• CORPORATE WELLNESS COACH, ARIN ADENIYI EXPLAINS
• REVEALS HOW TO BALANCE THE BODY, SOUL & SPIRIT
Have you wondered why a lot of young corporate executives in their 40’s are coming down with debilitating diseases like stroke, liver and kidney problems?
Have you noticed that many corporate executives now suffer Hypertension/High Blood pressure and are on expensive drugs?
Do you know that the World Health Organisation has put the life expectancy in Nigeria @ 52? That is the gloomy picture of the state of health of many corporate executives, many of who suffer from one ailments or another.
Why is this so City People asked Arinola Adeniyi a corporate wellness coach who is living out her passion to help others achieve optimum well-being. “The problem has to do with the busy life-style of todays corporate executive” she says. Arin who runs Venivici, the leading health club and urban spa in Lagos is also a Diet & Nutrition Specialist, Colon Therapist, Estheticism who is an expert in providing solutions to modern day living syndrome through a focus on human endowments of Mind, Body and Soul.
How does she see the scary figures from WHO, of a reduction in life expectancy rate to 52 years and the fact that a lot of corporate executives are falling ill with ailments that are avoidable. “Its all life-style related. Your immunity is No 1. Like I keep saying, all of us in Lagos are trying to run a 25 hour cycle.
Everybody is just busy. We are over scheduled, over-booked, overwhelmed, over extended, over everything. So, its going to tell on your body.
We should not forget that we are 3 dimensional beings – Body, Soul and Spirit. And you can’t just separate the Body from your Soul. We are all just constantly on the move. So our soul is a bit confused. We are not in sync with it. There is anxiety. When you are anxious, you will begin to make mistakes.
And then you are just not focused.”
“Like I keep saying. We are all running about. We all leave home without our oxygen masks. In the aircraft we are told please wear your oxygen mask first. Help yourself before you help your child. We want to be there for everybody else but we are not even focused enough, because in the midst of the 100 things, we put on our to do list for the day, we don’t even feature as an individual on that list.
Life is all about balance. Lifestyles in Lagos has been very appalling. The quality of our life-style is poor”.
“We are not living a balanced life. So there is no balance. We are constantly on the move. You have to achieve a Work-Life Balance.
When I talk about balance it has to be your financial, emotional, physical, work, family, health, some people have an 8 cycle Work-Life Balance.
It should be all-encompassing. But these days people don’t have time to fulfil the physical-people don’t have time to exercise. Work is meant to be 8 hours. Relaxation 8 hours. Sleep 8 hours. Which one of us is doing that in Lagos?”
“So everything is out of sync. Our lives are totally not with it. And if we are not in balance, we are bound to make mistake. Our immunity is not strong, because we don’t find time to exercise. We don’t eat right. We leave home at 4am. We come back at 11pm day in day out”.
Its not our fault. Its just the way life is”. Are we saying the older generation didn’t run this kind of race?”
“No they didn’t run it this way. They had balanced life our grandparents lived in the villages. They will walk to the farm. So they have gotten some form of physical exercise. They ate raw and fresh. The food was cooked that day. They didn’t have fridges or deep freezers. Water was kept in this deep and cool clay pot (Amun) and still the water was always cold”.
They didn’t have microwave. We do. Yet we do read all the literature that goes to show that it is dangerous to heat your food in a microwave oven, because it can be toxic so you need to avoid using microwave”.
Everybody cooked their own food. There were no fastfood. We ate chicken only once a week, on Sundays. But nowadays I can eat chicken 4 times a day not just the King or the tie that was your own portion, but all of it. Chicken was a treat it was just once. Eating too much protein is not good. By the time you take it and then digest it, it can become acidic in your body.
Yet we eat and eat a lot of it. There are just so many things that we are doing very differently. The older generation were not after owing 10 private jets, riding the best cars, they just believe that a good name is better and content. So they will do their 9am to 5pm. There were not many industries. There were not many entrepreneurs. They were not running this kind of schedules, we are running an unbelievable schedules. The pace has become very very fast. It is not peculiar to Lagos. Its called The Modern Day Living Syndrome”.
