By Femi Kusa
johnolufemikusa@gmail.com
What may Tourism Minister Lola Ade-John have eaten which so upset her health that she had to be in hospital, and some persons around her were even guessing she might need to see doctors abroad? This was the news break sometime late last month before memories of President Muhammadu Buhari’s long London hospital spells probably reconfigured the news’ skyline.
It may be wrong, though, to assume pottering of the Minister’s health condition, if a cat was ever let out of the bag. The official position, stated by the minister herself two days after, dismissed speculations of food poisoning. We may never have the right answer to the question, just as, to many citizens, former President Buhari’s health affairs remain securely wrapped up under the carpet. Nevertheless, the newsbreak about Lola Ade-John’s health pulled familiar strings in my memory. For I have had no fewer than three near-death experiences with food and prevented many other food troubles from getting out of hand.
EXPERIENCES
I spoke of having three near-death experiences. They were all related to eating bananas ripened with carbide. The first experience occurred in the office of BUDGET TRAVELS at Ilupeju Model Market, in Ilupeju, Lagos, where I operated a health food store some years ago. I had a meal which I topped with some bananas. Suddenly, I felt something like a storm rise from the pit of my stomach and spiral upwards and sideways. Suddenly, also, my eyes began to roll on their own and everything I looked at began to swirl. I knew I could fall from the chair on which I sat, hit my head on the ground, and injure some tissues inside it. So, I quickly lay flat on my back on the floor, telling the owner of the office, Mrs Bukola Azeez, that I was about to faint, and she should get me help. I removed my top dress and singlet. Many persons rushed in, forcing all sorts of things they thought could help me into my mouth. Some kind folks in love came with milk, others with energy drinks, and some more with water. My shopkeeper, a young woman, was perplexed, that she did not remember ACTIVATED CHARCOAL, a delivery of which we had just added to the old stock that afternoon. It was after the danger was well over and I asked for a jar of activated charcoal that she remembered one of its major uses was to mop up certain poisons and even some germs in the gastrointestinal tract and move them out of the body through the stool or faeces.
Another of those near-death experiences took place at home, like the third. I was alone in the house. I had just returned from the office and decided to snack on bananas which I bought on the way, before I joined my friends for a beer or two at our meeting place in the shopping complex of the housing estate in which we lived. Suddenly, I felt that spiral motion again from the depths of my stomach. Quickly, I pulled my top dress and the singlet. I recalled this time that, a week or two before, a youth corps member had slumped and died in one of the canteens of the Lagos State secretariat, Alausa, in Ikeja. I rushed to the kitchen for a bottle of palm oil which I thought could help to absorb some of the shocks before I got more help. But, while in the kitchen, I discovered I had lost the sense of smell. I quickly reasoned: What may happen if I mistook the bottle of liquid dishwashing soap for that of palm oil? One of the contents may very well be carbon tetrachloride, a dangerous poison in large doses, which is known to damage the liver and the kidneys.
I had learned to not ignore my intuition, that silent, non-obtrusive familiar inner voice since it saved my life when I lived at 39 Elmina Cresent, off Toyin Street, in Ikeja, Lagos. On that wonderful day, I cleaned the car and parked it on the street. Then, I had my bath, and had breakfast, one that may have been my last about 20 years ago, if I had disobeyed that small, silent yet knowing and seeing inner voice, the voice of the spirit. I wore my office dress, came out of the main building, and locked the door after me. My dog, which my children named King followed beside me, wagging its tail. That morning, I fed it and my cat in their feeding bowl. I wished in that endeavour to be a unifying factor for all creatures as we humans, as Lords in this wonderful Creation, are meant to be, teaching all creatures to not be enemies but friends. As I tried to open the footgate and head for the car outside, that inner voice asked: HAVE YOU LOCKED THE HOUSE DOOR?
My intellect or brain tried to deceive me when it retorted:
“What a stupid thought! How can you forget what you did about one minute ago?”
Pictures of how I locked the door rapidly unfolded before my gaze. But the inner voice asked me again: “WHAT WILL IT COST YOU IF YOU GO TO CHECK THE DOOR?”
I turned around. But I had hardly taken two steps towards the house door which would require about 30 steps to reach when I heard cracking sounds and smelled metal in the air. I fled to the back of the house through the side which protected a view of me from the main gate, while my dog fled through the other side. I thought armed robbers were operating in the street. About 30 minutes later, I heard familiar voices on the road. There was nothing exasperating about them. So, I came to the main gate to peep. All I could say was: “Oh my goodness!”
