Dr Olatunji Adeniyi is one of the best brains we have in the health sector. He has done a lot as an anesthesiologist, intensivist, who also has a passion for the cardiovascular system. He has worked around Europe and South Africa over the years. He has over 30 years’ experience as a doctor. Presently, he is one of the best/senior doctors in a newly opened hospital (Olan Medical Centre) on 119, Adeniyi Jones, Ikeja Lagos.
A few weeks back, at the opening of the hospital, he reveals a lot about what people should know about their hearts and how people can live a normal life. Below are excerpts of the revealing interview with City People Senior Reporter, ISAAC ABIMBADE.
What should people know about their health concerning their hearts?
The heart is one of the most vital organs in the body. Unfortunately, when things happen, it happens so rapidly. Although, there would have been underlining warnings which could span through years. The heart itself has a lot of reserves, but having exceeded the reserve, it just goes down and you see people just walking and they just collapse. You hear people sleeping and they don’t wake up. You see people having the condition of the heart. And if the heart is not pumping well (blood) or you have a clot in your heart, and the clot rolls to the brain and to other organs, and when it gets to the brain it can give you stroke. And if it goes to the heart, the coronary perfusion becomes completely obtunded and then you have what we call a heart attack. If it goes to your kidney because a lot of people now have renal problems. So the renal artery becomes occluded and then you go into acute renal failure. So the heart is so vital that everybody in their 40s or above 35, must evaluate their cardiovascular; you must evaluate your heart.
What is the major cause of people sleeping and not waking up from their sleep?
You cannot really say it’s all about heart. Majorly, it has to do with the condition of the heart because the heart is a pump, (like the pump in your house) and it has to pump blood to all organs in the body; from the head to toe. So, if whilst you are lying down, the heart is just slowing down and you are sleeping and you are not breathing well, you unnecessarily overheat the heart, but you won’t know. And if the heart is already having issues and you are sleeping, you are snoring and you are not breathing well, it will just stop! If you are lucky, you can wake up suddenly with a chest pain, but some are not lucky. The heart just stops. And if the heart stops and there’s nobody around to jump-start your heart, that’s the end. The key thing is that every human being should check their hearts, ideally, it should be from birth. There are simple tools, as simple as using the stereoscopy, as simple as using the ECG.
When things happen, we are not so advanced in this country, in terms of technologies (maybe we have 2 or 3) where they can do interventional cardiac care. So the best thing, however, is to ensure you don’t get yourself to the level you will need interventional care because it’s extremely expensive, and the centres are very few and the experts are also very few. So, how can you take care of your heart, it’s what you eat. It’s largely what you eat.
But in those days, there were no such things?
In the olden days, there were two dimensions to that: the first dimension is that people don’t survive for too long. That is one. They don’t probably live too long to develop heart condition and if anything happens, probably they would relate it to somebody who doesn’t like him. But in the olden days, you can give the credit to them, some of them live as old as 100 years, and when you look at those people they are largely farmers who were always very busy. So, exercise is no 1. They walked almost 6/10 kilometres, for about 5 times a day. Secondly, what you eat. They don’t eat all this Oil. They don’t have all this sugar. They don’t have this caffeine and nicotine. They don’t take all those. They are on the farm. They just cut the leaves and they eat. God designed human to be largely vegetarian. If a lion should open its mouth, you will see massive canines. So, God has designed Lion to eat meat. A human was designed largely to eat vegetable and fruits. When 3 quarters of our meals become beef, with fats and other stuff, of course, we would suffer what the lions suffer. The average life span of a lion is 15 years. Whereas, the Gazelles, the antelopes and the rest they are killing, including tortoise, can live 250 years because it will just cut grass quietly and eat. So, life-style modification, especially on what you eat is very, very key to your cardiovascular health.
You also talked about people going to their place of work and they collapse and die. Is this also a heart-related problem?
Heart issue is one major thing, but there are other things. For example, if you don’t know you have high blood sugar; if you don’t know you are diabetics, If you don’t know your thyroid is not functioning well, if you don’t know your kidney is not excreting well, if you don’t know that your liver is not detoxifying very well, suddenly one day, you will just collapse. We see people driving in traffic and they stop, and traffic light says go and he’s not going and by the time you get to him, you discover he’s dead on the steering.
It’s unfortunate that in this part of the world we don’t do regular health check-ups. And as far as I’m concerned, these are the kind of legislative motion that should be moved in the House of Reps. Let them say that, henceforth everybody above 35 and above should go to the nearest hospital and get their heart checked, get their sugar level checked because I can tell you for every 4 men you see on the street, one is either diabetic or one is hypertensive. These are statistics of a few years back. And with the current stress and hardship, your guess is as good as mine. If you could check your car every month, or every 3 months, and you as human being refuse to check yourself, it will be bad. The sad thing is that we don’t take the issue of health serious in this country. Somebody is ready to spend 4/5 million to buy a car, but tell them to go and spend 50 thousand on their health, they would say no.
What is your hospital, Olan Medical Centre doing about all these?
What Olan is trying to do now is to be a hospital where you can walk in and you tell them what you want to do. You don’t have to do any serious registration. You will just tell them you want to do a check-up on yourself. In fact, there will be a discount. In the next few days or weeks, it would be free. We would do your cardiovascular assessment for free and we give you a report on your ECT and then you can start from there.
Tell us your number of years in this profession?
I’m well over 30 years in the practice. I have seen quite a lot. I have practised in Europe; England and Holland, especially. I practiced in South-Africa too. I have practiced largely in Nigeria, at Olam. I was once a medical director of Critical Care International. My key area is anesthesiology.
Let’s get to know you more sir.
Dr Olatunji Adeniyi is my name. I’m a critical care physician, an intensivist, an anesthesiologist. I take passion in the heart and cardiovascular system.
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