THE SLOW POISONS THAT WE CONSUME
Modern man keeps inventing all types of substances for gratifying the palate. Some alter his psychological disposition. The users of these products usually claim to "feel good", "forget their worries", "gain ecstasy" or experience some temporarily altered state of mind. Some of these poisons such as cocaine, heroine, opium and crack are illegal. Meanwhile, some of these illegal substances can lawfully be used, if backed by a prescription from a qualified medical practitioner. Other slow poisons that are legal include products that have caffeine in them (kola nuts, coffee and tea from the plant thea sinensis), artificial sugars, alcohol, tobacco and addictive drugs prescribed by physicians for their patients and sometimes for themselves.
No disease condition suddenly happens. While young our bodies can take a lot of sustained punishment. Eventually, especially as we get older, they occasionally go on strike, with the the frequency increasing after we have passed 45 years of age, if not sooner. Each individual has his own unique time span that it takes for him/her to show disease conditions linked to his occasional or routine unhealthy consumption, sexual and other habits.
Many Africans say that at 40 years of age, they are or were weaker and less vigorous, as compared with their grandparents when the latter were 80 years of age. Of course, our present bodies are hardly different from what they have been possibly for thousands of years. If modern Africans and other peoples notice how weak or less vigorous they are at half the ages of their grandparents, then this can only be due to significant changes, not in their bodies but in their lifestyles.
Of the many very important changes in lifestyle of an Africa, two stand out very clearly. One of these is that we in the Africa are now copying people in the industrialized countries. It appears that we fail miserably in copying how productive they are but rather most consistently copy the worst of their habits in consumption. As a result, we consume tobacco, alcoholic beverages, refined sugar, more artificial and industrially processed or non-natural products and more fried foods that were unknown to the palates of our grandparents. The second is that we are now more allergic to physical effort and have become more sedentary, whether at work, at play and when we move about.
Of course, the result of all this indiscriminate copying is that we have also speedily acquired diseases that are common among people in the industrialized countries. Indeed, we have no indigenous names in most if not all our African languages for cancer, hypertension, diabetes, depression, insomnia, dementia and others that our present lifestyles are causing in us. The reason is that our forebears did not suffer these conditions. Obviously, these more recent diseases are additional to those that we traditionally have had and which we are still unable to rid ourselves of them.
chidebe26@gmail.com,
chidec2001@yahoo.com
+234-8037108507 (Text Messages; WhatsApp)
+234-8125074686 (Calls)
No disease condition suddenly happens. While young our bodies can take a lot of sustained punishment. Eventually, especially as we get older, they occasionally go on strike, with the the frequency increasing after we have passed 45 years of age, if not sooner. Each individual has his own unique time span that it takes for him/her to show disease conditions linked to his occasional or routine unhealthy consumption, sexual and other habits.
Many Africans say that at 40 years of age, they are or were weaker and less vigorous, as compared with their grandparents when the latter were 80 years of age. Of course, our present bodies are hardly different from what they have been possibly for thousands of years. If modern Africans and other peoples notice how weak or less vigorous they are at half the ages of their grandparents, then this can only be due to significant changes, not in their bodies but in their lifestyles.
Of the many very important changes in lifestyle of an Africa, two stand out very clearly. One of these is that we in the Africa are now copying people in the industrialized countries. It appears that we fail miserably in copying how productive they are but rather most consistently copy the worst of their habits in consumption. As a result, we consume tobacco, alcoholic beverages, refined sugar, more artificial and industrially processed or non-natural products and more fried foods that were unknown to the palates of our grandparents. The second is that we are now more allergic to physical effort and have become more sedentary, whether at work, at play and when we move about.
Of course, the result of all this indiscriminate copying is that we have also speedily acquired diseases that are common among people in the industrialized countries. Indeed, we have no indigenous names in most if not all our African languages for cancer, hypertension, diabetes, depression, insomnia, dementia and others that our present lifestyles are causing in us. The reason is that our forebears did not suffer these conditions. Obviously, these more recent diseases are additional to those that we traditionally have had and which we are still unable to rid ourselves of them.
chidebe26@gmail.com,
chidec2001@yahoo.com
+234-8037108507 (Text Messages; WhatsApp)
+234-8125074686 (Calls)
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