EBOLA talk is filling Nigeria’s air space again. There are one or two things I do not like about it. The first is that
such talk comes from thought. Thought manifests, that is … it becomes physical deed sooner than later. There is hardly anything any of us can do about it. It is a law of the Universe. Some people call it THE LAW OF THOUGHT.
Let’s look around for how THE LAW OF THOUGHT may work, and why it is always advisable not to fill one’s thought space with negative or ugly thoughts, such as EBOLA scare. What have we ever done that was not preceeded by a thought of it? Is it university education, marriage, getting a job for the first time or switching over to a new one? When we suddenly begin to think of someone we have not seen or heard from or about in a long, long while, and he or she calls us on the telephone or knocks on the door and enters our sitting room, what had happened? Was that person thinking about us and we received the thought? How often do we sit in a bus thinking deeply about an unknown passenger a few seats infront, and the passenger suddenly turns around and our eyes meet? Does this not also happen in the restaurants? Beyond these experiences with the power of thought, which brings to the originator of thought what is homogenous to these thoughts and their authors, societies and even nations are bound in some ways to experience what they CARELESSLY talked about. Decades ago, yellow fever epidemics broke out in some parts of Nigeria soon after traffic police uniform was changed from the black top, black bottom regular police uniform to yellow on black for which it earned the nick-name YELLOW FEVER. While I would not like to be seen as suggesting that there may have been no other possible causes of those epidemics as germs, poor sanitation, and compromised immunity, I would like to stretch this notion to other seeming epidemics as breast and prostate cancer. Practically every Nigeria woman today, young or old, leaves in fear of breast cancer. So do men over 40 about prostate gland cancer.
About two weeks ago, a woman aged 30 telephoned me to ask about what foods or food supplements would help her breasts. She was reluctant to see a gynaecologist, despite my advice that she do so. In a layman’s description like mine, both breasts suddenly “caught fire”. They were terribly hot, that is, and grew bigger, one about one and a half times the other.The pelvic region was that much “on fire”. But other parts of the body were calm. What could be going on? An infection? In both corresponding regions and, simultaneously? Were her hormones running riot? Was she pregnant? A pregnancy test ruled off that question. And her nipples did not show signs that they were producing milk in preparation for a coming baby.
Apparently, as would be shown a few days after, her period was about to short-circuit, bringing on a second period within a normal period circle. Now, the breasts and the pelvic are calm, the bleeding has stopped as have the breast pains, but I have not stopped to tease her about her fears of lumps and that, had the bleeding persisted or broken out elsewhere, I would have shut my gate after her, and called the EBOLA ambulance. She would laugh, but, in all seriousness, swirl one arm over her head and say three times … “I reject it” …. and …”it is not my portion”.
Everywhere you turn, you hear such rejections follow diagnosis of any affliction. But how much of any disease do these mantras really vanquish? It is all FEAR. Fear lowers a bridge from the soul to the dreadful world we fear, and connects us to it, thereby making the object of our fear, an entity homo-geneous with our through, to easily cross over and have an anchorage in our lives. It may surprise you to learn that, at 69, I have had no prostate or heart examination, despite all talk about prostate gland afflictions and trouble of the heart. I strive to eat well for these organs and do not deny them of their toners or tonics or food supplements. Even those organs I may have been careless about, such as my eyes, I have learned to now give maximum attention. When I speak about carelessness, I remember the days I worked almost 18 hours a day, reading every fine print, warding off the stress with lager, ignoring sharp pains in the eyes with the first glass of really cold beer gulped at a fish pepper soup joint. Nowadays, I tell my professional print media colleagues to not overstress their eyes, and, because it is inevitable that they use them for longer time every daynthan any other professionals, to eat well for their eyes and keep them running well on vision food supplements . Last week, I knew boundless joy when one of them telephoned me that she was just reading my column for that week.
“Then, your vision must have significantly improved,” I replied.
“Oh yes, they have.”
Hers was a case of FLOATERS, which shot her vision whenever cellular debris bonded together and so-called floaters floated from wherever they were to block light transmission from the lens of her eyes to the retina. In the normal eyes, these debris are desolved and do not become floaters. The floaters must have gulped more than N1 million in doctor’s fees and drugs by the time she learned about eye antioxidants, such as Bilberry, Taurine, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Lutein, and Zezanthin, Astanzanthin, and lately, Re-Mag and Citrus peel (orange peel powder or capsules). There are a lot more, no doubt, such as Ceneraria, Occulmed, and CoQ10.
