As a trainee sub-editor on the Daily Times newspaper in 1971, I did not pray to become an Editor. There are several rungs of a step ladder between the sub editor and the Editor. Very early in my professional career, I discovered each of them so pressure packed that it could shorten human life. Who would like to become deceased by a job, live a life of pain and then die young? In those days, journalists lived rough lives and were said to have short life spans, often dying from hypertension and related diseases. I am hypertension free and alive today probably because I learned very early how to cope with the stress which is inseparable from the profession. In the beginning, I worked for between 8 and 10 pressure-packed hours, hardly had time for lunch and dinner, lived on unwholesome, on-the-go meals and developed such abdominal discomfeitures which almost took my life. It is somewhat difficult for one to flee from what may be one’s destiny so, I hung on, and ended up as an Editor on two start up newspapers which imposed about 16 hours intense work schedule on me for more than 20 years. Surprisingly, I was not hypertensive, perhaps because I loved the job and the biochemistry which love makes in the blood favoured me. It was possible, also, that I am hypertension- free because, later on, I knew what foods to eat and which ones to avoid, and what food supplements to add to my diet. As a hint, I have completely avoided Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) in my meals cooked at home since 1984 that is for 41 years. MSG adds taste to food, no doubt. However, it is overloaded with artificial sodium. Many doctors ask their hypertensive patients to avoid sodium as best as they can, but neither the doctors nor their patients worry enough about MSG. Therefore, it was not surprising to me that cardiologist Prof Dike Orji, of the University of Abuja, warned recently that about 38.1 percent of NIGERIA’S’ adult population are hypertensive.That is a whooping 83.82 million persons in an estimated 220,000000 population. Thankfully, I am not hypertensive. Today at 75, my blood pressure hovers between 110/70 and 120/80. In the second part of this two part series, I will share some of my food supplement experiences. Many men should like some of these food supplements which protect the libido against ravages of stress and prevent stress from causing hypertension. Some of them improve brain power, address anxiety and depression, improve muscle tone and strength and enable the consumer to cope better with stress. Some of the others improve conditions of the heart, clean up blocked blood vessels, make calcified or hardened blood vessels to become more supple and, thereby, make more blood to flow easily and reduce hypertension. There are, also, herbs for cleaning the kidneys and the liver, for crushing kidney, liver and gall bladder stones, ridding the crucial organs of stones forming in them, as well as for shrinking a troublesome prostate gland. The editor’s job is often sedentary, easily allowing for lipid build up in blood vessels, enlarged heart and , sometimes, prostate gland challenges from the pressure of sitting for long hours through meetings and poring over almost every line of text in his newspaper. Of all the editors I worked under, only prince Tony Momoh indulged in a game, squash, every Saturday! Even then, he still returned to work in his games paraphernalia! Meanwhile, I would like to return to my days as a stress tormented trainee journalist.
My colleagues and I resumed work at about 2 pm and called it a day at about 10pm or 11pm. That seemed fair enough, except for the content of those eight or nine hours. Hardly did I arrive home before midnight. My biological clock or the circadian rhythm altered. I hardly slept soundly for more than one or two hours at night, and did not know how, during day hours, to compensate the for the sleep deficit. Nature removes sunlight from particular parts of the earth at definite periods to enable man, beast and plant to take a break from the hustle and bustle and submit themselves for recuperation under a different regime of energy provided by the moon and stars. Newspaper work did not, and still does not, permit this. I had to eat supper terribly late when, between 12 noon and 8pm is the time nature permits the digestion of food and 8pm to 4am is for absorbtion of nutrients from digested food. Already, I was breaching a Law of Nature. I would break more in a journalism career which, at that time and even now, was recognised world-wide to count journalists among the shortest – living professionals.
My night sleep could never be deep, refreshing or enable the organs to properly recuperate themselves with changing circadian radiations. That could mean premature biological aging well beyond calendrical aging. The intestine could be overstuffed with food digesting too slowly, unable to be voided within 18 hours of ingestion, thereby promoting microbial overpopulation and gas, among other disturbances of late dinner. One of these disturbances was that I was asking the body to be digesting late meals when it was programmed by nature to be absorbing nutrients from early meals. That meant I was giving my body two jobs to do at a time. It would then either perform half of each, leaving dangerous deficits, or perform one task and dispense with the other.
