Category: Health

I used to hate politicians. Now, I no longer do, although I keep a safe distance from them. Through inner struggles in the 1970s and 1980s to understand why I existed and was what I was, I realised that dislike was just one or a few steps from hate and that hatred was a wrong principle that may impel one to physical or psychic murder. Love, rather, is life. Life gave rise to everything which exists, everyone for a purpose, and love, like purity and justice,are life’s attributes. Coming from out of Life,we humans bear resonations of these attributes which, like seed germs, lie slumbering within us and  all creatures must bring to flowering and fruiting  within them.

Many people cannot relate with the politician, rotten, smelly and fiendish, however, disguised the fickleness or foibles, without disliking or hating him or her. For the average politicians is slippery, deceitful,wicked, selfish … think of any of the foibles of man, and you would find an abundance of them in his character. Many of them acquired these traits for self defence, like the venom of the snake or the spit of the cat in the eyes, or the killer poison of the chamelion or the brutal teeth and claws of the lion. We are in the season  of  electioneering politics, the deadliest in Nigeria season of politics, and should be careful, all of us the followers of politics and politicians, about how we protect our health against the backlashes of this tempestous time. Politicians look after themselves … so, look after yourself as you journey with them in thought and mind. The Sparks of the fire of politics are flying everywhere and may be  impacting your health without you realising that the politicians and the political temptest may be tossing  your health up and down. We kept the vigil for result of the the party primaries without compensetting the body for Adrenaline build-up, which would have shot  up blood sugar  level at night, when we least needed it, a potential culprit in diabetic. The virgil also shot up the brain level of Serotonin, that chemical substance which builds up in the brain from sunrise to keep us awake all day.

Semilarly, any virgil, political or not, will shoot down blood level of Melatonin, the chemical substance which shut down the brain from night fall to give us restful sleep. In a vigil, therefore, we are acting against MOTHER NATURE, bombarding the brain with Serotonin at night when we should be swamping it with Melatonin for restful sleep. We no we cannot sheath nature.That is why your health care provider gives you melatonin tablets, capsules or tincture, depending on the gravity of your condition, when you suffer from insomnia or sleepleness. So, what do we do the day after to clean up the excess amount of free radicals or toxin substances which are produce by the over work brain? How often does the diet provide us brain specific anti-oxidants for this job? An over worked brain bombarded all time by shocking or annoying political news may become easily tired, affected by emotional desturbances, become inflammed and age rapidly. Political stressors may be the underlying cause of remote health challenges such as headaches, migraines, insomnia, stomach and other digestive  and blood pressure problems, to mention just a few outcomes of the stress.

I went through many of these scourges of politics in 1979. Remember that was the year of the general election in which Chief Obafemi Awolowo was pitched against Alhaji Shehu Shagari. I was 29, fresh from national youth service and a spiritual encounter I had always longed for to understand why we exist and what the great Universe was all about. At 24 just before I set for the university,I had begun to experience the phenomenon of out of Body Experience (OBE). You may imagine you are dreaming and, suddenly, find yourself in the middle of your bedroom looking at your sleeping and “dreaming” body on the bed, or you may find yourself floating near the ceiling and, looking down,observe your body, fast asleep and snoring.

No one satisfactorily explained these experiences to me in those days until in my youth service year in Uyo and Calabar. Now, I understand what my foster daughter, 15, is saying when she says that, as she sometimes try to open the door for a guest, her hand passes through the handle.  From her character, I sense she is an old soul in a young body whose spiritual helpers (most people erroneously call them guardian angels)are trying to connect her with her past existence. She no longer fears going to bed, believing that a fiery woman would come all over her, asking for  THE BOOK OF RICHES.

