Who among us who can read or write or, if unable to, is capable of deep thinking who never had a teacher? We all had,and still have, fabulous teachers. I remember Alhaji Babatunde Jose, Chairman and Managing Director of the powerful Daily Times group of newspapers in the 1970s warning my 1972 class of journalism trainees at The Times Newspaper Training Centre( TNTC): “ The day a journalist stops to read and to learn, he begins to die”. I was 22 and made not much of it. On the job,I would undergo pumelling in the hands of editors such as Segun Soba, Sola Odunfa, Angus Okoli, Clement Okosun, Dipo Ajayi, George Okoro, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Henry Odunkomaiye and Prince Tony Momoh. They all helped me to cut fine professional teeth and muscles. When I , too,began to train reporters, correspondents and editors about 12 years after, culminating in my editorship of The Guardian newspaper in 1988 in my 17th professional year, I appreciated them all. I remembered, also, my teachers at school and often mentioned them every Teachers Day.
Today, I still remember Mrs Brikesteth. She was my primary three teacher at St. Andrews Primary School, Ibara, Abeokuta in 1958. She forced my class to learn by heart the memory verse Romans 12. 17-21( “Recompense to no man evil for evil….therefore, if thy enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him water. By so doing, ye shall heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good”). There was Mr Eyitayo in primary five and Primary Six at St. John’s Primary School, Agodi N5, Ibadan. I was among his best three pupils, exchanging positions with Victoria Eyitayo and Adenike Omage(any one knows where they are, please?). Mr Eyitayo gave me a good foundation in Arithmetic and geography which, unfortunately, no teacher in secondary helped me enough to build on.
At Oliviet Baptist High School, Oyo, between 1964 and 1968, I enjoyed unique teachers too many to mention. Mr J.B.P. Lafunhan was the Principal. Bolaji Akinyemo( now a professor) was there. So was S.O.Kolade,the Health Science( physiology and Hygiene) teacher, the flag of whose work in those days this column has been flying since about 1980s. He kindled my interest in medicine and encouraged me, as a journalist later, to subscribe to reputable journals on medicine such as The Lancetn England. Ayo Ojo, a vibrant activist in the Nigerian Medical Association,( NMA) of the 1980s, was my school father at Oliviet. He lived in Block17 and I in Block2 at the Kings Barracks, Iyaganku, Ibadan. His uncle, like my father, was a policeman. His other uncle I later knew is Chief Ade Ojo of ELIZADE(Elizabeth and Ade) motors. Every holiday, Ayo Ojo took me to the Youth Camp across the rail- line, where we studied from morning to the evening.
He made me run over Biology and Chemistry syllabuses of “OLevel in Class 4 three times before the WASSCE in class V of 1968. He would later own and run no fewer than four hospitals before his retirement. To crown them all, I had the privilege of learning about Creation at the the feet of Chief A.O.Lawson. An insightful statement from the Bringer of the Creation Work from which Chief Lawson shone the light to Truth seekers inspired me at 27 in 1977 to discover my roots in the healing processes of Mother Nature and to seek kindred souls like me world-wide to learn from. That unforgettable statement is that…NEIRHER DRUGS NOR INJECTIONS BUT THE RIGHT KINDS OF FOODS AND DRINKS BRING LASTING HEALTH. For the first time on any World Teachers Day ( 5, October 2024 this year), I thought of celebrating the fabulous men and women whose great pioneering or frontiers expanding work in medicine in the form of alternative Medicine or Natural Medicine opened my eyes and spirit wider to this vocation and gave to me another Passion after Journalism. Some of them have left the flesh, but their works live after them. I still cannot explain how , despite the rigours of newsroom life, starting work at about 11a.m and winding up at about 2a.m to arrive home by about 3.a.m, with only a break on Saturdays, I was able to discover these women and men, buy their latest books and build a library of them.
They must be fabulous teachers for that to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, as I encouraged you , too, to seek out your teachers and send to them token gifts if they are still alive or to their children or wives if they are gone, I will present to you over about the next five columns about 20 or 25 men and women I learned from and can help you expand your knowledge about natural health. They are… Dr. Robert O. Young.
Here comes another remarkable teacher Natural Medicine cannot forget.His revolutionary slogan was,and remains, The New Biology of Health. To many persons, he may not have said anything new since the source of his PH Miracle was all about the balancing of Acids and Alkali in the blood, body fluids and tissues was altogether nothing new. Nevertheless, wasn’t there much newness in the way he presented it to make the old re-freshingly new and to top the agenda of Medicine’s talk to even this day? In this regard, he was like Dr.Batmaghelaj, author of YOUR BODY’S MANY CRIES FOR WATER; YOU’RE NOT SICK, YOU ARE ONLY THIRSTY; and DEHYDRATION, STRESS, INFLAMMATION and CANCER, the book he was writen before he passed. Conventional medicine knew about water before Dr Batmanghelidj, but did it prescribe water for the cure of diseases or teach us how to drink water to prevent them? Dr Robert Young disputed sacrosant ideas of his time that germs from outside the body caused diseases.
