Aunty Nurse, as we all called Mrs Inemesit (Happiness) Ekanem was a simple Florence Nightingale from Akwa Ibom State who made hospital visits somewhat unnecessary for many residents in her neighbourhood until she passed on two weeks ago.
She lived at No. 12 Emmanuel Adekanmi Street, off Emmanuel bus-stop, Old Abeokuta Road, Oko-Oba, Agege, Lagos, where she ran a successful patent medicine store and offered some maternity clinic services for several years. Ironically, however, as the Yoruba say, Alatise O Mo Atise Ara Re (The fixer of other persons’ problems has no remedy for his or hers!) And, so, the Good Samaritan Auntie Nurse, as we all knew her, gave way two weeks ago to a pain in the chest which had all the portent of heart failure.
Auntie Nurse and I met about three years ago in my home, courtesy of Mr Michael Adenola who wanted me to speak to her about some quantum energy devices in which he was trading online. She was trading in them already through one of her childhood friends in Uyo, but was not obtaining robust business education and information.Thus, encouraged by our discussion, she sought to switch to Adenola’s group. I advised her against this, advising her not to deny her friend the fruit of her labour, and continued to give her all the support she required. We interacted often soon after. My last engagement with her involved the pregnancy of a 15-year-old which the girl had concealed from her guardians until then. I sent her to Auntie Nurse to prove or disprove her innocence. Auntie Nurse placed some fingers on the abdomen of the girl, looked at her guardians straight in the face and pronounced: “FIVE MONTHS!”. To make assurance doubly sure or to exonerate the girl, she was sent immediately to a lab which confirmed “FIVE MONTHS!” . Auntie Nurse was well known for her primary health care services which had the hallmark of A ta Ma Ta Se (right on the mark) that her home became something like a mini-hospital.
Her sudden death from a seemingly innocuous or simple condition as a chest pain was, therefore, a shocker to many of her clients, friends and neighbours.To doctors who look after the heart and the blood circulation system, however, the problem might have built up over many years and probably neglected or under-rated like many other health challenges.
Before her passage through a health malaise from which she had delivered many of her patients, Mrs Elizabeth Kafaru, doyen of Nigeria’s herbal medicine in her days, said this often happened because health care givers were too busy helping other persons, that they hardly remembered their cases well enough. Am I not guilty as charged?
All around me, men of my generation are complaining of such troublesome conditions as prostate inflammation, enlargement and cancer of the prostate gland and we are working always around and against them but I have done nothing beyond checking every morning the colour, volume and weight in a clean white drinking glass, ensuring there is no foaming and that nothing impedes a free flow! In matters of the heart health as well, my blood pressure checks are months apart, even if at 74 I should have graduated from a 110/70 blood pressure of many years under hectic work hours of 11a.m to about 3a.m.
Today, I am still content with the satisfaction of a 10,000 steps workout with my aides on some days with no complaints of a pepperish chest, palpitating or murmuring heart, breathlessness or shooting pains in the left arm, some of which may be signs that the heart needs some help. Irrespective of these credits in the ledger, however, I believe nothing should be left to chance, that we should see our doctors as frequently as they recommend we do. This cannot take anything away from our responsibility and right to be our own doctors since our bodies belong to us, anyway.
WARNING SIGNS
Every one can be his or her watch dog over his or her heart and the circulation system by observing some simple home checks, some of which are…
TIREDNESS
Many persons cannot climb a stair way or a foot bridge over a highway without easily becoming tired, breathing hard and rapidly feeling dizzy or experiencing palpitations of the heart.These may be signs of heart problems on the way or already established. However, these signs may be warnings about other problems such as low blood sugar, diabetes or high blood sugar or low blood pressure. Cough in the elderly could be due to congestive heart failure, adrenal gland weakness, fatigue, burnout, low blood count, anaemia, especially megaloblastic anaemia due to Vitamin B12 deficiency or even of a kidney or bone marrow challenge.
METABOLIC SYNDROME…
When the abdomen begins to bulge, a group of disorders known as the Metabolic Syndrome may be going on. This means the body is becoming de-energised, its functions are not running smoothly, the poorer metabolism is leaving backlogs of waste everywhere and these, as a syndrome, will create problem(s) someday, suddenly or progressively. Some of these problems may be hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, clotting blood, hardening blood vessels (arteriosclerosis), blockages in blood vessels (atherosclerosis), elevation of stress hormones in the blood, thickening of the blood, venous insufficiency (incomplete out flow of blood from the blood capillaries and veins, damaged on return valves in the blood vessels, swelling and pitting in the feet, lower legs and so on).