Some people will call her condition hallucination. She sees the woman, sometimes in the middle of the night. She screamed out of bed. I rush down stairs. She points at the woman. Although I do not see her, I understand what is going on, for I had gone through such experiences. I tell the unseen woman to leave the little girl alone and go away. For months, we have not had any incident. I walk with her into her past as much as I can understand it. For there is none of us who, on his or her  own, can understand all the interconnectedness of existence. We have over millennia woven tapestry of our fate like a Fisher man’s net with many knots, and we are here  now to disentangle them, free of the knots, before we can ascend homewards.

My grandfather was a notable traditional medicine man who consulted for the Awujale of Ijebu land of  his days. When he passed, one of his cousins “stole”his ACCOUNT BOOK, we were informed. The Account Book of the traditional medicine man is a compendium or “website”of the secrets of his art. It was the most prized possession of these men and their families in Yoruba land of those days. With this Account Book in the possession of my family, I probably would be a different person. I probably would still have gone to university and been a journalist. These would be parts of the tapspestry of fate I would have woven to tread on to my existential goal this time around. It is possible that, with the recipes in this Account Book, I would have set up medicinal plant plantations and pharmaceutical factory to commercially produce them. But someone “stole”the Account Book. It may very well be in the right hand. But it may, also, very well be in the wrong hand. What if it was in the wrong hand and my grandfather, rather than move on homeward, decided to pursue petty earthly objectives and began to torment the man who stole his Account Book and did not make his child inherit it? There are many possibilities. Something always drives something. We were informed in the news last week that a 40-year-old man took his 18-month-old son to a village bush  and, beside a palm tree, took off the boy’s head with a carpenter’s saw and buried it there while he threw the lifeless body elsewhere. Such stories as this, or of a boy forcing his mother to bed or of a 60-year-old man raping a 10-year-old girl abound in our society. Do we care to think deeper than just raining curses about what may be going on?

MY OBEs forced me to think: WHERE AM I? WHY AM I here? Where did I come from? Where will I go after here? How did I come to be?

Why am I an Ijebu man and not an Nsukka man or a Calabar man? Why did I have to attend university in Nsukka? How would I look like if my father and mother married different spouses? Would I come to this earth through one of them, or I would not come? Where, then, would I be, or I would not exist? Where do I go when I pass? Is there a hell fire or is it a figurative expression in a terrible sphere of existence? Who are angels? Are they servants of men or as we try to delude ourselves? Anyone who has been privileged to be clairvoyant or to have experienced extra sensory perception (ESP) or to have read Raymond Moody’s book, Life After Life, a copy of which I was privileged to give Chief Obafemi Awolowo after he asked for it at his last birthday party, would realise there is a lot more to existence than just being born, attending school, graduating from university and getting a job, getting married and  having our babies,  fighting religious battles, becoming the president of a nation, passing some day, and being giving a “beffiting” expensive State feneral!.

In 1979, I had what, today, I may call elementary ideas about some of these existential events. I saw the stars, the sun and the moon standing in the service of man, never going on strike. I saw the earth always bringing forth to feed billions of mouths every day. I saw the seas and oceans standing in service as well without fail. Man has  ever fished from them and fish had never disappeared in them. Since my teeth would no longer allow me to eat cow meat, and thank them for it  because that protect me against consuming the poison in red meat, I have turn to fish and Periwinkle. They have helped me to not stupidly patronise  the man who runs his cows over farmlands, killing and maiming, only to bring the same cow meat to my table, since I am not an idiot who would sell my land, my birthright,for a pot of pottage. Since my finances cannot afford Titus Fish, I have opted for Periwinkle and Crayfish as sources of my animal protein. In my household even my corn pap comes with a generous serving of Periwinkle.

Ladies and gentlemen, where I am really going is that, I bow in generation before the eternal and immeasurable Grace of the Almighty Creator and Ruler of All The World’s when I wonder why cray fish and periwinkle have not disappeared from the streams and rivers despite their heavy havesting for food by an ever multiplying an ungrateful human population. Just as many of us no longer remember to say THE GRACE at table as we learned in kindergarten school, we do not also see the lesson in this, for us: everywhere we turn, mother nature is standing under the command of the Almighty Creator, IN THE SERVICE of even the UNGRATEFUL MAN. But everywhere we turn in Nigeria, we hardly find man standing in the service of man.  The politician is worse in this crime. He believes a man must chop where he works and has turned the nation into his “workchop”.

