of fashion and celebrating aping. Do not forget the internet and  Onpassive which is coming to turn the internet aright in our generation, and bring  real celebrities on board.

    Mistakes

    Again, the following are merely my views, which may be wrong or correct. Davido showed he was well brought up by Yoruba parents when, in Igbo land, he prostrated as a Yoruba boy before his father-in-law, which is no less than simply because he is your father-in-law, and his culture does not demand prostration from you.

    We may not blame Davido and Chioma for the rain of U.S. Dollars. It was well beyond their control. However, they should have bottled the extravagance of a very expensive motor car for Chioma as a wedding gift.

    Davido and Chioma learned a lesson from the departure of their first son. They over-flaunted him, ignoring the spiritual admonition to ‘Let children be children’. By this, children are to be kept away from the world of adults. But what did we observe? The poor boy, 24/7, was flaunted to the world. Chioma probably thought this was telling other women who had children for Davido before or after her that she had him in her grips. She probably did not realise the enormity of pain each such flaunt may cause Davido’s children who had no easy access to their father, or their mothers who had no access to the father of their children.

    The lessons of their experience with the  first child should inform the way their twins children are to be brought up. But it would appear that caution was again thrown to the wind in the matter of “She sabi cook, she sabi do.” Even if a woman would like to fight the star wars of the women in the life of her husband, shouldn’t the man be a man and disable certain “war” plans?

    Davido’s life with women and children is a complex one, young as he is. When a man knows a woman, or rather when a man and a woman know each other in the procreative act, all they have done is say a prayer to the Almighty Creator to send to them a human soul He has created for them to nurture him or her on earth in ways most pleasing to Him. In His Goodness, He sends to them one or more souls as their situation permits. Each parent must, therefore, stand at his or her duty post to fulfill the promises made in the procreative act.

    Nowadays, however, procreation is irresponsibly carried out. We may say that, in the lawfulness of all events in Creation, the souls who approach the irresponsible petitioners deserve parents of no better sense of responsibility. However, this does not take away the pains in the heart of a woman who has a baby for a man who does not make himself available as her husband and full-time father of the child. Nor does it remove the pain also from a child who grows up one-sidedly without a full-time father in his or her life.

    Davido is said to be taking care of these children and even demanding custody of one or two. As I am told, he has been told, the “settlement” should be with the mothers. Yoruba culture says, Obirin t’o b’mo fun ni ti kuro eni ale eni (The woman who has a child for us is no longer our concubine but our wife). In Yorubaland, there is no bastard child. Give the child all the money you can on earth, he or she will see in his or her heart   only the picture  which his or her  mother paints for him or her. If she rejects your settlement money, she is saying it is you and not your money she want.

    Chioma should wisen up. There are many wives in the life of Davido. There is no need for “Star Wars” of wives. The money for that wedding car gift could have been better spent on agriculture in Osun State. For example, what about a rabbit farm that would produce millions of rabbits every year and create jobs for thousands in this era of hunger protest?

    You are free to share please.

  • Inauguration: Guard your health, six mafia wars likely (1)

    Inauguration: Guard your health, six mafia wars likely (1)

    I wrote this prophetic article for publication in my column in The Nation newspaper of Thursday June 15, 2023 and posted it, afterward, in my face book page…JOHN OLUFEMI KUSA. That was 13 months and two weeks ago. The three-part article foresaw a mafia war against  the new President for his lifting of the lair of the snake. Three Presidents before Bola Ahmed Tinubu (Obasanjo, Yar’Adua/Jonathan and Buhari) could not over 24 years make Nigeria’s refineries to work. The problem was contrived by the oil mafia at home and abroad to pave way for the importation of refined petroleum and its derivatives. This was gulping about $660 million or between 30-40 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign currency holding every month.  The economy became cash strapped, inflation rocketed and public discontent was growing, with no expansion in the economy and dwindling sectorial allocations. On top of all that, the Buhari administration sold substantial amount of crude oil in advance to repay questionable foreign loans. President Tinubu thought the way out was to KILL THE SNAKE by removing oil subsidy and putting the money in federal, state and local government purses for the benefit of  millions of Nigerians instead of hundreds of persons in the oil mafia.

    His plan was:

    (1) End the subsidy (2) Plough the subsidy into the economy and (3) ease resultant negative effects with palliative measured in the short-term and, in the medium term, fix all refineries, produce refined oil in Nigeria again, export some, fill the economy with humongous new cash without printing money through the saving of $7.32 billion in one year. Nigeria can produce 2.2 billion barrels daily. President Tinubu inherited 1.25 million barrels every day which he has upgraded to 1. 6 million barrels by militarily confronting local and foreign crude oil thieves. In only 14 months, he did what three Presidents could not do in 24 years.

    However, the mafia has not given up. It is possible it is behind the national protest which begins today against side effects of the TINUBU PLAN which in just one or two weeks should begin to yield bountiful fruits if DANGOTE refinery, the world’s biggest located in Lagos, begins to refine crude oil. How prophetic of more mafia wars yet to come may be seen in the series of three articles which  can be read on FACE BOOK at JOHN OLUFEMI KUSA. Nigeria’s political opposition is fiendish, possessed of bring down syndrome. It says President Tinubu deserves the nationwide protest beginning today because, when he was in the opposition, Tinubu engaged in a similar protest  against President Jonathan. However, today’s opposition, led by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, fail to say that Tinubu has plans for comfortable petrol price whereas Jonathan had none. The mafia war I fear most is the food war. It is linked to the petrol war and to the insecurity war, all of which and more are mention in this series. Senator Ali Ndume may not be wrong in his allegations that  some mafias are walling the President from the population. In June, last year, this series  suggested how Nigeria may farm trillions of pawpaw fruits and trillions of rabbits every year to abort food shortage. I sent copies of these column to Senate President Akpabio and to Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to the President. The ideas came from a work in which I was involved with Brigadier Samuel Ogbemudia (rtd), a former Military Governor of the now- defunct Bendel State. Every senator, representative, minister,  governor, commissioner, local  government chairman e.t.c  was to set up  a rabbit farm pilot project in his or her constituency to create jobs for young persons and to provide rabbit meat for millions of Nigerians. If we could become a rabbit-eating nation, we will need less cow meat, the foreign herders will return home with their cows and our farms will become safer for our farmers to produce more food. On top of that,  we would save money on cow imports. Currently, Lagos State is estimated to consume about 100,000 cows every day at an average cost of  #450,000 per cow. Please calculate this bill on Lagos State alone every year and project it across Nigeria! It is possible the pressure of work crowded these ideas from the tables of Senator Akpabio and  Honourable Gbajabiamila. The Ideas are still available on Facebook at John Olufemi Kusa and on The Nation newspaper online, backyard of the President’s own newspaper. The foregoing is a background to the national protest which the opposition and some civil society groups, perhaps some mafias as well are staging from today  till August 10.

    How well prepared are we for six bone-breaking battles in Nigeria’s economy between president BOLA TINUBU and business MAFIAS who are sucking the country and us dry? We said in 2015 and 2019 that we wanted change. But that change never came as we expected because President Mohammadu Buhari either didn’t know what change was all about or he was too weak or afraid to wage wars in the economy against MAFIAS that were strangulating the country. That was why many Nigerians were thrilled that President Bola Ahmed TINUBU declared six bone-breaking “wars” in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2023. They saw him as a brave man who knew his way around the economy and who will not give up any battle until, to quote Williams Shakespeare, “ The hurly burly is over, (and) the battle is won and lost”.    

        Soon, I will outline the “wars”, President Tinubu has declared on troublesome MAFIAS in the economy. I believe the “friendly fires” will be temporary, like the pains of a woman in labour in the labour room and that the end of each battle, like the arrival of a new baby, a bundle of miracle and joy, will bring beautiful, broad smiles on our faces. Meanwhile, we will have to guard our health, because tearing away from the past, like tearing away from an attachment, is not an easy experience. How well we would survive it all will depend on our capacities for adaptation to changing and adverse situation.

    Before I come to the outlines, I wish to advise that all of us, including the President himself, pay more than passing attention to our health. Bitterness over the changing environment in which we live will not solve our problems. It may give us headaches, sleepless nights, hypertension, heart and blood vessel diseases, stroke, heart failure, fear, anxiety and even depression. Do not be suprised if sudden deaths at this time are related to pathological hatred for the man in the driver’s seat, that is the president and whatever are the achievements in the economy he is making. When you hear some people speak, you easily recognise that they have not woken from the slumber of the elections and do not realise or believe we have a new president. President Tinubu will be under severe work pressure . Nerve wracking will be the several meetings he will have to hold in the first hundred days of his administration to properly establish the vision and to guard the sail. The soup plate receives the soup in its bowel, not on its buttocks, a Yoruba addage says. This will make him need brain and nerve food supplements. He will need to avoid heavy meals because they will drain more blood to the stomach and intestine and leave less for the brain, the eyes, the ears and the nerves which will be under severe pressure at this time. I do not know what his diet is like. He and his chef may wish to advise themselves of what astronauts eat in space, where no cooking is done , and they return to the earth often fresher and as energetic as  they left it.

