WHEN I was 21, I thought I was going to die. That was 40 years ago. I’d finished higher school at Igbobi College the year before, took a book seller’s job at Odusote Bookstores on Herbert Macaulay Street, Yaba, Lagos, and, from there, landed a bigger one, a trainee sub-editor’s job, at the Daily Times newspaper on Kakawa Street, Lagos. The sub- editor’s job was, and I believe still is, a hectic, thankless job. A sub-editor is the unsung backroom shadow of the editor, the newspaper’s last crucial bridge between the reporter and the reader, the one who makes sense out of nonsense. my trainer and boss was the herculean and perfectionist George Okoro, a socialist who lost most of his teeth, it was said, when a Biafran soldier smashed his jaw with the butt of a rifle. George Okoro was irrepressible, he may have opposed the Biafran leadership, got detained, tried to escape and arrested. He was a hard beer drinker, and introduced me to beer drinking. Work hours were indeterminate. The job was over whenever it was, and that could be anywhere near midnight. After two months, I abandoned the job for another at Mandilas nearby. But I returned one or two weeks after, claiming to have been ill, when the Mandilas managing director posted me to Kano, where I was to work as a trainee store keeper. Life at the Daily Times and with George Okoro was hectic. his brief was to bake greenhorn higher school certificates in to sub-editors in six months in the ‘blast furnace’ of the newsroom. so, from the newsroom at close to midnight, we crisscrossed the hotels, Ritz, Gondola Cabar, Fela’s Kakadu, Chez a Bib etc before landing home. In the mornings, I had to read foreign newspapers for story and imaginative headline and photo caption writing skills in addition to layout. Two imaginative headlines I’d always remember the DAILY MIRROR for are (1) A QUEEN DIES and (2) NECKING ON THE BACK SEAT KEEEPS THE HEAD AWAKE. The “QUEEN” was an old British Royal Navy ship named Queen Elizabeth which sank. The NECKING story concerned an old man who went to court to stop the local council from siting a bus-stop opposite his house. He said most of the late night passengers were teenagers who, on disembarking, kissed and hugged as a way of saying goodbye for the day, making such love noises in the process that disturbed his sleep! He won.
WORK in this stressful situation found an ally in the quest for manliness to deliver another devastating blow to my health, especially intestinal health. I had had no time for healthful meals, depended more on snacks and soft drinks and beer. I had been thin from school for which I earned the nickname PAPER WEIGHT. I wished to add weight, gulped lots of soft drinks because I had read in F. DANIEL’S TROPICAL HYGIENE FOR SCHOOLS that sugar got converted to fat. I took WATE-ON, the weight growing formula of the time and EGGOVIN, the egg and alcohol formula to which I added more raw egg and at least one tin of pasteurised cow milk. At that time, I knew next to nothing about the need to watch whatever went into my stomach, or of the fact that I AM WHAT I EAT AND DRINK. Soon, I had stomach and intestinal problems, which began with bloating, belching and farting. Apparently, I had overburdened my stomach, liver and intestines. The bloating wasn’t ordinary bloating. It is the type called WIND. Stomach ulcer came along. If the pains came, I’d rush out of the newsroom to a canteen opposite the office, grab a popular snack and wash it down with a soft drink. I didn’t know that, with this white flour snack with beef accompaniment, I was loading my body with more acid forming foods. I became so bloated eventually that I couldn’t eat a slice of bread without feeling full while still hungry for food. somehow, the thought that I was dying struck me. At that time, two of my cousins passed away. The first to die was Tosin Otusayo. The other was Sunmisola Oshodipe, an OND Accounts graduate from the Yaba College of Technology who worked at Cocoa Industries, Ikeja. He was said to be blocking fraud by cocoa farmers who, as the story went, attacked him ethereally. He became dizzy, perhaps from low blood count or low blood sugar, slumped one day and died! With their sudden departure, I sought help from my maternal grandfather in the village who took me to a woman who inherited healing herbs from her late herbalist husband. I had confidence in this woman because, prior to my case, she had helped to permanently cure my sister of her menstrual circle migraine. She gave her a leaf she was to place in her hair and bury in the earth at sunset. and that put an end to the hammering headache. For my case, she asked that a meal consisting of a particular fish and herbs be made early in the morning by a woman who would not wash her face or brush her teeth or speak to anyone. I, too, was to do likewise before the meal. having a meal before brushing my teeth was strange to me. But I obliged. and I was cured till this day right from the first meal I had hours after. I was too young to appreciate the importance of this medicine and, so, did not ask for the recipe, which I could have obtained on a platter of gold. I was to need it at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, when my friend Damola Willoughby came down with stress ulcer, from which he recovered after hectic academic schooldays.