In 1979, I was a dreamy young man as a senior sub-editor on the Daily Times Newspaper of Nigeria, the most prestigious and biggest daily sale newspaper in Africa. Almost everyone knew Chief Obafemi Awolowo was the better candidate. He was a meticulous planner. He made the Western Region of Nigeria the leader of all regions in the country on every count.  He was not a wasteful spender. He put the right people in the right places. He was an unapologetic believer in REGIONALISM for peace in a plural federation such as Nigeria. But military Head of State  General Olusegun Obasanjo, who presided over the nation, supecting that Chief Awolowo would probe Nigeria’s financing under the military, told us “the better candidate does not always win” an election. While that may be true, the 1979  Presidential election was grossly manipulated and the sanctity of the Supreme Court was tampered with. Why would that court decide the election in favour of Alhaji Shehu Shagari  and  say that its ruling should never be cited in Nigeria’s judicial system.

In 1979, all northerners  Chief Awolowo asked to be his running mate boycotted him. So,  frustrated, Chief Awolowo chose Igbo man  Chief Philip Umeadi. That was a Westeast or Southsouth ticket while Shagari chose Chief Alex Ekwueme from the East, from a Northsouth-ticket which allegedly won. What Chief Awolowo suffered then in northern denial is what Rivers Governor Ezenwo Nyesom Wike and former Anambra Governor Peter Obi are experiencing now, 43 years after. Wike lost the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket under ethnic northern manipulation. Fourteen of 17 party men asked by the winner, Atiku Abubakar, to find  a suitable vice presidential running-mate picked  Wike. But Atiku ditched him.  Peter Obi with Yoruba man Dr. Doyin Okupe as running mate will fly nowhere, like the Awolowo-Umeadi ticket.

In 1979, I was a NIGHT STOPPER for the Daily Times  sub editor’s desk who is authorised to stop ongoing printing of the newspaper, remove some copies and introduce newer ones with better news impact. Election results were running copies in those days. Any newspaper that did not update would be stale on arrival at the news stand. We received reports that Chief Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) won two of the three senetoral seats in Kaduna State, and updated the paper accordingly. Later, Dr. Walter Ofonagoro reportedly stormed the SITUATION ROOM as Senator Abaribe almost did in 2019, to upturn the results in favour of Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria (NPN)…UPN sympathisers in anger voted in the governership election  for People’s Redemption Party candidate, Balarabe Musa. This was a misnormer because,  while NPN almost wholly controlled the House of Assembly, the PRP, UPN Alliance produced the governor. It was not surprising, therefore, that the NPN- dominated Assembly would later impeach Balarabe Musa. It was, therefore, also not surprising that politicians would destroy the Daily Times, Africa’s newspaper of pride. When Alhaji Shagari became president, the board of directors of DAILY TIMES was injected with NPN politicians. Thus, the editorial independence of this giant newpaper was again threatened. Earlier, the military regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo had dealt it a savage blow by illegally and compulsorily and acquiring 60 per cent of the private shares.  One of the line editors, OyinladeE Bonuola, known as LADBONE for his English Grammer column, CAUGHT OUT by LADBONE, took the newspaper and, I believe the government to court over illegality.  That was after the heinous board, believing he was a UPN card-carrying member, had removed him from main stream editorial work on the mother daily title to SPEAR MAGAZINE, a less-influential monthly. Martin Iroabuchi, a daily visitor to Chief M.K.O Abiola, an NPN big wig, became entrenched as editor of the Daily Times. Felix Odiari, the News Editor, regularly visited Umaru Dikko, President Shagari’s point man and transport minister (1979-1983), who was unsuccessfully abducted in London and was to be crated to Nigeria by Brigader Benjamin Adekunle (rtd) on the instructions of the Federal Military Government of General Muhammadu Buhari and General Tunde Idiagbon. A third NPN in road to the news room was the Chief Reporter who was a point man for Bamanga Tukur, former general manager of Nigeria Port Authority ( NPA) and at that time Governor of  Gongola State (today’s Adamawa and Taraba states).