He sought an answer to why the 1918 flu which killed more than three million persons globally would kill some persons in one household and no-one in the next or spared some persons in the household where it wrecked havocs.The Yorubas of South-Westetn Nigeria have two sayings or proverbs which support his own arguments. Kokoro ti o nje efo, abe igi efo lo wa ( The pests which consume the vegetable stalk is right underneath the root stalk), and Ole ile lo pe t’ode wa ja ( it is the thief at home who invited the outside thief to strike). Dr. Young based part of his arguments on The Law of Balance one of the laws of nature,which, he said, upheld Equilibium in the universe in which everything held the others in check. Whenever these checks and balances failed, trouble erupted. In the body, what he said kept all diseases at bay was the acid- alkaline balance which was measurable on a 1 to 14 pH scale in which seven was the median or neutral value. Acidosis, that is excessive acids, was anything below seven and Alkalinity was anything above seven. The body functions at its best when the blood pH is 7.365,an alkaline state in which no germ is believed to be able to survive or to strike, says Dr Young. Like the blood, Dr Young expected some other body’s fluids to keep a 7.365 pH, although he recognised that variations do occur with the saliva, urine and lower intestine and the The Woman Secret Place.
He saw Gingivitis ( Inflamation of the gums) receeding gums and Pyorrhea ( infection of the gums and teeth),for example, as having their roots in pH imbalance in the saliva and gums. Microzymia Dr Young explains that microzymia, a microbe, lives in human, animal and plant cells, planted by mother nature to destroy them whenever their living activities shifted from alkaline life to acid life. That would mean that, as humans, if we desire to live free off disease and pain, and to not age prematurely and die pre-term, we must, through the diet, make all of our 100 trillion or so cells in the mature adult body live within this Code of Conduct of Mother Nature. Our forebears in Yoruba land encapsulated this knowledge for humanity before Dr Young in a saying or proverb that …Ogede n baje, a l’on pon( Banana or plantain is getting rotten, but we say it is ripening).
Today, we know unripe plantain is more nutritious than they ripened or over-ripened plantain in which the alkalizing potassium has been converted tosugar, an acidifying substance, for which reason microzymia goes to work to make it rotten and then destroy it. Alkaline cell need not fear microzymia. Microzymia is inactive for as long as they remain alkaline. When they are acidic, Microzymia devolves, first into bacteria, then into fungi or mold, depending on the severity of the acidosis on the 1-14 pH scale.
A doctor inexperienced about nutrition and the knowledge of pH balance and of Microzymia is too quick to lob anti biotics against the bacteria, says Dr Young, when he should have advised dietary changes to restore the blood to alkaline status. His antibiotics may wipe out the bacteria, but he had only postponed the doom’s day. For anti-biotic residues only make the blood more acidic and invite more microzymia to devolve into more powerful strains of bacteria,a “drug resistant” situation.An exasperated doctor would then increase dosages and the fire power of his prescription, and the vicious cycles would continue.
Meanwhile, Microzymia, fulfilling a creation dutyto disintegrate all “rubbish” and prepare the way for new life forms, would devolve from bacteria to fungi and mold, as the situation warrants. Fungi and mold are members of the yeast family of which are hundred of species. These are simple plant forms. Isn’t it frightening to think that plants may be growing in our bodies? Dr Young paints the picture of how it may happen in his epic book, the PH MIRACLE. Through oral thrush, or the white patches on our pinkish-red tongues, we are given early warning signals by the body of what may be going on inside our systems, but we often pay little or no attention. We are content to brush off the blotches with tooth paste.
However, we do not destroy the roots which are buried deep in the tongue, and, so, the blotch regrows during the day. Meanwhile, these plants forms consume nutrients in our blood to grow their population, and inject into our tissues and blood the poisonous waste products of their living processes, thereby predisposing us to a number of illnesses and even cancer in the weakest tissues. I accept the views of some doctors in their book, Cancer is a fungus, that fungi are leading causes of cancer. I accept the view, also, that uterine fibriods which is ravaging Nigeria’s female population may be caused by bacteria, fungi, mold and viruses. They are seen in fibroids tissue surgically removed from the uterus. Many women have sweet tooth. Sugar fuels acidosis. That is why candida, yeast form, thrives also,in the vagina. The Blood.A great battle rages every day to make the blood alkaline. The blood is the “River of life”. Acid blood corrodes or eats up cells, tissues and organs. Twenty-times of alkaline material are needed to convert one acid material to Alkalinity.