As a crown on my lifestyle challenges as a trainee sub editor, I did not know how to sleep during day light. So, I bore several hours days and weeks of sleep deficit. I hardly had breakfast because my intestine became bloated. Lunch was out of the question because the sub editors’ desk of those days had no room for lunch break. We all made do with sausages, meatpies, buns or puff puff, soft drinks. At 21, that is 54 years ago, I was installmentally dying, and could have been gone but for my maternal grandfather in the village who got a herbalist there to rid my intestine of its gas overload. The gas had built up so much that one slice of bread was enough to impact me with shortness of breath for hours.
Henry Odukomaya
I returned to work soon after, wondering how Mr Henry Odokumaya, the Editor, was coping. I did not realise that he, too, was suffering beneath his well-cut suits and that, a few years ago, it would be my lot to help him to avert surgery caused by heavy, late dinner. I discussed this in a chapter I contributed to a book by some journalists to mark his last well celebrated birthday.
In 1971, he made me pray never to become an Editor. What kind of job was the editor’s?, I never ceased to wonder. He arrived the office at about 10am, read all page proofs for editions due for printing but took a break at 3pm or 4pm for lunch at home and returned to the office at about 9pm to work again till goodness knew when! Prince Tony Momoh who succeeded Mr Odukomaya worked like that. The other cases which made me think of quitting journalism were those of Mr Animashaun, news editor and Alhaji Alade Odunewu, an Editor in the Times group and the popular columnist known as ALLAHDEY, who wrote the instructive column, WALKING CORPSES, two words I borrowed for the title of this article.
Animashaun
My last work contact with him was on the Federal Budget of a particular year. The Daily Times of those days could break the budget down to how much it would cost you in terms of bath soap to have a good shower in the morning and another before bed, or the cost of rice and beans or okro soup on your dining table. It was not garbage in garbage out budget reporting. Comparisons were made with previous budgets so that a definitive statement could be made. That day’s job was hectic. Mr Animashaun and I were about the last persons to leave the newsroom. I was behind him as we descended the stairs on 3,5,7 Kakawa Street. It was late. I headed for the bus terminus on Nnamdi Azikiwe Street, near Tinubu Square. He boarded his car. I did not realise he wasn’t heading home but straight to a hospital. He must have been experiencing severe headaches or a pounding heart or both. These are among several symptoms which hypertension may prevent, if at all it does, but which many persons do not pay serious attention to or take for granted. Many persons confront these warning signals with self medications. They are lucky, or so they assume, if the tide ebbs. Often, however, the problem goes underground and resurfaces, packed with more vigour to strike harder on a doom’s day.
As I said, Mr Animashaun and I went out different ways, unknown to me…for life. We had to return to work on a Sunday. I bought a copy of the Saturday paper to review our work the day before. On Sunday morning, I almost collapsed when I bought a copy of the Sunday Times, saw Mr Animashaun’s photograph and beside it a report which announced his death the previous day!
Allah Dey
I did not work directly with him, but I always read his column. One of the most fascinating to me was the one he titled WALKING CORPSES. Apparently, he had lived with HYPERTENSION for a long time, raising the bars of the risk factors without realising he was installmentally dying. What finally got him to hospital, I do not remember. I recall, however, the account that his doctors detained him in the hospital, explaining that it was a miracle he had not died. The degree of his hypertension at that time was better imagined. Alhaji Odunewu, who would later become chairman of The Nigerian Press Council(NPC), would later pay more attention to his health. It was on this platform I interacted more with him when I was Secretary General of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and a representative of the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO) at NPC meetings. At that time, I had swallowed the journalism bait and became an editor, overcoming the frightening images of my journalism suffered progenitors, but learned to become more adapted to facing the challenges with nutrition and herbal medicine. It was a privilege and honour for me, as in the case of Mr Henry Odukomaya, to also be in support of Alhaji Odunewu. Apparently, his hypertension challenges had not completely effaced. He despised being on a medication which, he said, made him feel as though red pepper was in his eyes. I suggested some remedies for it and other complaints. For some time, I heard nothing from him. Then, he went to either the United Kingdom or to the United States. His doctor there referred him to a doctor in Egypt who was said to be a good authority on the ailment(s). So, off to Egypt Alhaji Odunewu went. He was such a humble person that, on his return home and right from the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos, he telephoned me to ask that I re-advise him of my suggestions. When I did and he checked his hand bag, he discovered that he had brought back from Sokoto what were in his “Sokoto” pockets. Thereafter, we often discussed health matters until he passed.