    Mafia Wars

    I anticipate six mafia wars in the economy.

    •The subsidy mafia may exploit temporary hardships to forment trouble that will get the President off its back, and return the nation to subsidy days. Already, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has brought a bird out of its pocket. Time will tell on which side it stands. The President has explained his own vision. What is the NLC vision for generating income to service national debts, raise salaries and wages, while economic development is simultaneously funded? Or is it merely rabble rousing, playing to the gallery? Is the NLC unaware of the Petroleum Industry Act ( PIA) which forbids subsidy? Where was the NLC when former President Mohammadu Buhari was signing the Petroleum Industry Bill ( PIB) into law?  Why is it now crying wolf when the law is running its course? Does the NLC want President  Tinubu to break the law? Is the NLC unaware that the NNPC over imports refined petrol and that the excess is exported by marketers to West African countries for humongous profit, subsidising petrol in these countries at the expense of Nigerians? What the NLC should do is give us its own counter plan for funding  the economy. We should  examine both and decide on which is better. In a general nationwide strike, many persons the NLC claims to be defending may die because there may be no doctors in hospitals. There may be no foodstuff in the market. The banks may close, and there would be a worse cash squeeze than Emefiele’s cash squeeze. There may be no money in the pockets of people who live by the daily income. Robberies may erupt. Are these and more like them what we want? Former president Obasanjo who had not left any president who succeeded him in peace must be lurking around in the shadows for a pound of President Tinubu’s flesh. Tinubu has outclassed Obasanjo as a politician on no fewer than three serious occasions. Obasanjo is unlikely to give up another fight with him. To the mafia, human blood is like water and human life like chicken life when it comes to protecting their interest, irrespective of whether the members are top dignitaries in the Church or in the Mosque.

    •  A single foreign exchange market ordered by the president will eliminate the black market, affect its operators. At bedtime everyday and on rising in the morning, will they pray for their ouster in the economy? What about Nigerians  abroad who send token foreign currency home in exchange for humongous sums in naira with which they are striving to gain a better and stronger foothold in the economy, investing especially in real estate, the sub sector which hardly depreciates? They may not like appreciation of the naira. So will Central Bank and commercial bank officials who round trip foreign currency to the currency black market.

    • The Chinese who export electricity generators to  Nigeria,  like Nigerian  business men in this market, including former presidents who are said to own electricity distribution companies, will not enjoy the president’s moves to double electricity production and stream line the industry

    •The Chinese and the Indians will not enjoy the President’s plans to bring back the marketing boards. They are involved  in illegal mining and export of solid minerals, and  in  purchasing  produce and other raw materials from hinterland farmers at ridiculous peanut prices. The marketing boards will legally displace them and pay farmers better. The Chinese, in particular, are eyeing Africa for settlements for their excess population, and are quietly achieving this in Nigeria. They come into Nigeria, looking haggard and hungry. They do all businesses poor Nigerians do, including   sewing and selling  of Yoruba AGBADA and SOKOTO and, in no time, begin to look robust and healthier. How will the Chinese and the Indians respond to the marketing boards?:

    •Nigeria’s security architecture will be reformed as part of “institutional reforms”.  This will involve many decisions including stoppage of the theft of crude oil for illegal export. Will the mafia like it?

    • One million jobs are coming into the digital economy for young persons. But it may derail “old cargoes” who may be unable to cope with the technology of artificial intelligence.So, one job may  come several may go.

    Oil Subsidy

    Arguments for the abolition of oil subsidy are simple. Nigeria spends 96 per cent of its national income to service its national debt. This leaves only four per cent of the national income for maintaining the economy and for developing it or making it bigger. But what can four per cent of the national income do? Infrastructure are to be built. Salaries and wages are to be paid. The labour unions are asking for bigger national minimum wage. Doctors,like university teachers, soldiers and policemen, other uniformed forces, even civil servants, are asking for more pay. Children are to be kept in school. Security, of life and property, is down. Electricity failure is rampant. Hospital equipment and services are obsolete. The nation is training doctors and losing them to other countries. Nurses and information technology folks are leaving as well. Crude oil is stolen from pipelines and shipped abroad. Where are the security forces? The crude oil refineries have been incapacitated for decades. So, we have to ship crude oil abroad at huge transport and insurance cost, refine it abroad and bring it back home . The difference in the cost of crude refined at home and the crude sent abroad and brought back is what vampires in the oil industry call subsidy, to stabilise pump price as if nothing happened. But why could the refineries not be fixed? Is it not because the ants which eat up the vegetable is right in the root stalk of the vegetable?

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    When former President Muhammadu Buhari was ill in a foreign hospital, former Vice President Yemi Osibajo tried to solve the national income problem before it got this bad. As acting President, he went round the country and approved modular refineries, since it appeared Nigeria was unwilling to make its old and dysfunctional refineries to work. Modular refineries held great hope for the abolition of petroleum subsidy and freeing whatever money was involved for other uses in the economy. Without elaborate refineries, the Ibos refined crude oil during the Nigerian civil war , using crude machinery. Many people were also “illegally” refining crude oil along the coast line in the Buhari days. Osinbajo’s approval of the modular refineries was greeted with jubilation. But as soon as Buhari returned to Abuja, hail and hearty, he àbolished Osinbajo’s approvals, perhaps under captivity of the mafias of which his wife, Aisha, once publicly warned him.

    The argument over whether there is subsidy or if subsidy is a scam must be over 30 years old. Today, subsidy is estimated at about N400 billion  every month.  I recall my days as Editor of The Guardian newspaper from (1988 ). Mr Lade Bonuola was the Editor-in-Chief. Doctor Stanley MacebuH was Managing Director and Dr Tunji Dare, Editorial Page  Editor. At different times, Dr Macebuh and Dr Dare were Chairman of the Editorial Board. A recurring decimal in the newspapper’s editorial opinion  before I left in 1999 as the Director of Publications/Editor-in- Chief  was the  question of whether subsidy existed in the pump price of petrol. The Guardian always took the position that none existed.  Whenever The Guardian lit the fire, the NNPC would attempt to douse the storm in the public place through attempts to shift opinion on its side in other newspapers. Soon, the NNPC penetrated The Guardian’s editorial board and would have gotten away with it but for the alertness of Dr Dare. In one of his pro-subsidy campaigns, the NNPC generated an article which it forwarded to its friends and subsidy believers in many newspapers. On The Guardian, the opinion of an editorial board member may be different from that of the newspaper and was sacrosanct. This meant that the chairman of the Editorial Board or the editorial Page Editor could not reject it except on the grounds of poor grammar, potential to cause public disorder, defamation, libel or sedition potential etc. So, the NNPC article in reference could have easily sailed through The Guardian as a favourable counter opinion to the newspaper’s anti-subsidy opinion. Dr  Dare discovered that the article he was editing was a word- for-word replication of the same article he had read in other newspapers under the names of different authors. So,the NNPC had planted the article on the newspaper industry and on The Guardian. Dr. Dare threw  the article out of  The Guardian. The purpoted author was a visiting member of the  editorial board from the University of Ibadan. ……

    The NNPC has not relented since then in telling the succeeding government, including President Buhari’s, to subsidise the pump price of petrol which, every year, runs into trillions of naira debt the government owes the NNPC. The irony here is that Nigeria’s economy depends on crude oil sales to the tune of more than 90 Percent. The NNPC sells the crude, removes its overheads and gives the rest to the government to run the economy. But when the NNPC always sells below it’s cost profile to the public using its profit as subsidy, there is nothing left to give the government. That was why the NNPCL, now a limited liability company, will announce recently that the Buhari government owes it thrillions of naira in debt. Now, what does president Bola TINUBU do in this circumstance? Carry on as usual, incurring humongous foreign debts like President Buhari to repay old debts and manage to build some infrastructure, or courageously break the old cycle, part ways with it and restart the Nigerian economy on a healthier footing? Some critics have said he should not have announced subsidy abolition without first discussing it with stake holders.

    • The original of this article was heavily edited from want of space. The full text is on Facebook @ John Olufemi Kusa.
  • Waste not, empty maize cobs make nutritious meals

    Waste not, empty maize cobs make nutritious meals

    We are in the midst of the maize season, which should provide us with sumptuous and nutritious pots of mushroom soup every day, if only we weren’t careless and inwardly indolent, wasting the abundance around us.

    I have long forgiven the white and red cap chiefs of the Anchor Borrowers project, who, through their deeds and misdeeds, opposed the dreams of hundreds of us in the Golden Farmers Co-operative to become outstanding maize farmers. In this group, I had wished to show how waste products from the maize business could profit our purses, cooking pots, bodily health, and those of others outside our fold. Unfortunately, we were shackled in a dying bank, Heritage, which crippled our dreams.

