Following these (health) recommendations just to prolong my life is a full time employment for which someone should pay me
Sometime ago, I read the story of a man who entered the ‘Laziest Man on Earth’ contest and won but was too lazy to go and collect the prize. However, it was brought to him in the remote part of the world where he lived. When he was found, he was lying down under a tree up in the mountain side but close to a brook. It was found that when it was time to eat, he would simply open his mouth (great effort) and a fruit would fall in, so did water from the brook. When the prize was held out to him, he unsurprisingly instructed the official to put it into his pocket for he was too lazy to reach out for it. Asked why he did not work for a living, he said life was too tough, and he was not minded to take part in its hassles. He would rather just lie there if they didn’t mind; and in fact, talking to them was costing him some effort.
True, life is tough, especially in Nigeria, what with the government pretending that the people do not exist; yet I have found that nobody really wants to die. The joke goes about a man who had gone to commit suicide at the rail line only to find himself waiting endlessly for the train that was late as usual. Hungry, he reached into his pocket for the loaf therein and murmured, ‘One could starve to death waiting for trains in this country!’
So, given a chance, everyone would opt for the prolongation of his or her life, employing the cheapest means of course. This is why people practically chew garlic as a food, rather than using it to spice up the dish, not minding its rather frightening taste. And peppery ginger is not left out either. When I come across people effusing these things in their breath, I do not move away as most people do. Quite on the contrary, I move a bit closer to get a whiff of it into my own body in case they know a thing or two that I don’t. I just think, supposing they are right?
But not to be completely left out of the game of life lengthening, I search the papers for news of any inventions that might provide a hint or two on how I can stretch my puny breath into lasting more than the three score and ten. And so, every now and then, I come across screaming headlines from health experts shouting down my throat things like, ‘Drink fruit juice and live longer!’, ‘Eat Soy beans and reduce colon cancer by 35%!’, ‘Eat beans and reduce lung cancer!’; ‘Drink milk to reduce weight!’; ‘Milk causes cancer!’; ‘Fat causes weight gain!’; ‘Fat necessary for health!’; ‘Fat alters liver immune system!’ ‘Eat Cabbage and cut your cancer risks by 25%!’, ad infinitum. Sometimes, though, I don’t know what to do: should I drink milk or should I not, and should I run like mad from fat, as if I don’t have enough of it already?
The simple fact is that the fine prints in these news items are not telling us many crucial things. For example, If I eat kale and collard greens (after first finding out what they are) to cut out the harmful effects of radiation by 60%, then who takes care of the remaining 40%? If I eat whole grains to reduce the risk of heart disease by 15-30%, what becomes of the remaining 70%: give it over to lady luck?
Then it strikes me, perhaps they mean that if I drink lemon juice, I will probably cut out about thirty per cent from cancer risks; eating soy beans cuts out another thirty-five per cent; adding cabbage takes care of another twenty-five per cent. If that gives me a cumulative control of about ninety per cent of my health from cancer risks, then I would be more than willing to leave the remaining ten per cent to providence. Or does it not work that way? Do these figures not necessarily add up?
It seems to me that following these recommendations just to prolong my life is a full time employment for which someone should pay me and even give me tenure service, i.e. make it pensionable. Believe me, it is hard work following the findings and the funny turns they choose to take.
When for instance I read the good news that milk can cause weight loss, I proceeded to invest a substantial per centage of my wage not on milk stocks but on the product itself. With visions of a waist line within the capacity of the measuring tape dancing round in my head, I also added yoghourt to my diet, consuming it with all the seriousness of a recommended drug. Not only did it turn out to be a punishment, but I believe it is actually what is behind my sudden unexplained weight gain. Then came the clinching headline that milk can cause cancer and I watched my investment go down the drain but not my waist. And for several days I stood irresolute between the two white coated gentlemen at their respective experiment posts giving me contradictory positions on the usefulness of milk, until a solution offered itself.
I remembered me of a little cartoon I read some time ago. In it, a man just coming out of sleep in the morning hears in consternation as a news vendor screams the headline of a newspaper down the street ‘Acid rain is coming!’ Alarmed, he turns to wake his wife to inform her but before he can utter the words, another vendor comes screaming out ‘Martians are coming!’ Likewise, he turns to inform his wife but before he can say the words, another vendor is running down the street with the news ‘Space Invaders are coming!’ Again, he turns to inform his wife but again before he can talk, another vendor comes with ‘Terrorists are coming!’ At this, he simply turns and goes back to bed, drawing the quilt over his head. So, I do the same and turn in the general direction of sleep blissfully ignoring the tirades of the headless headlines.
Everyone has been so taken with the fact that Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity when an apple fell on his head but I have always marveled that no one ever asked him what he was doing under the tree in the first place. It is possible that he was indulging himself a bit, like our man at the beginning of this story, and it was no surprise that the apple fell on him. The point is that if anyone sits still long enough, why, the sky would fall on his head.
This is exactly the position of a psychiatric patient whose story was related to me a while back. Among his many problems is the fact that he goes everywhere with a cap on his head. He sleeps in it, eats in it, washes in it and even as I speak with you now, is likely to be found sitting in it. When confronted and asked why he does not take it off occasionally, he replies that what no one knows is that there is a large hole in his head which cannot be seen and which the cap is covering. And if he removes that cap, air is likely to blow over and into it, scatter its contents and he might die, so he cannot afford to take the cap off. For the same reason, I think we all had better keep our caps on and refuse to let the uncertain air of these contradictory scientific and unscientific findings scatter the contents of our heads.
This article was first published in New Age in 2006.