Journalists are often brutalised by the political season and by politicans. Many journalists in the Daily Times news room were professionally ridiculed, stagnated in their careers or demoted simply because they did not attend NPN inner caucus meetings with politicans. I had my fair share of this baptism. So did my colleague Bonuola. Emergence of The Guardian newspaper gave us a free passage way to professional freedom. I no longer felt sad going to work. Again, I became a dreamy young man, helped by my understanding of the conception of DUTY and LOYALTY, knew joy working  round the clock with a major goal of not only contributing my widow’s mite to the production of Nigeria’s finest newspaper, but also of teaching Daily Times and its handlers a bitter professional lesson… overtaking the now soulless  newspaper in pagination size, advertisement volume and circulation coverage. The day we did that, we celebrated the conquest of  Daily Times in THE GUARDIAN newsroom.

Nigeria is suffering in many ramitifications because of its politics and politicians. If you have the privilege of visiting any Nigerian psychiatrist hospital today, you will find all of them over flowing with patients and the doctors overstressed. I found in some cases there were female patients than male. There are no jobs in town. University graduates are paid an average of N30,000 a month. In their mid 30s, some men still leave with their parents. They are no ready husband for marriageable women. Business is slow. Income is down. Health is tottering because many people have no money for health insurance or hospital bills. The social environment is cool, cloudy and foggy. So, GUARD YOUR HEALTH…. Political storms are raging and colliding.

Guess who is back in town, and circulating in business circles about 20 years after his wife was electrocuted in a Lagos flat while trying to save one of their children from electrocution? He is Major Ordia (rtd) aka Mr. Matol!

Before Major Ordia literally fled Nigeria for a sanctuary in Canada with other members of his grief-striken family. Matol had become a household name in Nigeria and the nutritional or food supplements market nicknamed him “Mr. Matol”. This Canadian product was one of the “inner caucus” food supplements in my plant medicine chest in those days for several (reasons), especially its high potassium content.

The hypothesis of Dr. Max Gerson that a low tissue potassium content may cause tumours, especially cancers, to form and to grow was making the rounds at high velocity. Dr. Gerson, a German, had successfully treated many degenerate and terminal cancers using organic coffee enemas and fruit and vegetable juices with high potassium yields. A few clinical reports had also associated Matol intake with rising immune system output of Natural Killer Cells. These are mobile cells of the immune defence systems which, as military police contains and arrests irreverent soldier and the mobile police fixes misbehaving regular policemen, are mandated by mother nature to destroy malignant and dangerous cells

Canadian researcher Jurag experimented with 18 herb combinations and permutations until he arrived at a consistency which he named Matol and thought was most helpful for improving many health derangements.

According to a 2012 post in www.pr web.com, :” Matol KM is essentially a herbal/potassium supplement. However, reports from customers say the formula can improve well being, eliminate toxins, balance the body’s acid-base levels, and supplement potassium and magnesium, two important minerals which are supplied in a colloidal form for easy absorbtion”.

Major Ordia sold Matol in Nigeria under this health banners and more until the electrocution of his wife forced him out of the country. Last week, he recalled:

“It was on a wet  Saturday  when we woke up to discover that the whole place was wet from the leaking roof at our 3-bedroom bungalow at Matol Jesus House at Number 3, Ugo Nwoke Close,  Off Adisa Sowemimo Bus Stop, Ojo Igbede Road near Alaba  Electronics International  Markets, Ojo Local  Government Area, Lagos State, Nigeria.”

Saturday the 21/06/2003

“My dearest wife Princess Mercy Idugiemwanye Amen- Ordia (nee Eweka) just 42 years old and we are both blessed with three very happy handsome boys, Osaheni 14, Idukpaye 10 and Karl Eseosa 4!