Ebola scare
In a new outbreak, Ebola virus has killed more than 1,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That is where the trouble always comes from. Nigeria picked it up last time around from a Liberian visitor, who may have picked it up from someone who picked it up in the Congolese network. The virus killed some Nigerians, including a dedicated female doctor, who, unprotected, tried to save a patient’s life. This virus is so bad it can be picked up from casual handshake or when people sweat and their bodies touch, as they often do in mini-buses or at cash payment points. Many people went for imported hand sanitisers, many brands of which had expired by the time they were imported from China. The labels bore Chinese instructions and dates. Some of my friends and I discovered the Chinese scam when we got a Chinese- speaking Nigerian to interprete the writing on a label. I preferred Aloe Vera Creams and plain lime or lemon juice. Today, we have terrific hand and intestinal sanitisers in Clove oil, Oregano oil, Garlic oil, Radish oil, Cucumber oil, Cumin oil etc.
In those by-gone Ebola years, body temperature tests were carried out before admittance to public gatherings, for high temperature was a warning presentation of this dangerious viral disease. Even churches, schools and supermarkets were not left out. The optometrist from whose clinic I bought my eye drop would wear nose and mouth guards, long sleeves shirt and handglove. In the villages, many people bath with salt water no fever than three times in a day. I tease my frightened friends that the waiter at the canteen who served their meals and gave them cutlery or the bus conductor who gave them change on their bus fare may be a carrier of Ebola virus. Were the peppers and vegetables in the market sanitised?
When Ebola virus decides to kill, it would damage many organs and blood vessels, and cause bleeding practically every where … in the brain, in and from the eyes and ears and nostrils, mouth, anus and from the urinary outlets. In this aspect, it is smiliar to DENGUE FEVER, a mosquito propagated infection in Asia where the bleeding is often stopped by pawpaw (papaya) leaf juice, raising hopes that this plant may also tame Ebola fever.
Another disease which may be as devastating as Ebola virus, but which Nigerians have not been paying attention to, is BUNONIC PLAGUE, which is caused by rats, given the enormous population of rats in this country. I learned about it in high school Health Science and would speak about it briefly, even at the risk of being criticised for self contradiction about starting a disease talk and rousing public fear. We know rats for LASER FEVER in Nigeria. In Europe, they ‘re known for THE PLAGUE.
The Plague
Europeans call this bacterial disease THE BLACK PLAGUE or BLACK DEATH because, from about 1300 AD, it wiped out anout a third or more of their popuplation (20 to 30 million people or more) I prefer to call it BUNONIC PLAGUE or simply THE PLAGUE or THE WHITE PLAGUE because the hand of the African was not in this European calamity. We, too, have rats in our continent, no doubt. But the rat which caused the European Holocaust came aboard a ship from China.
And if the Chinese thought they were immune to problems their rats could inflict on other people, THE PLAGUE visited them in the 1800s, that is 500 years after the European visitation, killing about 12 million people.
A heart-rendering account of the Plague was rendered by OLE J. BENEDICTOW in HISTORY TODAY Vol 55 issue of 3rd March. He said the 1346 A.D to 1353 epdemic was the period of seven years during which he estimated that … 50 million people … or 60 percent of Europe’s entire population” was wiped off”.
To bury the dead, every church dug a pit to it’s water table. Every day, bodies were dumped in there and covered with earth. Thus, layer after layer of bodies were buried till the pit was filled up. When the Plague attacked one member in a family the others fled, leaving him or her without help and love, till death inevitably came. When the Plague hit near epidemics proportion in a city, the entire city fled to the next.
Dogs feasted on corpses that were not buried. A woman left a note for posterity in which she said she buried her five children with her own hands.
How the Plague killed
Fleas hover around the rat colonies, feeding on their blood and infecting and getting infected. Brown and grey rats avoid humans and prefer to live in ceilings, especially during the rain or snow or very hot weather. Black rats would rather live in kitchens. When the fleas no longer can find rats to feast on, they turn to humans. It takes between three and five days for the bacteria they inject into human blood to incubate and, in about 18 per cent of their victims, another three to five days before death occurs. Swellings first occur in the neck, armpits, thighs, and groin, all sites of lymphatic system lymphnode which filter the lymph (real blood) of toxins, indicating serious blood poisoning.
You cannot protect yourself well enough when your neighbours are careless with the way they dispose off their wastes, or cover their dust bins. When my ceiling was invaded by rodents, I tiled the pillars of the house. When the could not climb them, they ate up the mosquito nets. Even when I doubled the nets, the rats still ate them up. At that point, I did what China did… declared a state of emergency, bought only Titus fish, poisoned the offals and placed them in strategic locations in the house. Over three days, I almost fled the house. It made me imagine how European houses and streets would have smelled during the Plague.
There is always a surprise and blessing in any calamity. Four prisoners now known as the four musketeers brought the blessings of the Plague most likely, for the Ebola virus fever era.