SWELLINGS
These are sometimes confusing as they may be produced by weak or enlarged heart, or by de-energised and underperforming kidneys. A doctor often relies on expensive laboratory tests to sort out the culprit. Some rely on a simple question: Does the swelling disappear when the challenged person lies on a plane surface, raises the legs on a surface or at the level of the hips or higher or overnight when the patient goes to bed? Does the swelling fail to abate under these situations? If the swelling would not go away, the kidneys are probably the causes. If they go away under these conditions, the heart may have become too weak to pull back to itself the blood it once pumped out, or there may be blockages of sorts on the way. Additionally, non-return valves in the leg veins may have become too weak to prevent up flowing blood from falling back or certain organs, especially the liver, the kidneys, pancreases or spleen may be inhibiting blood flow in one or diverse ways. Sometimes, too, a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) may be at work. This is a blood clot in the deep vein. For this condition, doctors often prescribe blood thinners such as Hesperidin, Aspirin or Warfarin, which may cause minor or serious side effects or go down well with the patient. In Alternative Medicine, nutritional food supplements are employed. Notably, they include Cayenne, Nattokinese, Omega-3 fatty acid, Apple Cider Vinegar, Vitamin E( D-Alpha, not DL-Alpha, mixed Tocopherols and tocotrienols).
ANGINA PECTORIS
This is yet another sign of heart trouble. This is often an electric pain which may arise from the scapula or shoulder blade in the left arm and travel down the arm or abate somewhere on the way.This is a signal that the heart is not receiving enough blood, oxygen and energy to perform its task.This is often because the arteries which supply it with blood are blocked by fatty or other plaque or deposits, or that excess calcium under a regime of Magnesium deficiency had infiltrated and settled into the soft muscles of these arteries, hardening them.The arteries cannot in this condition dilate or widen enough for blood to easily flow through them. Tension is elevated in the vessel. Without adequate blood, oxygen, nutrient and energy supply, some of the muscle fibers of the heart may begin to die, causing the heart to enlarge in compensation until its reaches an elastic limit and it gives up. By now, many readers of this column should be aware of the popular prescriptions in Alternative Medicine for these conditions such as Hawthorn Berries, Vitamin B1( Thiamine), Co-Enzyme Q10 or, better still, Ubiquinol, Vitamin E, Beta Carotene, Garlic, Kyolic, Lecithin, Nattokinese, and Vitamin B-complex.
DIABETES
Many challenged persons do not always link it with hypertension which may cause heart disease and heart failure. When insulin cannot cross from the blood into the cell because of the absence of Chromium in the diet due to the ingestion of refined carbohydrate foods., this causes insulin resistance. Insulin accumulation in the blood vessels, rather than in the cells, may stimulate the smooth muscles of the blood vessels to mushroom and overgrow upward, downward and sideways, reducing the lumen or blood flow space and thereby making the blood vessels become Muscle Bound. This type of resistant hypertension may be more difficult to challenge, upset or offset.
Like all of us as we age, Auntie Nurse may have gone through some of these developments in her heart and circulatory system without realising that something amiss was going on. Her diet may also not have favoured her health. How many of us as we age have eliminated bread( white or wheat), milk, poultry egg, margarine, butter, fries, red meat or beef, white flour foods, sugar in all forms and monosodium Glutamate (MSG) – which are all causes of diabetes. I bounced them off more than 20 years ago! Goodbye, Auntie Nurse!
CLOUDY VISION… CATERACT OR GLAUCOMA
I AM still not surprised that most of my mails this month are about cloudy vision and that the writers are aged between 60-something years and over 80. I rejoice with the over 80s who still bounce about with eyes unprotected in the scorching sun and heat. It means their vision may still be superb. However, it would be better for them to protect these eyes which are not only old and prone to weakness but may easily succumb to oxidative pressure. Some of the enquires were on three herbal eye drops which Ophthalmologist Professor, Mrs. Bukola Adefule-Oshitelu, had developed from her interaction with Alternative Medicine or if you like, Nigeria Traditional Medicine (NTM) to make it indigenous.
One of them is Garcinia Kola( Bitter Kola) eye drops which she developed to reduce high occular tension. One of the enquirers reminds me of those days, long ago, when I thought there was no answer to this problem. His internal ocular pressure (IOP), was 24 in one eye and 31 in the another, a dangerous swing towards optic nerves stress, damage and blindness when these nerves would do well on a 12-21mm Hg tension.
The second enquiry was in respect of Chanka Piedra, a multi-purpose herb which fights hypertension, gallbladder and kidney stones ( she strictly recommended it for fighting Cateract of the eye lense), germs, Staphylococcus aureus, elevated blood cholesterol levels, etc. Prof. Oshitelu offers the Chanka Piedra eye drop specifically for Cateract.