“The pace is fast. Technology is not helping us. Some people carry 4 phones. So you are distracted from actually what you are supposed to be doing, every 7 minutes, based on some studies that have been done”.
“So instead of focusing on a task and finishing it, you are replying text messages, you are telling people what is on your mind, you are being socially savvy, so, its just a very very complicated life-style. And I don’t think its going to get better. The pace of life now is very, very fast”.
What is her advice for the elites? How can they slow down the pace?
“Its simple. You need to create time for yourself. By that I mean the ME time. You need to remember that your own oxygen mask needs to be on before you can help others.
Nigerians don’t rest. Even at the weekends that you are supposed to rest, assuming you are running your 4am to 12 midnight schedule Monday to Friday, people don’t rest.
On Saturday, there is usually social obligations, its your colleagues party or your best friends birthday, its your Chairman’s event. And then some of us get to travel outside Lagos to fulfil those “compulsory” social obligations, because that is just who we are. We support each other in all that we do. Then you are coming back to Lagos and then you are tired and we hear of people who ray on Sundays, I am not going to go out. I am not going to church or go anywhere, than they sleep throughout the weekend and on Monday you wake up and you are still tired.
There are cases of people who go to the hospital and hey run all the checks and they saw there is nothing wrong with you. You are just stressed up. There have been cases of some people who go to play tennis and slumps off on the court. The truth is the Nigerian elite does not pay attention to himself or herself”.
How about what we eat?
“Yeeeee! That is a big problem. We are not eating right because of the many management and board meetings. And what do they give us there? Things we don’t need in our body. We are not eating close to nature as much as possible. We are not hydrating enough. We don’t drink as much water as we should.
So you find that you have official dinners, breakfast meetings at hotels, lunch is business lunch, dinner cocktails. Add up everything you are eating it is not like the normal meals you would be acting at home.
The older generation did eat like us at fastfood joints. They didn’t have to contend with the Nigerian parties that have 14 different dishes in 2 hours, put on your table, from the smallchops, to asun, pastries, dessert. Even when they put all those food on our table, it is supposed to be a choice. What usually happened is when you sit down the servers come to you with the menu and they expect you to choose between fried rice, or jollof rice or coconut rice or Chinese rice. What you then hear most guests say is bring me a little bit of each. Then 30 minutes after the Amala bowl will come with the Ewedu to go with it. You will collect it and eat because everybody is eating.
Then the smallchops come and you eat. Then somebody brings fried yam and you collect it and eat. It is unbelievable the way we are eating. And we drink Champagne like its water, or it is going out of fashion. I think most of these things can be avoided because there are choices. Life is all about choices.
Yes, all these things are there but we can choose to drink water over champagne. Then are we eating enough vegetables and fruits? Do you know the irony of it? In Nigeria we are blessed with all of these. We want to eat the imported apples, grape fruits. Why don’t we eat what we grow here? Most of these imported fruits by the time they bring them home they have to be preserved. So, you are eating toxins, plus the fruits.
We need to sit back and make the right choices. Hydrate well, drink more water. Get physical. Most of us don’t exercise. If you wake up in the morning you can go for it or create time in the evening to exercise. A lot of things in you, from your immunity, to blood circulation, your blood pressure, can be controlled just by deciding to add 30 minutes of physical exercise into your lifestyle. Don’t tell me you are busy because if you now break down. You will be rushed to the hospital and at that time you will be forced to create time that you thought didn’t have”.
Is that why all these lifestyle diseases are all related?
“Yes, Diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, high cholesterol level, are all lifestyle related. “Medical studies have also shown that 85% of all diseases are stress-related. Stress is unavoidable. But you can decide to reduce the amount of it Health living they say is superior to medicine and make Food your Medicine.
Until we begin to see good food as a necessity for the body, make food your medicine, make your 2 legs your doctors – your right leg and left leg put them in motion. Hydrate well, drink a lot of water, drink more water. Yes, there will be times of celebrations and all that, but this should not be the norm.
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