The four musketeers
Because the Plague was highly contagious, prisoners were assigned the job of burying the corpses as little or no value was placed on their lives. Many prisoners contacted the Plague and died. But four who worked as a group did not. They became known as THE FOUR MUSKETEERS. They would enter the homes of Rich people who had died or were dying, and steal cash, gold and light weight but expensive property. Soon, they were arrested and brought before a judge. The judge gave them an option of their freedom if they would tell why they seemed untouchable by the Plague. Their secret, divulged to the judge, was this … the mother of one of them was an herbalist. She made for them an anti-contagion potion which they drank and rubbed on their bodies as a sanitiser before every outing. The anti-contagion potion contained anti- microbial such as Apple Cider Vinegar, Sage, Garlic… The information brought back to memory, in the few past centuries, made these natural anti-microbials popular traditional medicines. This is the blessing I imagined the Plague calamity may have left behind for the present time. It tells us something… that the immune system is critical to human survival in a world we inevitably share with antagonistic and unfriendly microbes.
Who can beat with kid gloves the dynamism of a germ which can replicate itself or divide itself into more than one million parts within one hour? Yet we are confronted by thousand folds species of these germs every hour wherever we go, when the average adult human body possesses no more than 100 trillion cells, including immune system cells!
Fighting Ebola
We do not have to wait until there is fire on the mountain or in the roof. The following hints may support the doctor’s advice and measures.
Immune boosting
We should eat to boost the immune system. The reason two persons are exposed to germs which floors one but do not touch the other is a weak or a strong immune system. A cube of sugar is said to ” disarm” the immune system for six long hours. Imagine the six or seven cubes in a bottle of so- called ” soft drink”. That’s a whopping three-day off seasons or longer!. Bitter foods stimulate the immune system and the liver.
Essential oils
Many of these are anti-microbial, digestive, anti inflammatory and immune stimulating. There are more than 100 of them. There is no plant without it’s own oil which plays significant roles in it’s life. We are meant to consume them for our benefit.
Pawpaw ( papaya)Leaf
One of the final and terrible presentations of Ebola, like Dengue fever, is massive internal hemorrhage (bleeding). Pawpaw leaf has been shown to stop hemorrhaging through production of more blood platelets which guard leakage points to stem blood loss. Besides, the juice of this leaf contains all the digestive enzymes which, taken on empty stomach, can be used by the immune system to fight pathogens. It can, therefore, serve a great role in enzymes therapy. Its high PAPAIN content will easily digest exogenous (extraneous) protein, the class to which the protein of Ebola virus belongs.
Red Marine Algae
This is one of mankind leading anti-viral plants. It has played significant roles in putting the HIV disease under check in many cases. This may be combined with such proprietary blends as Amazon A-V, which is a group of anti-viral plant extracts, Amazon A-F, a group of anti-inflammatory bacterial and anti-candida plant extracts. It is good to focus not only on viruses alone also on bacteria, fungi and candida because a large population of them may bog down substantial immune capacity and leave the system without enough energy to face Ebola virus.
Thaumatococcus Daniellii
“Calm down”, as young people say in stressful conditions. This name is not a thunder clap. I will unmask the masquerade in a short while. I first heard of the medicinal properties of this leaf in 1994 when my wife had our last child at Duro Solaye Hospital, on Allen Avenue, Lagos. Like his brothers, he came with neonatal jaundice, the traditional management of which I had become some what aware of. I removed all beverages and glucose formulas from the new mother’s side table in the ward and replaced them with flasks filled with marigold tea and mild Aloe vera powder tea. Both stimulate the liver. From the breast milk, the baby picked it up.
In neonatal jaundice, the baby’s liver is too weak to conjugate bilirubin, the yellow component of red blood cells breaking up. An abnormallyhigh level of bilirubin may cross into the brain and damage it, making the baby become a “vegetable” for life. If the baby’s tummy ran on the Slow and Marigold teas from the mother’s breast milk, a dilution is advisable. Soon, my son’s jaundice cleared. But I could not offer the recipe, for understandable reasons in an hospital environment, to a mother in the opposite bed whose baby had three Exchange Blood Transfusions ( EBTs). In an EBT, some of the blood is removed and replaced with some of someone else’s blood. People who know the spiritual consequence of this do not approve of it. This woman obtained the voluntary discharge of her baby and herself. No one expected to see them at the first post-natal clinic weeks after. Meanwhile, she took the baby to her village in Epe, Lagos State of Nigeria where the leaf of Thaumatococcus Daniellii was routinely boiled and the water extract fed to the baby. At the first post-natal clinic for babies born that time, this baby was one of the most developed and healthest!