From her stable, also, comes Pinth, a popular Yoruba herb, for cateract. To them, I suggest inclusion of eye anti-oxidants such as Bibery, vitamins A, C and E, Gingko biloba, Lions mane mushroom, magnesium, selenium,CoQ10 or Ubiquinol, Plasma tissue or cell salt, Beta carotene etc. Each of them has a good history to its name. I will mention only a few. Calcium wreaks havoc in the body when there is not enough Magnesium to pair with excess of it. In the brain, it can cause a stroke through circulation blockage. In the blood vessels, excess calcium may cause hypertension. In the joints, the trouble may be arthritis when it “cements” bone structures and in the Spondylitis of spinal bones.
This condition often ends up in the removal of damaged vertebrate bones, their replacement with plastic forms and a bent in the gait afterwards. In the eye, the lens, an otherwise gelatinous substance is hardened. Many sufferers of calcium havoc either are magnesium deficient or consume Cheap Calcium supplements such as Calcium carbonate, the class-room chalk, which is not well absorbed and utilised. The eye drops for glaucoma are sometimes Calcium Blockers, to prevent free calcium from infiltrating and hardening delicate structures of the eye.
Alternative Medicine offers Magnesium to dislodge calcium’s insolence in the eyes and elsewhere. That is what Milk of Magnesia ( a Magnesium remedy, does in the intestine to unlock the Calcium lockdown of nerves which cause constipation and encourage intestinal flow)! While CoQ10 or Ubiquinol may energise the eye and Lutein, Zezanthin and Astazanthin from Carotenoids may protect them against damage by the blue spectrum of sunlight, lion’s mane mushroom is always very exciting to me. It was discovered by a female Italian doctor during Second World War to help in the repair and revival of damaged or mangled nerves. I followed her till we lost touch after she was 103 years old, still writing and presenting academic papers. This remedy is used orally. I eagerly look forward to when eye drops of its extracts will be developed for damaged or mangled optic nerves. There is cheering news from Japan where persons said to have been medically certified blind for upward of 10 years can now see as clearly as though nothing happened to their vision. I believe we are moving from the realms of bone marrow surgery and transplant to newer possibilities.
One of the new realms may be quantum energy health which this column reported two weeks ago (April 11, 2024) on the Nigerian market. It was a good opportunity for me to replace my Chymall quantum eye glasses, the frame of which had broken, with that of Double Plus, and water my eyes with a new Quantum energy water bottle spray. The cost is not a laughing matter for a purse such as mine at this time, but I believe it is worth it. Not only does it energise the eyes, promoting circulation, the lens blocks damaging rays of the sun to which many persons expose their eyes and against which they inadequately protect them with only darkened lens. I suggest that any-one who spends long hours watching television or working with cell phones or laptops endeavour to protect the eyes with quantum energy eye glasses.
QUANTUM ENERGY ENERGY HEALTH RESOURCES
The following responds to that column on Quantum health of April 11, 2024 which was entitled: Quantum Energy Health Market: Double Plus Tracks Chymall came from an engineer in Port Harcourt. He says:
“Well done, dear brother.
‘‘Though very long discourse, well-loaded with very useful information.
‘‘I’m very happy and proud to be associated with you, dear brother.
‘‘The knowledge of Quantum energy is the key to managing almost if not all health related issues.
‘‘Thanks immensely once again for this very illuminating discourse.
‘‘Finally, dear brother, could you please give your final update on ‘Double Plus’?
I hugely appreciate your work, brother.
Emma Nwandu.”
SOME DETAILS
Thanks, Sir, for following this column.
Surely, the details will be provided as the possibilities unfold. For example, the Quantum energy eye glasses may help the brain as well. They are in the region of the sixth chakra and the brain is in the seventh, the last of the energy vortexes of the animating soul or the Astral body, going by the traditional Asian energy conception of medicine. I have heard some people say too much energy in the brain causes conditions such as insomnia, depression or possession. Therefore, it may sound ridiculous to suggest quantum energy for clearing this energy mess.The picture of such a therapy may get clearer and cleaner, however, in the differentiation of dirty energy from clean energy. Dirty energy suppresses normal brain function, creating dysfunction while clean energy establishes natural functions. Therefore, quantum energy will not necessarily stoke the fire of dirty energy challenges in the brain.
However, the opposite may become the case when the cause of wakeful energy is tracked to impurities which the brain cannot excrete, leading to poor blood circulation and brain chemistry imbalances. These may even block brain capacity to convert Serotonin, day-time neurotransmitter, to Melatonin, night time and sleep time neurotransmitter. I have kept awake to 3am to conclude this column and will head to bed right away and…to dream land!