    Dreams never die, however. They are intuitive whispers or ideas from higher grounds that develop into forms that the frontal brain can conceptualise or hammer into earthly realities. These forms float when they miss their anchorages in some places or persons; they float elsewhere where the reception may be better.

    Since I learned about Waste Not, Want Not, I had wondered what could be done with the stalk, leaves, corn covers, and corn silk after the maize harvest, boiling, or roasting of corn for eating or conversion to corn porridge or corn pap for drinking. I believe it was in the 1980s that we learned that the golden threads (corn silk) removed from the corn after stripping off the husk covers have several urogenital medicinal substances. When cleaned up, dried, and boiled, and taken as tea, they provide diuretic effects, helping the kidneys move out more water from the blood and body. They have been found to kill some germs in the urinary tract system and help mild prostate gland issues. When corn silk is used wet as tea or in other edible forms, it gives laxative effects.

    In respect of the plant, this is a first lesson in Waste Not, Want Not, a message that nothing from the hands of mother nature is waste material. Also, in the 1980s, when there was talk about aluminum being a cause of some brain problems, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, and that it could facilitate cancer in any weak or susceptible parts of the body, I got wind of the movement of Chinese people from Aluminum foil food wrappers to the use of special material made from corn covers. The discovery was exciting to me; I needed no persuasion that the covers could have medicinal value as well. Did we not enjoy the maize boiled or roasted in their covers more than the naked one? When we roast maize with the covers on, burning one cover after another and removing the corn  from the coal fire pot or oven before the heat consumes the last layer of covers, we enjoy a lot of corn oil with the corn unlike the  naked roasting, which does not yield oil. Naked roasting may also cause burns, which may be carcinogenic when eaten.

    So far in Nigeria, we do not know how to convert corn covers to natural food wrappers, save money on aluminum foil wrappers imports, create jobs, and eat healthier foods. We are probably inwardly immobile because mother nature blessed us in diverse ways. We have lots of Thomatoccus Danieli (moi moi or agidi leaf or ewe Iran), water extracts of which have been noted to help in the treatment and possible reversal of alcohol damage in the liver, some cases of liver failure and jaundice.

    We have lots of plantain  leaves in which Akwa Ibom women wrap fufu. What of plantain leaves in which some women even boil rice, beans, or yam? Evidence of our inward and intellectual indolence or, better still, spiritual indolence, because we are human spirits and spirit energy or power drives everything we do, is that we cannot encapsulate these leaves into digestible forms for everyday use as nutritional food supplements.

    From the corn covers, I move on to the maize stalk. When I hear my maize farmer friends complain that fertiliser had become more expensive, I ask them what they did with the stalks of the previous harvest. Alfa Aliu, a former Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) employee, who is now a chicken and maize farmer in Minna, and Ver Abraham, a thriving farmer in Gboko, can bear witness to this.

    I suggested their farms acquire hammer mills to powderise the stalks, leaves, and empty cobs and mix the powder with the top soil before maize cultivation in a new season. What about experimenting with adding this powder to animal feed to reduce feed cost, create jobs, produce healthier animals that would improve human health? That is what I do in my small home flower bed garden with tremendous results.

    It was in this process of carrying out this experiment that I was led to a new idea of a new use for empty corn cobs. I discovered that empty corn cobs may help in the production of mushrooms. Recently, I got bricklayers to mould 24 flower pots around the house. We filled them one quarter up with vegetable stems obtained from vegetable sellers in the markets. We added orange peel and sawdust. We aimed to develop compost ground with corn cobs.

    That was when Udeme James, a gardening lover, went online to find out what the outcomes could be. I had no doubts. I had done it before with flower gardening, chicken, and pig feed. From four pigs, three of them female, I had farmed about 300 pigs and piglets in one year at the Oke-Aro pig village, near  Iju, Ogun State. Which new idea did Udeme James come upon? On TikTok, she found the video of a Chinese woman who was growing mushrooms at home for her family’s consumption.

    I need to warn that this venture is not for persons who cannot identify poisonous mushrooms from nutritional mushrooms. Women, and perhaps men, who grew up in Nigerian villages easily tell the difference, although some mishaps do occur with fatalities. I, therefore, suggest that novices keep away or discipline themselves to learn the art. When I was a young newspaper sub-editor in the 1970s, I  sub-edited many vlcopies of several persons who ended up in hospital or died after poisonous mushrooms meals. The poisonous mushroom was so buried in my sub-conscious that when I was offered  mushroom soup by my host in a London restaurant in 1979, I asked for something else. A few years ago, Udeme James and her niece, Better Effiong joyfully told me they had seighted bad picked mushrooms in the flower beds. I screamed, and instructed that the mushrooms be thrown away. About four days later, they asked me if I enjoyed the soup they cooked and served the previous evening. I quickly apologise for not commending them for cooking a sumptous soup. When they told me the soup was mushroom soup, my eyes dilated in disbelief and fear. Straight away, my mind went to one of my uncle-in-laws who was blessed with five daughters and one son. Anytime I visited him at home and we were alone and he began to look over his shoulders, I knew what will happen next. He would whisper: “ FEMI, WOMEN ARE DEVILS.” Although he is gone now, I intend sometime in September to tell him on this page that women were not created to be devils. I know Udeme and Better will believe me because, ever since, I have not questioned their judgement on the edible mushrooms. One day, she will lecture us on edible mushrooms.

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    For women who can do this, their families will easily ride over the present national complaints that vegetables are scarce and expensive in the markets, that meat, crayfish, freshwater, and ocean fish are expensive and not within family reach, that children are growing up eating not enough proteins, especially the essential amino acids, and, therefore, developing the risk of becoming HIV-positive through nutritional deficiencies.

    Mrs. Orabiyi and her daughter, Teddy, a 300-Level Economics student at the  University of Lagos, must be laughing as they read these lines. They are my bosses at Life-Plus International, a private business cooperative that does many things, especially rabbit and mushroom farming.

    Of the values of mushrooms to human existence, the following words from an expert’s review attempt to lift a veil… “1. Reishi: – High in antioxidants and beta-glucans – Supports immune system and overall health. 2. Chaga: – Rich in fibre, vitamins, and minerals – Contains antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds. 3. Shiitake: – Good source of vitamin D and copper – Supports immune system and cardiovascular health. 4. Oyster Mushrooms: – Low in calories and high in protein – Rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. 5. Lion’s Mane: – Supports brain health and cognitive function – May help reduce anxiety and depression. 6. Enoki: – Low in calories and high in fibre – Rich in vitamins and minerals, including potassium and copper. 7. Portobello: – Good source of vitamin D and copper – Supports immune system and overall health. 8. Maitake: – Rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants – May help support blood sugar control and weight management.

    Mushrooms are a nutrient-dense food and can provide a range of health benefits when consumed as part of a balanced diet”.

    With the foregoing, anyone who understands mushrooms may now gather empty maize cobs and go online to check for how to use them for mushroom farming. Better still, I would be glad to link them with Life Plus International.

  • From where do our bodies begin to die, how?

    From where do our bodies begin to die, how?

    As stated in the article above, this is the second of the two articles for my column this week….July 18, 2024.

    We are not our bodies. They are material cloaks or vessels or garments in which we, their owners, experience our existence on Earth. That is why iI can speak of your gums and teeth or of your prostate gland. That, also, is why I can speak of my head or of my legs… that is, the head or the legs owned by me, Femi Kusa, the living ego or “the breath of life” or, better still, the human spirit  or human being, if you are more comfortable with that, who inhabits the body you call me. As I am not my motor car when I am inside it, I am not my body when I am inside it!

    There are many ideas about where the human body begins to die from, and how. Decades ago, the Royal College of Surgeons in England gave us this idea… DEATH BEGINS SLOWLY BUT SURELY IN THE INTESTINE. No one can doubt this.

    We know the deadly havoc Cholera can wreak on the health and life of the human body through the intestine. I have read in a medical journal of how feces caked up in a woman’s intestine right from her anus to her duodenum, and morbid anatomy surgeons at the morgue had to break it up with a chisel before they could perform an autopsy. That was a rare breed of case of constipation, though. What about the ones that end up with polyps and cancer? Persons challenged by bleeding piles and hemorrhoids know how debilitating this condition can be. For, apart from the embarrassment of wearing diapers or having under briefs outer clothes stained with blood, lost every time they push for elimination, it may add up to cause mild or serious anemia, which may warrant blood transfusions or cause blood deficiency in some organs, harm or endanger them.

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    When I was a boy, I saw mothers dab the middle of the heads of their babies with oil. I grew up to learn that this place was the FONTANELLE, where cranium bones were yet to fully connect. To this day, mothers wear caps of all sorts on the heads of their babies to prevent “cold” from getting into the body through this place. For the same reason, I believe socks and gloves are worn on the hands and feet of babies.