Most in Nigerian foods are acidic forming. Carbohydrates and proteins are acid forming. Cooked food, factory process and packaged foods are acidic. The air we breathe and water we drink are often acidic. A major hope for alkalinity is in lightly cooked, juice or freez- dried vegetables. About 20 years ago, Dr Young’s revolutionary book gave rise to a freeze-dried foods industry. In Nigeria, I sold Alkalive Green, Alkalive Red and alkalive blue. These were proprietary formulas of about sixty alkalizing plants in a package. The greens provided chlorophy-ll and alkalizing minerals among other nutrients. Alkalive Red gave us berries such as bilberry, acai berries, Goji berries, staw berries, Goose barries, Cran berries e.t.c.
The product was a knock- out for vision acuity and other nerves energy requirements. AKALIVE BLUE calms the nerves and promoted restful sleep. Professor Tsali, a Kenyan doctor working in England, brought to Nigeria through Dr Sam Asemoha, an holistic medical practitioner, three lines of a similar product which I helped to sell in the early 2000s. They were called Mariandina A, Mariandina B and Mariandina J. One was for detoxification, other was for nutrition and another was for immunity boosting. This was a world Dr Young was ushering us into. He suggested that we could also make our diets alkaline by altering the ratio to about 80 percent RAW foods and 20 per cent cooked foods. This is a huge challenge. You would admit so if you regularly watch what you and your neighbours eat every day, and you then relate your health conditions to your diet, Dr Robert Young admonishes us. Keeping the blood alkaline is a tough job in Nigerian. Routinely, the body expects alkaline materials from the diet to pump into the bloodstream and thereby neutralise the acids.
Where the diet is acidic, the body dips hands into its alkaline reserves in tissues and organs. The reserves are usually stuff like sodium, Potassium, zinc, phosphorus, iron, Boron, molybdenum e.t.c. Potassium is found inside the cells, sodium in the fluid (interstitial) which surrounds the cells and in which they are suspended like a fisherman’s net on a water surface. They are found in muscle tissues as well. Removing them and dumping them in the bloodstream often creates troubled situations in the tissues from where they are poached. That is why the removal of Calcium and Magnesium may cause muscle spasms and pain, bone loss, bone pain, bone softness(osteomalacia), bone fractures, gum and teeth challlenged, heart problems e.t.c. Dr Robert.O.Young gives us other possibilities… BACTERIA and YEAST “Bacteria, yeast and mold do not themselves produce symptoms in the body. Their toxic wastes do. Nor do they initiate disease. The only show up because of a compromised environment. Has Rudolph Virchow wrote, mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.This operations and their waste contribute directly or indirectly to a huge list of symptoms.
Most diseases, especially chronic degenerative forms, follow microform overgrowth. Between the streams of athlete’s foot, and AIDS are the yeast and fungus overgrowth underly diseases such as diabetes, cancer, Atherosclerosis,(clogged arteries), chronic fatique,osteoporosis and more including infections that appear to be transmitted from person to persons. The general sign of overgrowth includes pain, infection, fatigue, and body malfunctions including adrenal/thyroid failure, indigestion, diarrhea,food cravings, intestinal pain, depression, hyperactivity, anti-social behaviour, asthma, hemorrhoids, colds and flu, respiratory problems, endometriosis, dry skin and itching, thrush, bleeding gums, finger/toe nail fungus, dizziness, joint pain, bad breath, ulcers, colitis, heartburn, dry mouth, pms and menstrual problems e.t.c. You can blame that on out of control microforms and their toxic acid wastes as well”. Dr Young proposition roused from slumber.
Millions of persons who were sleepy about their health.They cause bitter controversies especially in the medical professionals. The American Medical Association (AMA) handed him with law suits for practising medicine without a medical certificate and got him convicted not fewer than three times. Each time, he bounce back to continue propagation of his conviction in pH Miracle cures. When one of his fellowers said pH Miracle did not cure her cancer, his 48 acre of Avocado ranch was sold for $105 million to pay her damage claim in court. It did not matter to the woman, their American Medical Association and the judiciary that many cancer patients die in the hands of satisfied medical practitioners in their hospitals everyday, and that pH Miracle has prevented many potential diseases and helped to cure many dangerous ailments,even if some cancers slip through the net. Dr. Robert O. Young, by fighting on irrespective of legal challenges on his way, has proven that his, indeed, may be a calling to educate us about The Law of Balance, a law of Nature, as it applies to the sanity of human health. I suggest you check him out online and read his book for the benefits it gives your health. Thanks, Dr. Robert. O. Young, for sticking out your neck to make us all age without growing old.
