(Being the second part of the interview – started last week
Saturday – between Dr. Bola Olaosebikan, the founder of Healthcare
Herbal Products, and Nigeria Natural Health Online’s editor, Dumbiri Frank
Eboh)
Why Infertility Is On The
Rise?
The
trend now is that new diseases are coming up. You may call them emerging
diseases. Just as you have emerging markets, you have emerging diseases too.
These new disease, especially in the area of infertility, are becoming
outstanding. And they exist amongst men and women. The major culprit is the kind
of food we eat, this is the fundamental baseline of the disease. We are eating
junk foods, we are eating processed foods, people are taking too much sugar and
salt. All these are not helping the health system at all. Men are not having
enough testosterone and when a man does not have enough testosterone, the man
will not be potent and would not be able to produce enough sperm. He might even
actually become infertile.
Climate
Change As A Factor
There is
also the issue of climate change, the climate is becoming warmer than before
and this is bad for men because men do not need something hot in their
reproductory tracks. That is why the testicles are in a sack outside the body
where it is cooler than inside the body that is hot. The testis cannot function
with too much heat.
The kind
of dress that we put on too, affects our fertility. Buba and Sokoto are good
because they allow in air; but you find people wearing tight trousers. These tight
trousers compress the testis and put pressure in the testis and the more pressure
there is on the testis, the more difficult it is for a man to produce sperm.
The nylon under pant that people put on too is not good. I advise people not to
wear under pant or boxers and if they must wear them to go out, they should
pull them off as soon as they come back home. Wear a long dress and let your
balls be free so that blood can circulate in that area very well.
Sexual
Promiscuity
Ignorance
has caused a lot of infertility for most men.
Another issue
is sexual promiscuity. A lot of randy men are having sex without using condoms and
so they are picking infections from here and there. So, multiple sexual
partners could lead to infertility.
A lot of
people are no eating natural foods. I always advise people to eat fruits and
vegetables. If you take fruits and vegetables every day, you are going to be
very healthy. Banana is very good, so also are Pineapples, Watermelon,
Cucumber, Cabbage and a host of others.
Stress
Stress,
which is the mother of distress, is also a strong infertility factor amongst
men and women. The economy is becoming very bad and people are working extra
hard to take care of the family. Stress produces a lot of stressors or corticoids
that counter male hormones and make them less fertile, Same thing for women. Some
women have water coming out of their breasts when they are not feeding a baby
and this is very bad. Any woman that is lactating (i.e water coming out from
her breasts) when she is not breast feeding a baby, can never be pregnant until
the liquid coming out from the breasts stop because the signal that is given to
the brain is that she is breast feeding a baby; and when a woman is breast
feeding, she cannot take in. When she has weaned the baby and the milk stops,
that is when eggs are released and she becomes pregnant.
Disease
As A Cause Of Infertility
Disease
too can lead to infertility. Infections can block the tube for women. 70
percent of women are having issues with their reproductive system. It is either
the tubes are blocked or they are having fibroid.
The
Influx of Foreign Herbal Brands Into The Nigerian Market
Of
course, there are so many foreign herbal medicine brands in Nigeria and there
is a battle now in the market between Foreign and Indigenous brands. But the
fact is that you should always strive to patronize Nigerian brands because they
are more trusted than the foreign ones. Some times I call these foreign ones
“Flowers” because they are just beautiful but there is nothing inside them. You
cannot be sure of the efficacy. You cannot even be sure of their root, their
source or where they are coming from. The address that is written on it may not
be genuine. Somebody just puts a sticker there that say there are 20 different ingredients
in it but you cannot be sure of it. The temperature from where they are bringing
these herbs is different from our own temperature, the soil is not our soil.
Some herbs and medicine are made for a particular part of the world. There are
foods that we eat here that they don’t eat over there. There are disease we
have here that they don’t have over there and vice versa. How can they bring
herbal medicine for malaria from Europe into the Nigeria market and say you
should buy it? Is there malaria in Europe? So how can they bring that kind of
medicine and you think it would work here? It is only orthodox medicine that
can work like that because they are chemical based and they are put together in
factories all over the world. But every Nation has their own herbs, has their
own herbal medicines. Every nation has their own foods, their own gardens. What
the Chinese eat is different from what we eat here in Nigeria and what we eat
here is different from what the Americans eat. That is how herbal medicines
too, is.
Herbs
can come from a foreign Nation but they have to be put together in another
nation for them to be relevant in that other Nation. You can bring something
that is grown in South Africa, you can bring something that is grown in Ghana;
but it is when you bring it to Nigeria and add Nigerian herbs to it that you
complete the formulation. There are some herbs you get from Jos, there are some
herbs you get from Uyo, from Ogwashi-Uku, from Ado-Ekiti and indeed every part
of Nigeria. All these are from our own soil and when you put them together, you
have a herbal product that can effectively tackle health issues amongst
Nigerians.
But these
foreign brands are just here to trade, they are not here to treat our people.
They are just doing E – commerce, they don’t care about our people. They
promise people that when they get into the network marketing platform of these
drugs, people can get cars and travel overseas. How does that impact on the
health of Nigerians? I think clinical studies should be carried out on foreign
herbal medicines coming into Nigeria before they can beat their chest in pride;
but until then, you should patronize Nigerian herbal medicines formulated by
Nigerians and made by Nigerian companies. These should be certified by NAFDAC.
NAFDAC has given us standards and I commend them for the job they have done and
for the job they are still doing. They have standardized the practice of herbal
medicine in Nigeria by giving guidelines on how practioners should engage the
industry. In the final analysis, the sky is the limit for indigenous herbal
medicine in Nigeria; foreign ones can only queue up behind us…
(TO BE
CONCLUDED ON SATURDAY)
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