    I may have been helped to save a woman’s life about 20 years ago when I waited on her in a hospital ward after she had surgery to remove her uterus, which was overgrown with fibroids tissues. The nurses left soon after they wheeled her back to the ward. Every 15 minutes or thereabout, I looked in, lifted the bed covers to check the condition of her hands, feet, and forehead. The last time I checked, the feet were cold, almost lifeless, suggesting blood was not circulating well there. I rushed to the nurse’s bay. They were chatting merrily. The only way I could get them up and out was by feigning seriousness on my face and exclaiming all over that their patient was almost ice cold all over and may have died. They sprang up, colliding with one another on the way. There, indeed, in the ward, their patient was dying. They rushed hither and thither, bringing back all sorts of appliances, pulled the screens, and got the doctors. She survived.

    Now we know that some persons present cold feet, especially in old age, because they suffer from venous insufficiency due to any or a combination of some factors, most commonly varicose veins or blocked or crumbled veins. The net result or bottom line is that blood circulation is restricted, and blood may pool, wastes and toxins may accumulate dangerously, free radicals may overwhelm the tissue, and oxygen, the elixir of life, may not be available to the surrounding tissue. Persons who are not aware or conversant with the benefits of quantum energy  appliances for improving health challenges address such a problem by massaging their feet, hands, face, or any trouble zone in their bodies with “Hot Liniments” such as mentholatum, Thermogenes, Sloane’s, Indian Balm, Oregano oil, or essential oils well moderated with carrier oils an example of which is Nakom oil .

    Nowadays, the trend is to wear quantum energy socks, and if the problem reaches up to the knee joints, quantum energy knee pads . Somewhere below, I will restate the suggestion I made a few days ago on my WhatsApp status after I saw some of my friends at an outing who complained of cold, swollen, or painful legs. Almost immediately, I suspected some of the complaints were Seasonal Affective Disorders (SADs). These are health troubles common when a new season breaks. We are in the rainy season. Lightning is flashing, thunder is hammering, helping snails to hatch their eggs,the downpour is heavy, the weather is cold, the heart is pushing blood hard, probably harder than ever, but the circulation cannot reach everywhere. Unfortunately, pepper is so expensive in the market now, and not many persons are eating it well enough to help the heart push better and make the blood thinner or more viscous.

    But before I return to Quantum Energy for cold feet and arthritic knees joint, I will quickly mention DYING FROM THE SKIN. About two weeks ago, a case of it came up, which I mention here only for the lesson we may learn from it. Our lives are lessons for other persons, and their lives are lessons for us. In the case under reference,  the light-complexioned body darkened and  blackened. That suggested departure of blood from the skin. As many as 15 pints of blood transfusions failed to bring back the complexion. The liver and kidneys were in various degrees of failure, and a substantial number of brain cells had died. The blood output may have been declining, and the various organs may have been reporting this situation. As I said earlier, we are not our bodies, and our bodies are not us. Our bodies are mere garments like our clothes, which we should learn to properly take care of with the right nutrition, healthy balance between exertion and rest, relaxation, joyful activities, etc. The body has no life of its own. It’s animated by the indwelling human Spirit, that is, by us (you and me), and maintained by the blood, which we also helped to form. Once animated, the body contributes its own  quota into the union of energies involving the body and the spirit. If contributions by the spirit falls low, as in depression, the body may begin to wilt. If contributions by the body become inadequate, as through poor nutrition, exertion, the spirit may find the body unsuitable and unseeable… and may vacate it in what we know as dead of the body. The same may happen if the body is not fed the right amounts of quality food and drink, which has become the norm today, giving rise to various kinds of energy and health questions. Whatever the case may be, we appear to be in a new world health order in which quantum energy has been given to mankind to enable them to help their bodies have the right amount of energy to hold the union of body and soul. The wise person will take advantage of this blessing… I said in my earlier stated Whatsapp status: Warm Your Feet And Knee Joints.

    Warm your feet and arthritic, painful knee joints.

    The weather is cool, cool enough to make some senior citzens bed ridden, complaining that their feets and legs are too cool and their  knee joint arthritic, sore and painful. They may help themselves by improving circulation in these areas through the wearing of quantum energy socks and quantum energy knee pad. Young persons similarly troubled  may do likewise. Who knows, this may some day prevent surgery   to replace natural cartilage knee cap with plastic knee cap at a current  whopping cost of N5 million per knee.

  • Maria Treben Bitters in thick, thin of health seasons

    Maria Treben Bitters in thick, thin of health seasons

    It has been 29 days since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu fell flat on his face while ascending the podium to make a highly-anticipated speech on June 12, Nigeria’s second national  democracy day since his inauguration as President  on 29 May, last year. All eyes were on him as he strode towards the microphone to address the nation. He stumbled and fell, but quickly sprang up. He immediately dusted his dress and made a joke of the fall, saying he prostrated to the honour of Nigeria’s fallen heroes of democracy. Many observers expected him to be bedridden that evening or the next day, but he hosted a dinner that evening and was active the following day. This must have embarrassed his political foes, who may have wanted to use the fall as ammunition to question his physical fitness, just as they did during the presidential campaign last year using computers to slur his speeches and responses during interviews.

    I have had several serious falls myself, each one serious enough to break my bones, but none ever did. I have learned many lessons about how to manage falls without after effects. I am happy to share some of them.

    If there is a good supplement or plant medicine I always like to keep in my emergency or first aid medicine box, it is Maria Treben Bitters.

    It is made from a secret formula passed down to humanity through Maria Treben, the legendary Austrian herbalist of our time, now of blessed memory. Originally, the formula belonged to Dr. Samts, who died at the age of 103 after falling off his horse during a riding exercise. At the age of 88, he gave the formula to Maria Treben, the flag bearer of several testimonials of these Swedish bitters. Maria Treben released to humanity the 42 uses of this non-alcoholic preparation with no preservatives, as stated in the Old Manuscript which she published in her book, Help Through God’s Pharmacy. When I learned of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s fall at Eagle Square on June 12,  Nigeria’s Democracy Day, I wished he and his wife, Remi, knew of Maria Treben and this brand of bitters. This is because it has bailed me out of several dangerous events, such as the president’s fall, and more. Mr. Sam Tunde Ayeni introduced Maria Bitters to me several years ago. At that time, he was doing business with Dr. Udo Erasmus, author of Fat That Heals And Fat That Kills.

    This book resolved the fat question and debate among Euro-Americans. The debate, fermented in the 1980s, revolved around which dietary fat could cause heart disease, heart attacks, blood vessel damage, and strokes. Palm oil and coconut oil were caught in the crossfire. Euro-Americans saw no value in them for cardiovascular health and sought to promote soya beans oil, abundant in the United States, as the oil that could safeguard health. However, the Caribbeans, strong in food and plant medicine research, later vindicated coconut oil, plentiful in their country. Palm oil also received reprieve from Americans themselves. Dr. Erasmus differentiated between fats that heal and those that harm, exposing killer factors in industrial oil extraction processes.

    When I reviewed his book in the 1990s and early 2000s, many readers of this column in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states rejoiced that their son was making waves in nutrition abroad. They thought I had mistakenly left out the “h” in the name of their second male child, “UDOH”! I retell this story to avoid this impression in the present column. Dr. Udo Erasmus, a Pole who naturalised in the United States, was brought to Nigeria by Mr. Ayeni for a health seminar  hosted by HAVILLAH health food store in Lagos. Following this, a wide range of nutritional supplements bearing Dr. Erasmus’ name appeared in the Nigerian market, courtesy of Mr. Ayeni’s efforts. The success of these supplements, especially UDO’s OIL, led him to partner with the producers of BRAGG brand Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV). Unfortunately, pirates hijacked the products despite registration with NAFDAC, a situation that persists to this day.

    Other testimonials

    •Mrs. Felicia Baderinwa (also known as Mrs. Whyte) of Agege, Lagos, used Maria Bitters to treat a split toe she got when she accidentally stepped on an iron gate hook. The injury healed quickly. Impressed, Mrs. Whyte introduced me to a mother whose baby had a severe abscess from an injection. Despite trying various remedies, the abscess persisted. I suggested Maria Treben Bitters, and after massaging it into the affected area, the swelling disappeared within two weeks.

    • While inspecting the construction of my house, a long metal range fell from an upstairs window and hit me right on the forehead. I saw stars and felt a swelling forming. I went to my car for a bottle of Maria Bitters and  I massaged some of the content  into the affected area intermittently for about 30 minutes and experienced no pain thereafter.

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    • One evening, I fell into an open drainage, shortly after I disembarked from a tricycle (Marwa). I stepped aside for it to move on. It werved towards me. I pulled backwards a little, unkown to me that I stood near the drainage. This event took place  near the entrance gate of the housing estate where I lived. My head hit the concrete wall, and my legs were caught by the outer wall. Security staff helped me out, and although I was aching all over, I used ice block therapy and massaged the affected areas with Maria Bitters all night. To my surprise, I felt absolutely normal the next day.