In all the six years or so that I lived in that detached house, I did not notice there was a wooden pole near the footgate over which ran high-tension electricity cables. The pole had been eaten through at the bottom by termites. That morning, it finally gave way, crashing on my car and throwing the high-tension cables over it. Had I been there, and had I been caught by those wires, it would have been a case of instant electrocution. We all disobey the inner voice with dire consequences we do not link to our carelessness or obtuseness.
Back to the second near-death experience. So, that evening at home, all alone in the house except perhaps with some unseen helpers and some nature beings in the garden who may have come in to help, I abandoned the kitchen and tried to go upstairs for a bottle of activated charcoal. My legs had become weak, meanwhile. But I managed to drag myself to a seat in the part of the sitting room where I hardly sat. To my surprise, there was a bottle of DIATOM waiting there for me. Udeme did not return it upstairs after she gave it to someone who was brought to the house in severe condition of stomach ulcer pain. The pain subsided about 10 minutes after he took a tablespoonful in a glass of water, and he slept off for about one hour, waited upon by his friends. That evening, I could not go for a glass of water and a spoon. What were my saliva and tongue for, I asked myself. I popped some into my mouth, moistened it well with saliva, and swallowed it. In about 10 minutes, the fire went down, like a firewood fire in the rain. Carbonic acid has met its match again!
After the third experience, I vowed never again to buy ripened or ripening bananas and plantain. That was why I began to grow them in my own garden. On this third occasion, Udeme served me a banana for snacking before dinner was ready. When I called out for help, she rushed upstairs for DIATOM. The economy has made it difficult to obtain many of these first aid agents, which, lest I forget, include one that I have not mentioned…ACIDIC STOMACH AND ALKALINE BALANCE. It is the one I take when indigestion wakes me up in the night with salt-tasting saliva in my throat. That can foment trouble if not promptly treated. I spit out the irregular saliva, clean my mouth, and swallow one or two capfuls, then I return to bed!
I have learned to be a food watcher not only because I used to have a very sensitive digestive system but, also, because of my encounters with food poisoning reports very early in life as a sub-Editor at the DAILY TIMES.
Between 1971 and 1974, some of the stories that passed through my hands for sub-editing were either on canoe capsizes and passenger deaths or of whole families dying after mushroom meals in eastern parts of the country. So well reminded of those mushroom deaths that I turned down mushroom soup treats in Greek restaurants during my first visit to London in 1979. Last year, Udeme Edet James, our house manager, frightened me when she said she saw some delicious mushrooms growing on the wood waste on the grounds of the back of my residence. I did not know what expertise she had that equipped her to tell killer mushrooms from edible mushrooms except that she grew up in an Akwa Ibom village where mushrooms were eaten as regularly as water leaf in Lagos where I have been resident since the 1950s. We agreed those mushrooms she discovered were not for cooking in the pots in which my meals were cooked. The stubborn young woman that she can be, especially when she wishes to make a point, she is certain of, Udeme asked me about two weeks later if I enjoyed the native Akwa Ibom soup she cooked. When I saluted her cuisine sense, she laughed merrily and asked if I had died or had a stomach disturbance…I had eaten mushrooms!
We learn throughout our existence, even in the so-called beyond or the afterlife, as the world outside the purview of our physical bodies is also called. The old lesson here for me to re-learn is to never argue with a woman or to give her an instruction. The experience reminds me of my fabulous uncle-in-law now of blessed memory. When only two of us were alone, he would look over his shoulders and whisper in very hush tones as though the walls were listening and would tell on him…”WOMEN ARE…” My wife, his niece, I guess, knows the code. In his family were five women and one man! I need no further education. In my family, there are three boys. To win any argument, I threw the matter at hand on the table for debate and always won on a four-to-one ballot. Would a university teacher of political science and exponent of democracy abhor democratic principles on the home front? Men can be rascals whereas women are “…1,2,3,4,5,6”.