I have told these stories to underscore the importance of being careful about what goes into the stomach. We are in the fourth week of a 2012 Resolution to take extra care of the digestive system from where, according to the British Royal Society of Surgeons, death begins slowly but surely. In the first part of this series, renowned American natural physician JETHRO KLOSS detailed in his BACK TO EDEN how people who ate the wrong foods and often complained of stomach and intestinal discomfort were found during autopsy to have grown all sorts of tumours, including cancers in their throats, stomachs and intestines. through the works of STANLEY BURROUGHS of the Lemonade Diet Master Cleanses fame, we now can guess that micro-organisms, especially Candida as revealed in the gray tongue or oral thrush, invade poison-ridden bodies and that these growths may indeed be an attempt by the body to imprison some of them. After discovering fungi in many cancerous cells, Italian oncologist Dr Tullio Simoncini, actually, wrote a book, CANCER IS A FUNGUS, in which he argues that fungal infections set the stage for cancer formation. Dr Roland Gdanshi, in his CANCER, CAUSE and COVER-UP, agrees, saying it hardly occurs in the heart or blood vessels but in liquid storages such as the stomach, colon, bladder, breast or prostate where injuries may be easily infected by candida.
I have learned to know my stomach and to be its friend. It is a small bag into which the throat leads food from the mouth. its job is to digest this food and pass it on to the intestines to finish the job. Some of the problems many people have with their stomachs are (1) gastritis (2) esophageal reflux or heartburn (3) peptic ulcer or (4) cancer. Gastritis is inflammation of the lining of the stomach. At the connecting point with the throat or esophagus, there is a muscular gate manned by the spincter muscle. This valve does not permit contents of the stomach to flow back to the throat or mouth, even when we stand on our heads, legs up like Atilogu dancers, unless a problem has occurred with it. A similar action occurs at the other end of the stomach where the duodenum makes the connection with the small intestine. The stomach pulsates, like the clenching and opening of the fist, to mix the food with digestive enzymes. Too much water or fluid, such as soft drinks or beer taken with meals, dilute and weaken the enzymes, prolonging digestion time or diminishing stomach efficiency. Prolonged delay causes putrefaction or rot which attracts fungi and other micro-organisms. Poisons from the rot and waste products of these micro-organisms irritate stomach lung and cause inflammation (gastritis) and pain for which antacids are often used injudiciously. Use of antacid presupposes that the body is over producing stomach acid. But the reverse is often the case. Too little secretion causes digestion delay which leads to food decay or degradation into acidic substances. so, blocking stomach acid may be counter-productive. one simple assessment often advised in Alternative Medicine is to try the patient on Apple Cider Vinegar or lime or lemon juice or Betain Hydrochloride tablets or capsules before a meal. If no pain is felt and digestion is smoother, stomach acid was low. If the condition is aggravated, acid-forming foods such as milk, bread, sugar, beef, fried foods, eggs, biscuits etc are to be avoided for a long while, say three to six months, while one glass of water, preferably alkaline water, is taken every hour. If the stomach is beset for too long with acidic undigested food, it tries to rid itself of the burden by either expelling it through the throat or forcing it on the intestine. But the sphincter gatekeepers at both ends, as good sentries, don’t usually permit this. If the expulsion upstream occurs for too long, this may cause irritation of not only the esophageal sphincter valve but the lower esophageal tissue as well, leading to the pain of heartburn, damage to tissue, possible infection by fungi and even cancer. If the stomach forces its irritating acidic content downstream, that is to the duodenum, the sphincter muscle there may give way under pressure, acid would burn the duodenum and set off duodenal ulcer.
Dr F. Batmanghelidg seems to have satisfactorily explained the connection between dehydration and stomach ulcer. The stomach is made up of flesh. The interior flesh is protected from acid contents by different protective layers. above the flesh is sodium bicarbonate. above the sodium bicarbonate layer is a water hydrant film. above this film is the mucus membrane. all these layers protecting the flesh beneath need constant supply of plain water to maintain them. Plain water is different from fluid in which there are solutes which require water for their metabolism. Dehydration, like stress, thins out the mucus membrane which, thereby, becomes less protective. If the wear permits food substances and acid to drop through, the hydrant and the bicarbonate layer may be unable to neutralise them, causing trouble for the flesh beneath. breaks in the armour bring fungi and bacteria, especially Helicobacter pylori bacterium which wreaks terrible havoc. I always tell peptic ulcer patients what their stomach injury looks like. The normal stomach flesh is like raw meat; the ulcerated or gastritis stomach flesh is like boiled or cooked meat. But as the stomach flesh is a living flesh, ‘boiled’stomach flesh may heal under certain conditions. as a general rule for stomach health, I would make the following suggestions.
• Do not miscombine foods. Fruits and vegetables cause chaos in the stomach.
• Do not take fruits over a meal. Fruits take about 30 minutes to digest, solid foods about three to four hours. Fruits trapped on meal decay while waiting for the meal to be digested, causes gas, bloating, microbial infestation, dyspepsia (digestive pain), reflux, excessive stomach acid etc.
• Do not eat to fill the stomach. The contractions may cause esophageal reflux or hiatus hernia, in which a loop of the stomach is trapped in the hiatus, a hole in the diaphram. Eat to fill about half or three quarters of the stomach.