    • I was hit by a motorcycle ridden by a policeman while crossing the road to Home Taste Kitchen in Agege, Lagos. That was where I always loved to have lunch whenever I was in Agege. I always waited for traffic to stand still on one side of the two-lane road before I crossed to  Home Taste. That day, traffic on the lane closer to Home Taste stood still. I had no trouble crossing over to eat. It was beyond my imagination that a motor cycle would be ridden in against the traffic which had stool still. What I observed in a jiffy were the handles of a motorcycle from which I had no time to dodge. The motorcycle lifted and knocked me against a truck beside which I stood. The impact left me bruised and bleeding on the road. I feared I may have broken a bone, especially my right femur which got fractured in 1966 in Ibadan when a taxi knocked down. I also worried about my spinal cord. The “area boys” rescued me and held the policeman accountable. I was taken to the hospital to rule out internal bleeding and later returned to Home Taste for lunch. I then went to my office to get a bottle of Maria Bitters, which I used to massage the affected areas that night and the next day. I recovered quickly, except for some bruising that Mrs. Hannah Korede helped nurse.

    • In another incident at a rowdy bus-stop, a Marwa ran over one of my feet, causing it to feel hot and peppery. I removed my shoe and dabbed the foot with Maria Bitters, which provided relief. I have had three more experiences with Maria Bitters since then.

    • One of my last memorable personal experiences took place one evening at Pen Cinema, Agege  round-about beside the Taste Fried Chicken complex. I was crossing the Taste Fried Chicken end of the road when a power bicycle ridden, again, by a policeman approached me from behind, knocking me to one side while the rider and the bike fell on another. Meanwhile, the headlamps of a car were advancing. I crossed on my buttocks to the Midian of the road afterwards, gathered myself, ignored apologies from the irresponsible law-breaking policeman, and treated myself at home, with no default or defects on the following day as usual.

    • I will  never forget a young tiler and his boss  who worked  in my house. They were tiling the stairway. Minutes earlier, I had complained to them that I did not like the way they left the granite cutting saw by the porch doorway. They ignored the complaint. Suddenly, a cry of agony rang out. His boss and I rushed out of the house to see him. Accidentally, and forgetfully, he stepped on the live cutting saw with his bare foot. The saw cut his foot deep, almost separating it into two parts. He was bleeding profusely and shouting. I asked his boss  to clean the wound with water while I went to bring Maria Treben Bitters. I poured almost a quarter of the content into the deep cut, and soon the bleeding stopped. We hired a tricycle that took him to Merit Hospital, where Dr. Moss, a Ghanaian, attended to him. He did not agree to let Dr. Moses stitch the parts together. He was given another treatment and discharged. I was afraid he could lose his foot, but to my surprise, he did not till this day.

    • Before her marriage, Mrs. Hannah Korede worked with me. She was with my sister when I visited her one day in Shomolu. She began to complain of menstrual cramps. Suddenly, her protestation assumed alarming proportions. Immediately, I called her husband-to-be, Mr. Korede, on the telephone. Before he came, I gave my sister a bottle from which she massaged the Bitters into Hannah’s irritated, cramping and sore abdomen. He met her about 30 minutes later in deep sleep. Where Maria Treben Bitters is not readily available, Liquid magnesium may perform this miracle as well.

    A few days later,  I invited some friends, including Mr. Danson Sunday Danson from Uyo, to have drinks with me to which I added some of the bitters. Some almost broke their drinking glasses in fury. Till this day, Danson avoids the bitters. It is bitter to some persons, but not to me, otherwise, I would not add half or one capful to my teeth-cleaning preparation, which includes turmeric, diatom, clove powder or oil, natural salt, and pollutant-free toothpaste.

    • My Palm Grove Bus-stop experience is unforgettable. I closed from my office on Town Planning Way in Ilupeju, Lagos, and boarded a bus from Palm Grove. I was to cross over to the other side of the 10-lane Ikorodu Road using a footbridge and from there board another bus to Shomolu to see my sister as I did every evening before heading home. The bus that brought me to Palm Grove disembarked passengers about 20 metres from the bus-stop due to a traffic jam. It was dark, and the walkway was rough, littered with huge volcanic stones that I sighted too late when I hurried to get out of the way of a vehicle rushing from behind me, hooting. I fell, full face, as we say, my right knee heavily rammed into one of the ragged stones. I saw stars. I thought my knee cap was fractured. I was sweating. Some good Samaritans came to lift me up and took me to the landing of the footbridge, where someone poured cool water over my head. In about 15 minutes, I regained some strength and was strong enough to slowly find my way to the other side of the road, aborted my visit to Shomolu, and boarded a bus back home. In my routine, I  performed the Maria Treben Bitters rituals…and went to bed. In the morning, I hardly remembered events of the evening before.

    The President

     If President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had not heard of Maria Treben Bitters, the foregoing testimonial should spur him to keep bottles in the Aso Rock Villa and take them along during his travels in and outside Nigeria. There are no fewer than 42 uses of this product which is specially formulated without alcohol or any other preservative according to “the old manuscript”. He is a busy man and, like all very busy persons, may come under stress now and then and experience pain in different parts of the body, especially in the joints. Many old persons who have to frequently over-work their knee joints  nowadays wear Quantum Energy knee pad. This energise the knee joint. They may not need to wear the knee pad to bed. During such free periods, they may generously massage the knee joints or any other joints with Maria Treben Bitters. I cut my hair low, so I massage deep into my scalp after a hard day’s work, before bed. Nowadays, I have quantum energy water spray bottles, and I dilute the bitters with water or keep them whole in any of these bottles. Quantum energy minerals in the bottle energise the contents. Energised water, for example, activates the human cells they come into contact with. I spray energised water into my eyes, mouth, gums, teeth, in any painful area of the body, on food and drinks to energise them. I use the water and bitters as an after-shave, deodorant, scalp massage, foot massage, prophylactic to prevent athlete’s foot, and sometimes as a massage for the entire body, including bone joints, especially those in the knee. What I do not fail to do when I can afford it is to add one or two capful of Maria Treben Bitters to my bath water in the bucket or bath. The skin absorbs the healing energy in the bitters and calms the nerves .

    According to a report, the old manuscript mentions that Maria Treben Bitters can treat Digestive issues, Constipation, Diarrhea, Indigestion, Nausea, Vomiting, Heartburn, Sore throats, Coughs, Cold and flu, Fever, Headaches, Migraines, Menstrual cramps, Menstrual irregularities, PMS symptoms, Skin issues (acne, eczema, etc.), Wound healing, Insect bites, Burns, Sunburn, Muscle pain, Joint pain, Arthritis, Rheumatism, Gout, Sciatica, Back pain, Neck pain, Shoulder pain, Knee pain, Ankle pain, Foot pain, Hand pain, Finger pain, Toothache, Gum inflammation, Bad breath, Body odour, Foot fungus, Athlete’s foot, and Skin fungus.

    Additionally, Maria Treben Bitters are used for: Detoxification Liver and gallbladder issues, Kidney stones, Urinary tract infections, Prostate issues, Hemorrhoids, Stress and anxiety, Insomnia, Fatigue, Allergies, Asthma, Bronchitis, Cancer support,Immune system support.

    “ It is important to note that some of these uses may require dilution with water or other preparations, and it’s important to consult with a healthcare professional before using Maria Treben Bitters for any health issue”.

  • Weak cervix, hormone behind pregnant wife’s kidnap story?

    Weak cervix, hormone behind pregnant wife’s kidnap story?

    Nigeria’s Kidnap stories are becoming more theatrical.

    It began with bandits and terrorists overrunning harmless peasants’ communities in the dead of the night, burning houses, shooting from AK-47 rifles, and returning to the forests from where they came with scores of men, women and children as spoils of war. Now, previously unheard of self kidnaps have joined the theatrics. School children are hidden somewhere by their friends who telephone the “victims” parents that their children have been kidnapped.

    We heard of a pastor who similarly deceived his congregation. Wives or husbands too play this game.

    The most recent is the story of Mrs. Raheemat Lateef.She lived in Abeokuta, was pregnant, left home to attend an antenatal clinic somewhere in town, later telephoned home that she had been kidnapped, making her husband call the police immediately, but only for her to be found in Ilorin, 249.5km kilometers away, in the home of her father, who has come up with another story that she fled from home because, as it had become characteristic of her in pregnancy, she had another miscarriage.

    Many persons who heard the first story of Mrs. Raheemat Lateef may not forgive her for raising their blood pressure or creating an atmosphere that could do so. I think that was a silly thing to do. When will it not be known that she was with her father? I have no problem ignoring her antic, especially as the motive was not to make money through false pretence. I hope no one developed high blood pressure at the thought that the kidnapping of a pregnant woman on the way to hospital portends darker days ahead for security in Nigeria. As told by her father, the problem Mrs Raheemat Lateef has with “habitual miscarriage,” as the condition is described, may have a relationship with such challenges as an incompetent cervix, hormonal imbalance, and magnesium deficiency, among other problems.

