If you Keep Doing these, you will Not Fall Sick Again – By Gabriel-Wealth Olatuja.
As the Founder/CEO of an emerging telemedicine company in Africa, I enjoy interfacing with patients a lot because that is one of my cores.
So aside from the other responsibilities that are always piled in my daily schedules, I try as much to provide medical support. Yes, I am not a medical doctor and not ready to do a doctor’s work. However, I still find ways to assist in servicing the patients with the best service that they can’t get elsewhere.
Whenever I’m available to assist my team with bookings, billings, medical records mining and management and prescription management, one other area that I pay special attention to is medical support – in which I query patients to get their medical history to adequately help the doctor in providing adequate treatment and where I also do health and spiritual counseling for interested patients on private consultation.
Something striking which has also been my personal experience is that most of the health challenges that end up degredating our health could be avoided if we pay attention to some basic things which I will discuss in this article.
One of the challenges that many of us have is an inability to monitor changes in our body system on a timely basis relative to the activities we perform and other factors like environmental, occupational, etc.
For example, during my master’s degree program in Occupational Health and Safety management several years ago, I did a work on “ergonomics”. In simple language, ergonomics means how workers position themselves when working, for instance, how they stand or sit down when they are working. For those who work with personal computers in the office, many of them experience waist pain, back pain, neck pain and even headaches towards the back of the neck which arise from the workstation (the seat and desk they use when working). When you don’t position correctly while working, you may develop a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD), which could lead to pains or cramps in different parts of your body. This could have been avoided.
There was a time I worked day and night for almost 2 weeks, sleepless nights. Along the line, I observed that I was having heart palpitations. My heart was kicking like it’s being drums that my chest would beat. I did a bp test, my blood pressure was around 156/70. I called one of my doctors, she said I should try and check with another stethoscope to be sure.
My pharmacist friend told me something that stroked a cord. He asked me, “do you sleep well?” I told him that i have been on some project day and night for almost 2 weeks and I haven’t had quality time.
He asked me a question that stroked me again, He said, “are you working to make money to live or to die”. I said to live. He said, “Oga go and rest and sleep”.
Guess what I did. I didn’t buy any medication from him. I didn’t call the doctor back. I went home, drank water, ate fruits and vegetables and went to bed. For 3 days, I didn’t open my laptop. All I was doing was eating, watching TV, press the phone, going to bed and going outside my compound to gist with some friends.
I didn’t take even paracetamol. After about 5days of rest, I went back to do a BP test. Behold, by BP, was normal. Imagine if I didn’t know what could have caused it, I would have spent so much money on treatment which of course would not have solved the problem. Doctors may even recommend going for an ECG scan and other heart checkups which are not cheap, and don’t forget the kind of economy we are.
Paying attention to your body is important.
This is the kind of investigation I do personally with patients. A patient once said he was having one-side-waist pain. I asked him what he did, he said he was a school driver. I asked him which type of vehicle he drives. He said bus, and he drives on weekdays. Fortunately, that day, the school was going on a week’s vacation. I told him not to drive for one week and keep me updated. Behold, he called back later that the pain disappeared when he stopped driving and the pain came back when he started driving. I told him it was an occupational health issue. I had the same experience at a time when I was doing Uber. Driving can cause waist pains because of siting for a long time and the pressure your leg puts on your waist when you match brake and accelerate as well as the pressure your hands put on your left and right side waist when you turn the steering.
Let me give you other examples before I close this article.
Beans are my favorite food. I could eat beans 3times a day for a week nonstop. I didn’t know it was killing me.
For over 6 years, I had waist pain, I didn’t know it was caused by beans. I thought is was a pile, popularly called jedijedi which I thought could have been caused by eating excessive carbohydrates. So I would stop carbohydrates and eat more protein which is not far from my sweet “beans”. It became very bad at the point that I was living on omeprazole to help release some gases which I didn’t know were generated by beans. So whenever the gases got trapped into my waist after eating beans, it would become painful as if theres a painful beat that separated my waist into two vertical. So one day, I stopped eating for a day, and in the evening, I ate vegetables.
By the time I ate vegetables and fruits only for three days, the waist pain disappeared. I marveled. It was done on my that one of my favorite foods was the culprit. I started a food rotation every two days. I eat carbohydrates, but the pain didn’t come. The day I ate beans, the pain came back. That was how I stopped eating beans for over a year, low and behold, no wait pain. Meanwhile, a doctor friend was contemplating how I may have to go for surgery. Just imagine if I had gone for surgery whereas beans were the problem…
A patient was having itching on the body because of the water she used to bath and whenever she bathed with water from another source, there was no itching. Another person had skin itching after bathing just because of the towel he used. Another person had acne all over her back after she changed her soap.
A patient has had constant neck pain and it stopped after I told him to stop using a pillow on the other hand another patient who has had neck pains for over 2 years was free of it after I told him to use a pillow when sleeping.
Everyone’s body is different and unique. What someone is using or eating that is good for their body may be a poison for your own body. You need to identify those things that are good for your body and are the same time those that are not good for your body.
A patient had had intestinal discomfort for several months until I told her to stop eating beans, semo and carbonated drinks. Lo and behold, that was the end of the gastrointestinal disturbances. She didn’t use any drugs.
If we pay attention to our body system and monitor “what happened when something happened” in our body, we will be able to maintain constant wellness and health.
I can give many more cases of my personal experience and patients’ experiences.
You need to study and understand your body system functional and changes from time to time. This will save you so many headaches and costs.
You need to always ask yourself what went wrong and why, whenever you have any symptoms.
Learn more about yourself. It will help to keep you in wellness and healthy so that you do Not Fall Sick Again
If after you have done all the needful and the symptoms remain, do not hesitate to talk to a medical specialist. Our medical specialists at Virtual Doctors are experienced and friendly. They can attend to you online on Virtual Doctors App. Register here and book an appointment today at www.virtualdoctors.ng/account. You can also book an appointment by sending a WhatsApp message to https://wa.me/2349071764818.
Do you have an experience too or are you allergic to anything that you think you want to share for others to learn from?
If you have any personal experience, comments, or questions, kindly leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Talk to me on WhatsApp at https://wa.me/2348067380225 or send an email to [email protected].