“We had invited  two roof maintenance workers all the way from Benin City, Edo State, Osarieme and his friend Imariabe, who had begun to work on the roof on the fateful day!

“All our workers came to work and would work half day and close at 13:30 hours because it was a Saturday; Monday to Friday working hours – 07:30 to 17:00!

While the carpenters were still working on the roof and the rains still dropping, my wife was at the kitchen preparing our evening meals for the whole house at about 18:30 evening when tragedy struck as soon as NEPA light was switched on in our Ndigbo Community and you could hear a chorus “UP NEPA” pounding our ears in ecstatic joy and jubilation!

“I instructed my sister-in-law Blessing Osakpamwan Eweka to visit the generator house and fuel the generator and start the generator and I then switched on the change over from generator to electricity and Osaheni  my 14 years old son told me to change to the phase where light was much more full and brighter and  that was it!

“He then went to switch on the giant standing Electric Fan and marched on a live wire and instantly got shocked and shouted and I dashed to him and grabbed him so tightly and I got so shocked but quickly stopped breathing myself and electric shock had no effect on my body while I placed my right finger in his mouth, in between his teeth and shouted give  me Matol, give me Matol, open the bottle and while he had almost bitten my right finger in his mouth we poured 30ml of Matol in his mouth and he sneezed and opened his eyes and started shouting life spiritual affirmation in his spirit soul and body and he responded with his eyes now fully awake, and I now dashed to repeat what the Holy Spirit inspired me to do for my son on my wife but i only held her lifeless body with Matol all over her body and rushed to two hospitals at Okokomaiko opposite LASU Gate where she was pronounced dead at 23:00 that  Saturday, the 21st of June, 2003.”

Major Ordia bounced back into Matol business in Canada through the help of an American peaditrician who later became his wife and whose father, a businessman, gave him the financial muscle for an African vide exclusive affiliate marketing licence.

The herbal content of Matol remains unchanged, although the product has been renamed… The ingredients include Chamomile, Sarsaparilla, Ddandelion, Hore Hound, Licorice, Senega, Passion Flower, Thyme, Gentian, Saw Palmetto, Alfalfa, Angelica, Celery seed and Cascara Sagrada.

Some of the health benefits of these herbs are summarised in Andrew  Chevallier’s “Herbal First Aid, a guide for home use”. This was one of the earliest books in my alternative medicine library in the 1990s. I recommend it for every home library. In the book, the author describes the herbs as follows…

Chamomile

“Tea, tincture, compress, poultice, cream, essential oil, allergies, asthma, children’s ailments, colic, constipation, teething, diarrhoea, hay fever, hiccup, indigestion acidity and vomitting, itchiness, period pains, poor sleep, sore breast, sore eyes, shock, stomach aches and pains, sunburn, wind.

“Chamomile is extremely useful in many digestive ailments. e.g acid indigestion, while it’s simple relaxing properties make it helpful in shock, tension and anxiety”.

He prescribed it for “bedwetting, irritability and overtiredness”. It also works, he says, for nightmares and night terrors apart from encouraging a ” sound night sleep”. The list is incomplete without “itchy and allergic skin conditions, including eczema”.

Dandelion

This is a great diuretic herb which comes with a lot of potassium. Alternative medicine practitioners prescribe it because, unlike diuretic drugs which send potassium out of the body through the urine, dandelion exports excess water without disturbing the SODIUM-POTASSIUM balance. By depleting the body’s potassium levels, diuretic drugs may worsen hypertension which they are meant to address, cause nerve problems, weaken the muscles and the heart (a bundle of muscles) and cause elevation of sodium levels at the cellular level. As Dr. Max Gerson and his disciples would argue (pls check GERSON THERAPY online), this may be the source of tumours (benign as in uterine fibroids, or malignant as in breast, colon or prostate cancer). The assumption is based on the hypothesis that potassium helps in the extraction of oxygen in the blood plasma into the cell, and that potassium deficiency causes sodium influx into the cell, an aftermath of which is that, unable to obtain enough oxygen for its oxidative processes, the cell plunges into fermentative (non oxygen using) lifestyle for its survival.