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    The father told the police about his daughter’s departure from home in Abeokuta and surfacing in Ilorin. She had been having miscarriages and did not know how to explain the latest one to her husband. It’s possible these miscarriages had been agonising their marriage, and this one could be the last straw that may break the camel’s back. I witnessed such a case a few years ago. I saw a woman from England who was in Nigeria to see her doctors at the Lagos University Teaching Hospitals (LUTH) again over fertility questions that were disturbing her marriage. Women should count themselves lucky who can naturally get pregnant and keep the baby to term. This woman is a friend to a woman in England who regularly reads this column. We met at the instance of this other woman. She was weeping, and she was saying her husband gave her this last consultation with her doctors as the last hope for their marriage. In other words, if a pregnancy did not clock to term, they were as good as no longer married! I recall a case similar to hers in which the quivering of nerves caused by magnesium deficiency caused no fewer than five pregnancy losses in a row.

    There were other cases in which hormonal imbalances caused the placenta to not grow properly, and the fetuses had to come down. One of the few things I recalled advising this woman from England to try was a panty liner. In those days, we did not have the Quantum Energy panty liner to address subnormal health in the vagina, cervix, uterus, tubes, and ovaries. We did not also have then the lady’s Quantum Energy boxer, both of which are now available in the market. Nevertheless, this woman returned to England, hopeful. A few weeks later, she did not associate her nausea and vomiting experiences with pregnancy. I advised her when she called me to run a laboratory test. The result was positive, and she was advised to go off work to avoid stress this time around. Now, this woman is a proud mother of twins. Thanks, Funke, for plastering a person’s life with joy. My prayer is that joy will ever abound in your soul as well.

    Incompetent Cervix. This is a major cause of spontaneous abortion, which is the abortion that occurs on its own. In my high school biology class, our teacher gave us a graphic architecture of the female reproductive system. He likened the vagina, cervix, and uterus to three rooms, one of which opened to the next through a door. The vagina is the outermost or “sitting room,” where sexual intercourse occurs. The cervix and uterus are “Madam’s bedroom” and “Master bedroom,” respectively, connected by a door through which deposited sperm travel inward. I like to mention one of the encounters of some women with the cervix. It is called sperm reflux and is anti-fertility. In this regard, the cervix is a defender of the uterus against infective agents from the vagina.It forms a thick mucus barrier door at the entrance between the cervix and uterus. This mucus is often thicker than the mucus during ovulation. With this thick mucoid wall, semen cannot penetrate the uterus. So, sperm and semen keep flowing back the way they came through in reflux. For some women, the reflux is immediate, right in bed, before all sexual disengagement. For others, it may take a while, long after the woman may have been back on her feet, believing all is well. Yoruba folklore therapists call it EDA (d:d) “pouring”.

    Orthodox medicine treats this condition with antibiotics. Natural medicines also uses natural antibiotics in food medicines and mucus thinners. This condition is not the only factor inhibiting reproduction outside of an incompetent cervix. The shape and positioning of the uterus and cervix are important for stress-free reproduction. The anteverted uterus is the natural, healthy positioning of the uterus. The retroverted positioning makes matters difficult. Either positioning defines the inclination towards certain other structures in the pelvic region. In a retroverted uterus, sperm cannot easily enter the uterus from the cervix, even when the passage from the cervix is free. There may also be challenges with a prolapsed uterus. This is a fallen uterus that has lost tone in the muscles that hold it in its own compartment. Failing, it encroaches into the cervix and may even make an appearance in the vagina. It may weaken the enthusiasm of sexual partners, if not embarrass them.

    In the treatment of these conditions, little attention is given to the Second Energy Chakra (see the internet, please) or assistance with Quantum Energy support, such as the female version of the Quantum Energy boxer. Recently, it was reported that a quantum Energy protocol involving the use of Quantum phototherapy Telomerase Activation machine reduce the seize uterine fibroids in a patient from 10.5cm to 5cm in four weeks. The trouble for many women who would like to own or avail themselves of the help of this machine is that it cost about 2.2 million for one and about 50 thousand Naira per section of one hour in the Therapist clinic. This machine is not for uterine fibroids therapy alone. It has no fewer than nine applications. Women who cannot afford it for uterine fibroids often go for the female version of the quantum energy boxer.

    We are back to some of the factors which inhabit reproduction, but not yet incompetent cervix. Often, we hear of blames heaped on prior surgical protocols and multiple births. I do not think this blame holds much water. It may do with women with poor nutrition but not in every or many cases of multiple births. I wonder why Mrs. Grace Edet James of Akwa Ibom State experienced none of these conditions, although she bore nine children. I also wonder why my maternal great grandmother, Okuronke Olunaike, bore one set of twins and one set of triplets without much ado before her husband passed. Reproduction problems have become the bane of Nigerian modern women.

    When the cervix is “incompetent” or insufficient, it cannot support the growth of a baby in the womb to a full term of 36 or 37 weeks. Somewhere around the middle of pregnancy, it gives way. I would like to introduce a second imagery, that of a “concrete slab,” in a storey building similar to the “connecting door” I borrowed from my high school biology teacher. In pregnancy, the structural support the cervix offers the uterus is like a concrete slab. If we live in a multi-storey building, we should know that a concrete slab suspends us from the ground floor.

    The uterus is like a second floor, the cervix a first floor, and the vagina the ground floor. The baby is growing in the “second floor” (the uterus), supported by the muscular “slab” of the cervix. If this muscular sheet gives way, the baby will come down pre-term, about half-matured, probably unviable. Sometimes, the baby may have died in the uterus, warranting nature to expel it right away. In some cases, a short or insufficient cervix can be attributed to hormonal problems. The primary hormonal actors are estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen has three forms, E1, E2, and E3, which should exist in a specific ratio to progesterone. Sometimes, the estrogen ratio is normal, but progesterone levels are low and need to be supplemented with pharmaceutical progesterone by a gyneacologist or through plant medicines.

    When human estrogen is too harsh, the liver breaks it down, and the bile and dietary fiber export it out of the body through stool. In this case, phytoestrogen substitutes are used. This consideration led to the development of plant medicines like Phyto Estrogen from Tasly and Gynocare from Milnapath Millennium Nature Pathway. In hospital protocols, a woman diagnosed with an incompetent cervix may undergo a surgical procedure called cerclage, also known as surrogical stitches. This procedure is like sewing a torn dress. A woman who undergoes this procedure must have the stitches removed before her baby is born, otherwise the baby may find the natural pathway from the uterus blocked. Natural medicine has a similar procedure, which involves scraping, upward, the bark of a certain tree with an empty snail shell, cooking it, and giving it to the woman to eat. This guarantees full-term development for the baby whose mother had been troubled by an incompetent cervix. However, the traditional procedure has limitations. What happens if the tree is no longer readily available when the baby is about to be born, or if the therapist has passed away? This question is relevant because the therapeutic procedure needs to be reversed for the baby to be born through the natural process. The bark of the tree needs to be scrapped in a downward motion, cooked, and given to the expectant mother to eat. The trouble with Nigerian traditional medicine (NTM) is the lack of specialisation, clinical experiments, and plantation farming. There are few growers of medicinal plants, factory processors, producers, merchants, and laboratory experiments. Why can’t this tree be grown in plantations, harvested, and put through a research process?

    Why must agriculture be tailored towards producing only food crops to the neglect of NEW USES OF AGRICULTURE, of which plant medine is one? HORMONAL IMBALANCE I previously mentioned hormonal imbalance in relation to estrogen and progesterone, as well as phytoestrogen and gynocare. There are various proprietary plant medicines available to balance hormones. Before proceeding, I would like to mention herbs like Vitex, Black cohosh, Ashwaghanda, Peruvian Macca, Donquai, Ashoka, and Red Raspberry leaves, which support fertility, along with minerals like zinc. Vitamin A, Vitamin E, Selenium, and similar nutrients also play crucial roles.

    To nourish a woman’s entire body for the demanding task of reproduction, I recommend a proprietary blend of approximately 80 nutrients called Daily Build. Unfortunately, we no longer have access to Spectra Greens, Spectra Reds, and Spectra Blues, which provided a wide range of nutrients for complete or near-complete nutrition for the average adult human body’s 100 trillion cells or so cells. In the 1980s, I encountered a challenging case where a woman experienced three consecutive miscarriages after a normal birth, all within the first four months of pregnancy.

