• As ACPN-Ikeja visits Carib Wellness Hospital
With the increasing rate of non-communicable diseases in the country, a medical expert, Dr Patrick Ijewere, has called on Nigerians to abstain from lifestyles that predispose them to health challenges, adding that most of the medical problems currently affecting the citizenry are linked to lifestyle, nutrition, mindset, environment and lack of spirituality.
Ijewere gave the charge during the recent courtesy visit of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN), Ikeja Zone, to Carib Wellness Hospital, of which he is the co-founder and chief executive officer.
Noting that wellness is a divine gift that must be properly maintained, the health specialist disclosed that when illness occurs, people must ask themselves what they have done to drift away from the divine gift.
He added that little wellness steps, such as losing a small amount of weight, engaging in physical exercise, quitting smoking, as well as eating more nuts, fruits and vegetables are capable of keeping diseases at bay.
In his words: “As humans, we need a perfectly working system, but in cases where we see the system not working perfectly, we have to look at the five killers of wellness, which are lack of spirituality, mindset, nutrition, lifestyle and the environment. The essence of this presentation is to look at wellness as our birthright. When ailment shows up, we need to look at where we have deviated from the norm; it could be wrong food, bad environment, malnutrition, negative mindset, poor lifestyle and others.
“There is always a price to pay for health and wellness; either you pay it upfront, with healthier choices and wellness behaviour or pay it later, when the disease shows up or it worsens. Guess which costs a lot more? Also, the further one strays away from Mother Nature, the sooner she says, ‘return to the sender’.”
In her speech, Pharm. (Mrs) Vivian Ibeh, zonal coordinator, Ikeja Zone of ACPN, thanked the management team of Carib Wellness Hospital, for honouring the request to pay a courtesy call on the hospital and for the very warm reception accorded the delegation.
She explained that the team visited the facility, the only nutritional hospital in Nigeria, so as to tap from the wealth of knowledge of Ijewere on some alternative routes to managing the human body and ensuring consistent wellness.
Ibeh said: “We have been exposed to wellness and how we can support our health through nutrition and other mechanisms that were used by our forefathers to attain wellness. We have been exposed to some health tips, and essentially we understand better what it means to embrace nature and wellness. We, community pharmacists, should be at the forefront of information, knowledge and trends.
“As members of the healthcare team, we have been exposed to how we could take advantage of wellness through nutrition and other means of detoxifying the body. Going back to nature helps us to understand why it was possible for our forefathers to live so long, without all these medicines and illnesses. They didn’t need medicines; they were not even ill and they lived longer and stronger, well into old age. We needed to explore this option of treatments or option of wellbeing.”