Of Dandelion, Andrew Chevalier says in his herbal first aid:

“Acne, allergies, constipation – adult and children – hangovers, hay fever, water retention, warts”. Chevallier says dandelion also “supports and cleanses the liver” to eliminate waste products. This makes it an “ideal herb for toxic conditions such as hangover”.

Passion Flower

When I think of this herb, I cannot help remembering other herbs such as feverfew, valerian root and skullcap. They are nerve relaxants and also often indicated for headaches and especially migraines. Passion Flower appeals to Chevallier for “anxiety and tension , asthma, ear ache, headache, migraine, period pains, PMT (Pre menstrual tension), poor sleep in children and adults, shock, tooth ache”. It passes as well as a “mild sedative”, helpful in “many types of aches and pains”. Chevallier says Passion flower mixes well with valerian in “overactivity”, which means that children beset with Attention Deficit and hyperactivity (ADDH) may benefit from it. “Together”, he says, ” these two herbs are good for shock and that shaky feeling after an accident.”

Thyme

Anyone who is familiar with garlic and thyme proprietary formulas should easily guess that this is a respiratory herb in the mould of Japanese Knot Weed which, in Nigeria, now presents in the proprietary blend restore lyfe, a combination of this herb, grape seed extract (GSE), antioxidants and phenolic compounds. Chevallier says it overpowers “asthma, athlete’s foot, back pain, bronchitis, catarrh and sinuses, children’s infections, colds and flus, coughs, hay fever, joint pain, muscle aches, sore throat, thrush, warts”.

I need to add that Chevalier does not limit his references to these herbs as they appear in a bottle of MATOL. His references have universal appeal. For these applications may be in teas, tinctures, fluid extracts, creams and lotions. Thus, in respect of thyme, he would suggest for example: “use thyme tea for all kinds of infections of the air passages, from the ear to the lungs. It has a strong antiseptic and calming effect, making it valuable in ear ache, sinusitis, chest infections and the likes. In these ailments, thyme combines well with garlic and echinacea. Use this combination also for thrush and other fungal problems. Thyme syrup is a pleasant remedy for children’s cough or simply sweeten thyme tea with honey. Burn thyme oil over an essential oil burner to cleanse a room and speed the recovery of a patient, especially in chesty conditions.

Inhale thyme tea or a few drops of thyme oil in a basin of hot water for relief of catarrh and sinusitis”. As I said earlier, the healing power of thyme outside the bottle of MATOL is present, also, in that bottle.

Saw Palmetto

These are berries which made health waves in the 1980 onwards to the end of the century as a conqueror of Benign prostate Hyperplasia (BPH). I believe this was largely because of generous amounts of zinc and essential fatty acids (EFAs) in these berries. It would appear we men in particular have forgotten about saw palmetto because we now obtain Zinc and the EFAs in larger proprietary blend doses than are present in the Saw Palmetto berry. Many men are deficient in zinc nowadays from many factors. Yet zinc is seriously important for the health of the prostate gland. It also has about 200 or more other uses in the body, including good vision. While many studies have linked good vision to vitamin A sufficiency, and suggested that vitamin A deficiency may cause night blindness, a condition of poor vision in the dark, it has also been suggested that, no matter how much vitamin A may be present in the eye it may have poor value for good vision in a zinc-deficiency status. In other words, zinc is required for the use of vitamin A in the eye!