    Gyneacologists suggested progesterone deficiency, as the cervix was competent. At the time, I was unaware of the importance of zinc, a fertility mineral, and reproductive system herbs. However, during a holiday to the United States in the late 1980s, I learned about the benefits of Vitex, Black cohosh, Red raspberry leaves, and shepherd’s purse from a pharmacologist who had successfully used them to overcome three miscarriages with his wife. I applied this knowledge to the stubborn case I was handling, and it yielded remarkable results. Vitex: In several studies, Vitex has been shown to support fertility in women. It helps to address Pre-menstrual Syndrome (PMS). This is a condition in which the body may blot with fluid, and the breast may enlarge, become tender, sore and painful to touch. Sometimes, fluid may drip from the nipples, especially when there is too much estrogen vis-a-vis progesterone. If prolactin, a hormone, is what drips out of the nipples, the ovaries may have been shut down and ovulation will not take place.

    Without ovulation, pregnancy cannot occur. This excess condition of prolactin is called hyperprolectinemia. Luckily for women affected by it, Vitex helps to normalise prolactin levels. This may not be surprising because hyper prolectinemia follows excess estrogen or estrogenation and Vitex balances estrogen. In normal circumstances, it is prolactin that the brain sends as a messanger hormone to the ovaries with a chemical message that they should stop producing eggs when a pregnancy has been established.This is why a pregnant woman is not pregnant during a pregnancy.

    When a woman is not pregnant and prolactin floods her system, she cannot get pregnant because her ovaries would have been shut down. Luckily for women, still, Vitex helps to prevent or to reverse menopausal symptoms. Young women, in particular, should not forsake vitex, because they consume alot of sugar and this unbalances their hormones. Black cohosh: Ameri-Indian women were the custodian of black cohosh before Western researchers discovered it. They use this herb for all sort of female trouble, especially those if the reproduction system. Black Coshos us estrogenic, but it does not affect some parts of the body while it affects others. It tends to help to re-establish menstruation in menstruating women whose period disappear especially when it is combined with Vitex or Donquai, another herb for women. In a study of 244 menopausal women challenged with uterine fibroids, 40mg of black cohosh every day was reported to decrease benign tumor by as much as 30 percent. Other studies of black cohosh and menopausal problems suggest that it’s improves hit flashes, sleep disorder, anxiety and mental stamina especially in combination with Vitex and other female herbs. In the 1990s, I had a good laugh at a greedy woman in her late 20s who was so frighten that her period slowed down and disappeared for months that she insisted on combining black cohosh with Vitex and two other hormonal supplements, one of which was PHYTO ESTROGEN from TASLY. When the period return, it was as though a kitchen tap was permanently turn on to rush. Magnesium Connection Just as progesterone balances estrogen, magnesium balances calcium.

    Excessive calcium can cause nerve agitation and tremors, which can be debilitating. Many people worldwide are magnesium deficient. I know of a young woman in Shomolu, Lagos, who became productive after taking magnesium supplements after five miscarriages due to an incompetent cervix. Another woman developed still hands after childbirth, which magnesium therapy helped alleviate. She had been unable to sleep and looked old and tired. I didn’t recognise her until Mrs. Bukola Aseeze, CEO of Budget Travels, reminded me of her story. Mrs Raheemat Lateef who had suffered multiple miscarriages must have been traumatised, fled to her father’s comfort zone. Her husband should show understanding and compassion, as marriage is a partnership through life’s ups and downs. Having babies is not the sole purpose of existence. Everyone should seek to discover the purpose of earthly existence and what, especially, brought him or her here. What value is there in having many children if we ultimately separate from them and our spouse, only to realise our life’s task was undone and we must return to re-learn and to re-perform it?

  • Cholera, fast-killing disease of  two calabashes

    Cholera, fast-killing disease of  two calabashes

    Let me be frank: many plant medicines can over-run cholera, as many naturopaths say, but, in my view, not  when the disease has thrown up medical emergencies. So, I write only about a cholera that is still a toothless bull dog, however wild its presentation may appear to be. Last week, I pulled my guards, just in case…! That was when my son kept going to the small room, as did a young woman often around us and  my system began to quiver after theirs. Carefully, I watched the trend for two days to be sure it was plain diarrhoea, took seven capsules of  activated charcoal on the third, to let detoxification take its course, and, on the fourth, terminated the bowel riot by eating with meal and on empty stomach, a bowl of scent leaves. These are two of several recipes which should easily terminate spasmodic muscle motions in the stomach and intestines caused by a bacterium in the disease of CHOLERA. I will mention other helpful remedies in due  course.

    S.O. KOLADE

    It was in the 1967 and 1968 Health Science classes of Mr. S.O. Kolade  at Oliver Baptist High School, Oyo, that I first  learned  about  Cholera. It was one of the diseases the  Western African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) compelled students of Health Science to learn. That was because the Africans education was tied to health experiences of the European. Cholera was not prevalent in Nigeria then, although our forefathers had encountered and tamed it with herbs. Yoruba traditional medicine men and women call it Aa run ONI  IGBA MEJI (disease of two calabashes). This was a most graphic or vivid description of a presentation of simultaneous vomiting and loose defecation in which one calabash was placed before tte mouth to catch the vomit and another took the anal discharges.

    Among Yorubas, the Ijebus kept accurate accounts of the healing herbs of their forebears. These accounts were kept in what they called the ACCOUNT  BOOK or IWE ACCOUNT. It was meticulously kept away from persons unauthorised to see it. Upon the owner’s death, it was the prized inheritance his children searched for. My paternal grandfather, IKURIMISA, was a renowned herbalist well known in the Palace of the AWUJALE OF IJEBULAND of his days. When he passed, one of his cousins was said to have hijacked, if not stolen, his account book. In my unrelenting search for the “accounts” of the healing herbs of Yoruba people, I came across what seemed to me to be the most well-kept records. It was in a book form  published in the name of Pa  ODUNMOSU.  I found it to be a book not to be kept carelessly in the book shelf because it had several recipes for inimical preparations as well. The book showed me the Yorubas had reliable medical knowledge. The description of Cholera was apt (Aa run Oni Igba Meji), more than F. DANIEL could describe for us in Kolade’s Health Science students in his book TROPICAL HYGIENE FOR SCHOOLS. I kept Pa Odumusu’s book so thoroughly that I forgot where I kept it. All I remember about Cholera from the book now is that EHINBISISOWO or EHIN OLUBE, that is  CHANCA PIEDRA ( Phyllanthus nuriri) was among the recipes.

    IGBOBI  COLLEGE

     It was in the “A” Level or Higher School Certificate  (HSC) history class of an English woman, Mrs. Odunsi at Igbobi College in 1969 that I came to square terms with Cholera. She taught modern European History in which British history was etched. It was largely a history of empire building and of war which pitched so-called democratic governments of Britain, France, and  Germany against the totalitarian regimes  of Russia. One of their battlefield encounters which had something to do with Cholera and brought  humanitarian nurse FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE to limelight was the CRIMEAN WAR.

    The war  was fought over Christian and Islamic differences in respect of access to religious shrines and over Russian expansionism. An estimated one million British soldiers were killed in unhygienic condition which promoted the flourish of Cholera, Dysentery, Typhoid and Fever. In addition, exposure to cold exerted its toll. So frightening were the pictures of dead and dying painted by Mrs. Odunsi that I then  understood the inclusion of Cholera in an O’level Health Science syllabus. Till this day, I have not ceased to ascribe divine grace to why Cholera has not wiped out more than half of Nigeria’s population, and wonder as well if we are not pushing our luck too far. In a moment, I will paint a small picture which should drive these points home.

    ABULE IJESHA

    This is a settlement of Ijesha  people who migrated  from the Yoruba hinterland in today’s Osun State. The settlement lies  between the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) and Myoung Army Barracks near Igbobi College. It is a swamp in which no human dwelling should have been permitted. The water table was so high in the 1950s when I grew up there as a child that well water was flows within only 10 feet from the top soil. The houses were packed so close on the streets that two cars may not be driven abreast without side contact. Open earth drainage dug with hoes or cutlasses were everywhere. They were  smelly and filled with mosquitoes. Children died everyday from malaria fever and its complications such as convulsions and seizures or from the poisoning by traditional medicine against them which children were  given in almost every home at the weekend. The  kingpin of these medicines was cow’s urine kept over the fire place in the kitchen to ferment. Whenever any child convulsed, even in the dead of the night, the women rushed into the streets wailing for help and there was a flood of cow’s urine targeted at the dying child and other children in the house. If the sick child died or survived, the helping women and men turned to their own homes to give their own children cow’s urine as a prophylactic. Which children often heard them saying: Ti a ba n wo alaisan, a a wo ara eni (where we look after the sick, we look after ourselves!)