GAS, BLOATING
I often tell the story of how I could not control the biochemistry going on in my intestine as a young sub-editor of the Daily Times. Work hours were long and indeterminate. I subsisted on white flour snacks and sugared drinks called “soft drinks”. Back home, to add flesh to my skinny bones, I made a drink formula for this purpose from a popular egg-based drink to which I added a tin of evaporated cow’s milk, preferably condensed milk, and to cap it, broke one or two raw eggs, all of which were whipped into a newer HOMOGENOUS blend. I bloated, almost died of intestinal gas, and was saved in the village by a herbal recipe I was treated with by a woman who inherited the formula from being a student of her husband who later passed. Back at Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, I was skinny and went by the nickname PAPERWEIGHT. I could not play football during game periods because of fears that the bigger boys could break my bones. As a sub-editor, I thought I had become a “big boy” and should “pop up” a little for the girls to notice, but I did not realize I could be poisoning my body thereby. Hands up, all old men who, as boys just seeing the light of day, didn’t wish to walk taller and look larger than they were.
ZINC SUPPLEMENTS
I have sensitive nostrils and taste buds. I advise everyone to sharpen their acuities by taking zinc food supplements. That’s one of the things they do among their 200 or so uses in the body. A person whose nostrils are not inflamed and whose smell nerves are functioning well can always smell a rat in a meal that should not be taken. As a double fool-proofing, the taste buds at the back of the tongue help to warn us to pull the guards. Nowhere do they work better for me than when I chew groundnuts, also called peanuts. I do not tell lies. I love groundnuts, especially the roasted ones. My mother-in-law, now of blessed memory, used to tease my wife that another woman may seduce her husband with groundnuts! She, too, likes groundnuts. But, for my sake, she hides every bottle of groundnut in the house. For me, groundnuts could go with anything that could go into the mouth.
I may munch them with bananas and lettuce for dinner or as an evening snack. Groundnuts are rich in protein, fats, important minerals, and fiber. There is hardly any nutrient that is not present in lettuce, according to the research of Dr William Rodgers, who discovered Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) in 1919 and is presented in his famous book, THE WONDERFUL WORLD WITHIN YOU. It was in his book that I must have first learned in the 1980s that lettuce is good for depression patients. Like bananas, which gave me those three near-death experiences I referred to earlier, lettuce provides the body with TRYPTOPHAN. This is a chemical substance that is first converted by the body to 5-HYDRO TRYPTOPHAN and from it to SEROTONIN. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter or the brain chemical that keeps us active from sunrise to sunset. It hits its peak from about 7 a.m. or 9 a.m. When night falls, serotonin is converted to MELATONIN. This neurotransmitter calms the brain, keeps us yawning, and sends us to sleep. People who are going through depression often do not have enough MELATONIN, which may be the reason they do not sleep well or have sleep disorders.
Pharmaceutical anti-depressants given in hospitals to depression patients help to mobilize serotonin from their bodies to produce melatonin in their brains. This makes them feel like sleeping all the time, especially at night. Serotonin and melatonin deficiency from tryptophan deficiency may cause short-term and long-term memory problems, anxiety, mood imbalances, aggressive behaviour, panic attacks, depression, sleep disorders, and a lot more mental health problems. If, during the day serotonin blood levels do not reach their peak because of excess melatonin, there is a tendency to wish to sleep during day hours as well. Also called the happy juice, melatonin improves mood and invigorates the mind, thereby making us happy. If “sleep attacks” occur during the day without reasonable cause, it may help if the melatonin serum level is checked!
I hope I have not digressed too far. I will soon be back on the track. I have only been excited to share my passion for eating groundnuts, which may be a dangerous nut to eat, good as nuts are for health, if one eats the wrong ones. These wrong ones are infected ones. They are not easily noticed by many groundnut eaters. In Brazil, for example, about half of the exported groundnuts are infected groundnuts. Fungi are the worst enemies of groundnuts. They drape them with aflatoxins which can cause poisoning of the blood and even cause some types of cancer. Anyone who likes groundnuts as I do should always check his or her tongue in the mirror. The tongue is supposed to be pinkish-red. When a white carpet covers the tongue or interlaces with its natural colour, this is oral thrush or fungal infection and may suggest that the intestine has been colonized by fungi not necessarily from groundnuts alone but from almost every food item sold in the Nigerian market. A Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) survey of Nigerian open markets once reported that there is hardly any food item that is fungi-free. So, we may all be loading up on poisons which, like time bombs, may explode anytime as food poisoning.
TO BE CONTINUED
FEMI KUSA was at various times Editor; Director of Publication/ Editor-in-Chief of THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER; and Editorial Director/ Editor-in-Chief of THE COMET NEWSPAPER. Currently, he keeps a Thursday Column on Alternative Medicine in the NATION NEWSPAPER.
Some of his health columns may be found on www.olufemikusa.com and in MIDIUM a digital platform for writers. He is active also on Facebook @ John OLUFEMI KUSA.
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