•as much as possible, take with every meal between 500mg or 1000 mg of Vitamin C or Grape Seed Extract (GSE). either helps to detoxify mould or its toxins in food. For example, brown rice, often preferred to white rice, has a high mould load. Groundnuts come with afflatoxin, a dangerous poison from micro-organisms which feed on its oil.
• Calcium, Magnesium and Vitamin B Vitamin supplements taken with meals support stomach and intestinal function. Calcium is used up for smooth muscle contraction, magnesium for their relaxation, and B Vitamins to reduce stress load on the system. Vitamin B1 aids nerve function. Nerves are involved in muscle contraction and relaxation. often, stress and lack of these minerals may be the cause of digestive system slow down or stasis, that is constipation.
• allow about five hours between meals. If a heavy meal requires about three hours in digesting and another is loaded in so soon, the stomach may wear down and out unnoticed until, finally, it crashes under stress.
• Bitters taken before meals stimulate nervous reaction in the glands which produce digestive enzymes ready to digest the coming food. Lime or lemon on the tongue similarly stimulates salivation. Besides, they help to stimulate the liver to produce bile which supports fat digestion, and exports poisonous wastes in the stool.
• Minimise water and fluid intake with meals. This weakens digestive enzymes and impairs digestion. instead, take water about 30 minutes before meals or two and a half hours after. Water taken before meals is recycled to the pancreas to make the alkaline pancreatic juice. This is injected into the duodenum to, among other things, protect it against acid content of the stomach. without pancreatic juice to neutralise this acid load, the duodenal sphincter muscle declines to let stomach content pass, forcing food to stay longer in the stomach with dire consequences. The water taken about two and a half hours after a meal helps to flush the food out of the stomach. many people have eased their digestion problems with this creative formula for drinking water… thanks to Dr F. Batmanghelidj.
WHEN there is fire on the mountain and there is need to help the system out, many proprietary supplements have proved to be gold standard medicines1) Made from Turkish rhubarb, Molasses, Buckhorn bark, Barbery Chickweed and Urva Urs, Constipation Relief Tea in Capsules is designed to relax nervous systems of the stomach and usher food easily through the intestines, checking flatulence, killing worms and preventing inflammation, among other uses.
• I enjoy working with Excessively Acidic Stomach and Alkaline Balance where the chest and stomach are burning and I am not surprised it works in many cases. three of the ingredients, Natrum phosphoricum (Sodium Phosphate), Kali Carbonicum (Potassium Carbonate) and Kali Sulferium (Potassium Sulphate) are homeopathic cell salts. Other ingredients include Alfalfa, Barley grass, MSM, Blue green algae, Chamomile, Cinnamon, Robinia Pseudoacacia, Sodium Bicabornate, Calcium bicarbonate, Berberine alkaloid, Aloe Vera powder and Rheum officinate
• Acid reflux & Indigestion tea acts as an ant-acid, soothing and relaxing the stomach.
• I have recently personally witnessed the rejuvenating effects of homeopathic biochemic cell salts. For “stomach Acid Related problems,” the books recommend, especially, Natrum phos (Sodium Phosphate), Natrum Sulph (Sodium Sulphate) and Silica. all are to be dissolved in hot water and drunk. If there are pains in the stomach, it may be wise to include Kali mur (Potassium Chloride). Natrum phos (Sodium Phosphate) goes for acidity pains; Natrum sulph (Sodium sulphate), for pains due to liver problems. there are 12 cell salts in all. recently, I experimented with eight of them, taking two each two times daily, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. when I dissolved them in lime juice, I experienced such increased urination during the day, and no need to void in the night, that would make me suggest it to people grappling with prostate problems.
• Italian and Japanese studies suggest Sangre de Grado resin as an anti-cancer and anti-ulcer agent for the gastro-intestinal system.
• We cannot mention all the remedies in one fell swoop. I would like to round off today with Kyolic, the aged garlic extract. But, before then, let me quickly add to the list MarcaTreben’s Bitters and Calamus root. Ktolic is odourless garlic with a difference. Garlic cloves are soaked in water for 20 months in stainless steel containers to eliminate its odour-causing compounds, which are converted into substances not present in natural garlic. among these substances are S-allylcysteine (SAC), S-allylmercapto (SAMC) and Mailland reaction compounds. Hundreds of clinical and preclinical researches credit them with a wide range of health benefits including success in previously treated but uncontrolled high blood pressure, improvement of heart health, prevention of oxidative stress, protection of the liver against poisons, cholesterol and homocysteine lowering, immune enhancement, anti-tumour and anti-cancer activities, improved nerve growth, boosting of red blood cell production.
In 1972, Nagai K. and others found that “a Kyolic liquid Aged Garlic Extract containing Vitamin B1, Vitamin B12 and liver extract orally administered clearly prevented stress-induced ulcer formation. The authors attributed the anti-ulcer effects to strengthening of the gastric mucosa rather than to decrease in aggravating agents such as gastric acid and pepsin. From China have come reports of reverse trends in stomach cancer risk with dietary intake of garlic.”