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    My uncle colonised Odunukan Street.  I went to Abule-Ijesha to spend school holiday with my grandmother from 1959 when I was nine. She lived at 12 Odunukan, her younger brother,  Pa A.T. Olunaike (a.ka. Baba Alajo Shomolu), at No.10, Pa Oshidipe, their cousin at No. 8, and Pa Oshifeko, another cousin, at No. 6.  Whenever a child died, the adult men of Abule-Ijesha organised a group of men whose duty was to dispose the body on the refuse dung which had formed around the the Pedro Stream at the borderline of mid-line Shomolu and low-line Shomolu. I still do not know where this stream comes from. It flows through Bajulaye through lower Shomolu into the Gbagada Canal. At night, Abule-Ijesha men went to deposit these bodies which would have been abused in diverse ways to warn the souls never to return to their parents as new babies. There was a strong conviction in reincarnation. The bottom or legs of the deceased child may be burned  in fire. The body may be lacerated in several places with oven hot knife, the cuts filled with fresh  ground pepper. The body may be stone dead. The ritualist believe, nevertheless, that if the soul had not separated from the body as a baby in the womb from the mother when the umbilical cord is severed, the silver cord, which connects the  body and soul  may, if still active, transmit to the soul what happened to the discarded body. In truth,it would appear these children returned, for those marks often appeared in  exact  locations on the bodies of newborns later.

    Once the group of men deposited the corpses, they left. Wild pigs scavenging  the dump site for food ate the corpses, including the heads. Whenever it rained, the dump  site emptied all these rubbish on the road, and we waded through them to our destinations. After I listened to Mrs Odunsi in 1969, I became afraid and wore  rain boots to work at the Daily Times offices on 3, 5, 7, Kakawa Street on Lagos Island. What if Cholera struck here, how many people would survive it, I always wondered.Many houses in Shomolu had no presentable latrines. In many cases, there may be only one bucket latrine for a whole building, such as was the case with my uncle’s which was inhabited by 25 families, many of them with children. In the toilet, some persons would pause their breath for about a minute just to expel a pellet or two, clean up and then rush out.

    Let us return  to Abule-Ijesha. Apologies if you are at the dinning table. In those days, the last room in a dewlling was reserved for the bucket laterine. The users climb a woody platform and squatted over a shit hole through which their stool dropped into the bucket below. Every week, shit men brought their trucks to take away the buckets and to replace them.  They passed through the corridors. If any child expressed  misgivings, the shit men  swirled the buckets on their head with their brooms and sprinkled the shits on the broom on such children.

    I do not think many neighbourhoods in Lagos here fare  any better today. Many are still flooded with lots of rubbish and germs in the water. For example, many homeless persons still spend the night on the foot bridges at Oshodi in Lagos. At night, they evacuate their bowels in and around the rail tracks. I guess this goes on wherever they are pedestrian bridges across the tracks.Whenever it rains, these  places are flooded and people wade through the floods. Some persons used  saline water to wash their feet when they arrive home. Whether this is of any value only time will tell.

    “I cannot forget another potential cholera cesspool in Lagos. It’s right next to CHARLY-Boy bus stop on the way to Gbagada, in the Oshodi-Gbagada axis of the Apapa-Oworoshoki expressway. From the bus stop, it’s a shortcut to Shomolu over a canal with a wooden bridge. Motorcycle taxis ferry passengers across. Before the canal is a busy and densely populated community of churches, mechanic workshops, dwellings, restaurants, and schools constructed with wood. It slopes into the canal and floods the community during downpours. I mistakenly took this route on one such day. Cars in the workshops were submerged up to their bonnets. Only the rails of the wooden bridge showed us where to pass. I pulled off my bottom dress and boxer at my sister’s, bathed with weak Izal water, washed the garments in thick Izal water, and dried them with her electric iron. That was my last trip to Shomolu through Charley-Boy.”

    GRACE EDET

    Her story as a victim of Cholera touches me whenever her  daughter , Udeme Edet James, and I discuss it. Mrs Edet, mother of Nine and about 38 when she passed, was a dutiful wife and mother. She was from Ikot Ekwere Itam, near Uyo. On her last day on  earth,April 12, 1997, she made breakfast for her children and, after they left for school, made lunch which she kept for them as usual. Then, she went to her farm not too far from her husband’s who had gone to his  before her. Suddenly, she began to vomit and to run loose bowels. She was weak. A neighbour   who passed by told her to go home and went on to her own farm.Mrs Edet  could not walk, nor could she call out to her husband. She probably thought her favourite daughter, UDEME(My share from God) would come to her  as she often did after  school.On that day, politicians came to  the village for campaign.  Fascinated by the dancing and music, Udeme followed them around. Then, the woman who saw a sick Mrs Grace in the farm sighted and told Udeme,eight or nine,  “You are here playing, your mummy is dying in the farm”   Help was rushed  to Mrs James on the farm. She was brought immediately to her family compound which was the location of a hospital where she underwent appendicitis surgery years earlier. Cholera was ravaging the village. Victims  were  brought in. However, the doctor declined to see Mrs James when she was brought in between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.  May be because the James family could not pay. By 9.p.m  , Mrs Edet was gone! Udeme said  she was dehydrated,  her eyes sunken. Many  villagers within the village and next neighbouring village died that year.

    VIBRIO CHOLERAE

    That is the name (plural)of the bacterium which causes CHOLERA. It takes them between one  and  five days to incubate in the body before they begin to forment  trouble..In susceptible persons, VIBRIO CHOLERAE toxins create wild muscle movement in the stomach and intestine known as SPASMS. These cause watery   diarrhoea often called RICE WATER  STOOL . Vomiting may cause severe dry mouth. Urine output may be decrease and urine may almost turn black. Electrolytes, especially  Sodium and Potassium are lost. So are  glucose,  magnesium and calcium and other minerals. These events may be so rapid and intense  that death may quickly fellow. This is why it is best to seek urgent medical attention before resorting to herbal treatments. However, this is not to say herbal intervention at first instance  is unnecessary as first aid or  curative therapy where  orthodox medical attention is distant or unavailable.

    Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) salt are available in many  pharmacies. Some persons do not like the state. Personally, I keep one or two packs of SEA SALT and a bottle or two of pure natural honey at home for use at the first notice of diarrhoea or vomiting or both. Sea salt has about more than 40 biochemical substances which are not present in Table salt and, so, is a plus. Honey is just as rich in nutrients.

    CHOLERA SPREAD

    The germs are spread through contaminated food,  water and drinks and through contact in diverse ways with vector excrement. The opportunities for spreading it are too many in Nigeria. Several water sources are contaminated. Bottled and sachet  water may be infected from source. Food is  not protected in food markets. Flies which may have perched on a VIBRIO CHOLERAE  source may  perch on raw beef in the beef hawker’s tray or table in the market. Such flies may also feast on raw fish. Cooks in the kitchens of well rated restaurants while cooking, mouths uncovered, may  release infected sputum into food. What about the situation in home kitchens? Persons who patronise roadside roast plantain and maize sellers may be at risk as well. Potential customers touch these and similar foodstuffs to seize them up for their money cash worth. What about fruits and droplet sputum from the mouths of some persons which fall on the lips or face of others during conversions?

    USEFUL HERBS

    In the treatment and cure  of CHOLERA with herbs,the following therapy goals or objectives,and even more, may be followed. In each one will be found several useful herbs.

    • Rehydration and rebalancing of  the electrolytes system.

    • Elimination of VIBRIO CHOLERAE.

    • Elimination of the  toxins of germ which  cause spasmodic and cathartic motions in muscles of the throat, stomach and the gastro-intestinal ((GI) tract

    • Healing  of inflammed  tissues

    • Healing of injured to tissues

    • Strengthening of the immune system

    VIBRIO CHOLERAE

    Eliminating it is simple, after rehydration and balancing of electrolytes or simultaneously accomplishing these. One of the best antibiotics in nature is GOLDEN SEAL ROOT. It coats inner lining of hollow organs, thus preventing germs adherence to them. Without adherence, vibrio cholerae  is useless. It becomes mince meat  for the immune system.. PAPAIN, a digestive enzyme in pawpaw leaves, seeds, fruit and sap of the unripe fruit and the stem, digests all  exogenous (foreign) proteins.  This germ is  made of exogenous proteins. In several studies, PAPAIN has demonstrated doubless capacity for  destroying VIBRIO CHOLERAE. They are several proprietary blends of plants medicines which do this as well. These may include PARA CLEANSE, PARASHIELD, DIATOM and ACTIVATED CHARCOAL

    Diatom and ACTIVATED charcoal attracts and capture and  encase the germs for destruction and double, also, as a toxins mop.  In Akwa Ibom State , the unpurified form of Diatom called NZU, a clay form, is used. The Yorubas soak cassava flakes in room temperature water until it becomes solid . It is called FESELU, something you can hit with a fist punch and it would not “scatter”.  It is believed to be too hard for the spasms to dismember and make liquefy.

    REHYDRATION: that’s important as re-balancing of electrolytes. I spoke of them earlier. It has been better achieved in emergency cases at an hospital.Anti-inflamatories as Ginger, Tumeric and Curcumin are important for convalence. I like Curcumin 2000x and Curcurite. A new proprietary blend called Rejuvenating Drink has joined the league. It is designed, it is said, to stimulate production of new stem cells which replace damaged cells. Then there is the soothing NIKOM OIL and the powerful healer, ZINC.