June One Hospital
This hospital in Lagos was situated on Opebi road Ikeja, opposite Salvation Road junction with Opebi road. It was the official medical facility for staff of THE COMET newspaper, a start up venture at that time. One day, the medical director, Dr Abiola, held a meeting with some executive directors of the company to appraise them of the health of the staff and to ask what the company could do about it. As a doctor, it was the first time she would be seeing a large number of journalists diagnosed with hypertension. Sadly for Dr Abiola, journalism couldn’t re-adjust itself from pressure and stress. Till this day, the news machine is driven not just by deadline but more by the sense of responsibility of its practitioners which leaves no stone in today’s work unturned for tomorrow’s work men. Investor confidence in the business is too high to be taken for granted as is the risk of lateness to the market. If one page of advertisment costs N300,000 and there are 20 in an edition which misses the market, that is not only N6 million lost in one day, but more from the newsprint, ink, other printing materials, energy and labour costs. Advertisers may sue a company if the newspaper causes them to lose their own market. Consistent lateness will cause advertisers and readers to flock elsewhere. Thus grows the stress traditionally, with the search for invisibility or exclusivity in the news industry, when newspapers seek to beat one another to a great story. Imagine what Segun Osoba, as a young reporter, would have gone through to be the first reporter to discover the body of Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, prime minister of Nigeria, after the January 1966 military coup. On the day the American president George H.W Bush’s deadline to Iraqui president Saddam Hussein to quit Kuwait expired, I was Editor of the Guardian newspaper and made senior editorial staff work all night. Thus, we were able to be the only newspaper which reported the outbreak of hostilities in full. Photographer Oseni Yusuf aka Zoom Lens captured from CNN still photographs of rockets and gunfire which lit up the Baghdad night sky. CNN journalists Peter Arnett, John Holliman and Bernard Shaw risked their lives to report the event to the world as their country’s president was bombarding even the hotel in which they lodged. Imagine their cortisol and adrenaline blood levels and the risk of hypertension and the corollary diseases to them while many husbands and wives wrapped around each other in bed, exchanging RADIATIONS and cooling off the tensions of the day’s work. In The Guardian newsroom that night, work pressure of the previous long day did not abate. These were men and women who had been working for 24 hours non stop and had to stay on another long night, without sleep, eating and drinking anything that came their way. On the day scud missiles were fired on Israel, I jumped into my car at 6a.m, barely two hours after I arrived home from 15 hours of work, after listening to the news on BBC, to stop THE PRESS for a newer edition of that report. Many reporters go through health challenging experiences at work. MR Ted Iwere, who would become Features Editor of the start up THE GUARDIAN newspaper, was received at the airport in Lagos by his friends and family on his return from the United States with a Master’s degree in journalism. He decided to stop over at THE GUARDIAN and to announce his plan to join us one or two weeks later. OYINLADE BONUOLA was the Editor. He had been worrying about a competent reporter to send to Gboko, where the National Party of Nigeria(NPN) was to begin his 1983 presidential election campaign. Ted Iwere knew the rules of the game. He couldn’t say “NO” despite long hours of air travel and possible jet lag. His beautiful report on the campaign was titled THERE’S NOTHING GOING FOR GBOKO. By that, he meant that Gboko was a sleepy town which was woken up and lit up by the political campaign of some of NIGERIA’S’ biggest money bags and noisiest politicians. Till this day, I tease him it was his best! His family and friends, probably wondering what kind of profession he was into, had returned home without him!
Dr Abiola heard many more of such stories of deadlines and sense of commitment to the profession. Perhaps only in the military and in radio broadcasting do you find such life. Most radio stations open at about 4.30 am. The staff are not well paid. They run their shows till about 3p.m , find something else to do till midnight for a living. Those who run love doctor shows are on till about 3a.m and still manage to feature on daytime shows.
Hypertension, The Silent Killer…
It is so called because, often the sufferer experiences no warning signals before the axe dangles or strikes. That is why, in this season of global enlightenment about HYPERTENSION, this article is dedicated to JOURNALISTS and persons who work under stressing conditions. Alhaji Odunewu did not see his hypertension coming until his doctors made him see himself and many of us as… WALKING CORPSES. Mr Animashaun probably saw it coming too late …and he died.
Next week: some possible causes of hypertension, their risk factors, and how to prevent, reverse or successfully hold this problem in check.