In the prostate gland which is the largest store of zinc in the body, this mineral, well known for its support for fertility, immune function and good hair, skin, nail and cause of taste and smell , works wonders. In the prostate gland, it checks the overactivity of a substance called 5-Alpha reductase. When zinc is not enough in the gland, 5-Alpha reductase activity may encourage overconversion of the male hormone testosterone to dyhydro testosterone (DHT) which, like a fertilizer, may overstimulate growth and overgrowth of prostatic tissue, leading to BPH and urinary difficulties. Zinc deficiency may arise from dietary deficiencies, ejaculations in sexual over exposure, acidity and other metabolic demands. This is why it is good news that Matol offers zinc supplies as a dietary supplement to those men whose diets are zinc deficient for their needs or facing health challenges in which zinc deficiency is a culprit.

Angelica

The herbal first aid has no entry on this Chinese herb, also called dang gui. Thus, Frank J Lipp fills the gap. He says of Angelica in his herbalism:

“Dang gui (Angelica sinensis) is used in Chinese medicine to harmonise chi energy, increase coronary circulation and reduce arterial blood pressure. It also has anti inflammatory, pain-reducing and tranquilising effects on the cerebral nerves, and is used in treating irregular or difficult menstruation, PMS, menopausal symptoms and post-partum debility.”

From www.rxlist.com, we learn of this plant:

“The root, seeds and fruits are used to make medicine. Angelica is used for heartburn, intestinal gas, loss of appetite, arthritis, circulation problems, runny nose, nervousness, plague and trouble sleeping. Some women use Angelica to start their menstrual period. Angelica is also used to increase urine production, increase sex drive, stimulate the secretion and production of phlegm and kill germs. People apply Angelica directly to the skin for nerve pain, joint pain and skin disorders.”

Celery

This herb is well known for its friendliness with the digestive system as well as for its alkalising and anti-inflammatory properties and antioxidants. Low in sodium and high in potassium, it is also a rich source of vitamin c, beta carotene and flavonoids. It’s antioxidants protect the digestive tract from oxidative damage. This should make it useful in the treatment of colon cancer and occult blood. The anti-inflammatory properties recommend celery not only for arthritis but colitis, which is the inflammation of the colon, a condition which sometimes degenerates into the excretion of mucus. Vitamin A present in celery is good for the mucus membrane lining, as it is a promoter of the healing process. Vitamin K, also present in this herb, helps to stop internal bleeding by supporting the production of blood platelets which seal broken tissue.

Cascara Sagrada

When constipation is naughty, this herb often helps. It contains a chemical substance known as anthraquinone which slows absorbtion of water in the intestine and increases intestinal fluid load. This creates such intestinal pressure, which, in the colon, stimulates contractions of the muscles and brings about voiding. Cascara belongs to the class of herbal laxatives such as aloe vera and Senna, which I once overdosed on and it gave me intestinal gas. The pains were so intense I had to see a doctor. I was booked by a young one for appendix surgery. But, upon a review of my case, a senior doctor let me home with medications for gas and pain. Ever since, I do not touch Senna.

HORE HOUND

The name of this plant is not an everyday word on the lips of Nigerian health care givers. Yet, it is a wonderful relief for cough and bronchitis which are common ailments in this country. It also helps heartburn, indigestion and sluggish stomach by improving saliva and gastric juice flow. It is good as well for curbing phlegm, stimulating appetite and for tackling menstrual complaints.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, here we are with medicinal materials for a wide range of health challenges in a bottle called MATOL. This column wishes Princess Mercy a joyful existence wherever she is, and is happy for Major Ordia has again found his feet and is moving on. His story imprints afresh on my mind a lesson about the law of thought. Whatever we think exists in a visible form to the clairvoyant. Since last year, I have been thinking of Matol. I have been receiving health enquires which I believe Matol may help to relieve. I suggest always that they find someone in Canada who may help them obtain it. I knew Mrs. Omolara Bello was returning from London. But her arrival caught me unaware. Cordelia Dike, my next bet, has overstayed on her visit home and was due back in New York. While I was waiting for her, my telephone rang and a voice I no longer recognised spoke. “Waow, waow” I kept screaming. He told his story. Matol is back. A whole container of it as a first stock. Welcome back home major;welcome Matol.