Being Diabetic Is Not A Death Sentence

• OSARENKHOE ETHEL CHIMA-NWOGWUGWU

It is no longer news that Diabetes is ravaging the land. Many people old and young all suffer from Diabetes. So serious is the problem that some health experts and doctors refer to it as an epidemic of immense proportion.

Health expert, Osarenkhoe Ethel China-Nwogwugwu has been managing Diabetes for years and this interview she reveals how to Live With Diabetes.

The general belief is that if you are diabetic you should run away from Sugar. Is Sugar the major cause of diabetes?

I raised my 5 children and other people’s children around me. And I took out those poisonous drinks that they’ve used to hold us as captives. Not everything sugar, just drinks. They used to deceive us and say, if you take it, you become active. Your brain will function, it kills your brain cells.

It weakens your body system and exposes you to ill health. I took that out from my family and we eat natural. We take fruits in its natural states, and we drink alkaline water.

We are very deliberate about water because parboiled water is no longer available as it was when I was growing up. So I have to be deliberate.

When we came, we moved from Port Harcourt to Lagos 19 years ago. I didn’t know that somebody can tell you when water is good and it’s not real. I didn’t believe that people can be dishonest.

So, the first thing I woke up to in Lagos was my whole family went down and I rushed them to the hospital. How can we all be sick? The doctor said, it is the water you are drinking. Excuse me, but this is the water we are buying.

We are buying water from the big bottle. He said, sorry, you need to check it. And to be frank, of a truth or to my shock, it was actually the water that was our problem.

And there was a family friend that introduced us to that alkaline water and said we should taste the water. And we now found out that that particular water producing company, which everybody in Lagos was drinking, had a problem. They were even shut down by NAFDAC.

They were refilling water from a source not authorized. So that was what made us sick. So I will tell people to be deliberate about what they eat.

Be deliberate about the water you drink. Be deliberate about take out, and drink. And now another good thing is my family does not have malaria.

Can you believe it? My family doesn’t have malaria. Since we took out soft drinks from our diet, my first daughter is 28, 26. The second is 24.

The other one is 22 now. And the other one is 19. And my baby, they don’t have malaria.

I breastfed them. I didn’t give them canned milk. No.

I used my breast milk. For one year, four months, then they started the direct food we ate on our table. And they are beautiful, strong, gorgeous ladies. So, and me too. Look at me. I’m living with diabetes.

I don’t run to the clinic every day. That’s because we are deliberate. So you have to take out those soft drinks from your table.

And for the past nine to ten years, we don’t use those things that you break inside your soup and your stew and call them seasoning. We don’t use it. I use direct sea salt.

A little at a time. And I enjoy it. You feel the taste of your food interact with each other and then you enjoy it.

And then you’re deliberate about the cooking style. You fry this. You eat with this.

If you must fry, I love plantain. So sometimes I fry it. Yes, I do.

I love it. But you mix it with vegetables.

Swallow. Our swallow is blessed. We have food in Africa.

So you can make Zobo without adding sugar to it. Use natural sweetness to make it or leave it Natural in its form.

I’m talking about dates, pineapple, and all those things. So, you will be fine. And you do natural kunu.

We have so many drinks in Africa that we can take. And if you must impress, you love alcohol. You take the palm wine.

My dad took palm wine all his life. And he didn’t fall sick, he read his books. That man, I wish I knew what I knew now then.

I would have studied him. He took palm wine every day. I was wondering why he kept telling me it’s good for eyesight.

He took a glass, not over drinking it, just a certain quantity because of the natural things that are in it. All comes from fruits. Palm wine is fruit.

How about vegetables?

There are some fruits that we confuse to be vegetables, but actually they are fruits, yeah.

So, he ate that every day.  My father ate fruits every day. I’m from Benin, So, my father had trees in our compound. It was when I came to Lagos, I saw people don’t have trees. I grew up with trees and fruits in my compound.

So, my dad ate fruits every day. He ate grapes, big fruits, grape. We had them in the compound, had coconuts.

We had oranges, we had bananas. Everything was in our compound, so we didn’t need to buy them. So, those are the things my father ate.

Very generous to eat that. But he ate it by six o’clock. He exercised every day. I didn’t know why the man was exercising.

Even on his dying bed, that man was still exercising, moving his legs. Now I know what it means, because you must be mobile for you to stay healthy, to prevent all conditions. You must be mobile.

Check it, that’s what the world says. They say exercise is activity. You must be seen to be mobile.

Exercise is just one thing, jumping, mobility. You must be mobile. Dance, you move around, you do your chores in the house.

My father cut his coconuts. He did everything himself at 90 something. He does everything himself.

So, that’s what I would say about your modification to improve your life. Your life is in your hands.

Interviewer:  So, talking about what you do on a daily basis, it seems you go around lecturing.

It’s part of what I do. Okay. That’s my daily routine.

Yes. My daily routine. I’m a humanitarian.

I love hospitality. I love giving, putting smiles on people’s faces. And I love to give, to share, because life, knowledge is power.

And to prevent diabetes, hypertension, sickle cell, mother and child loss of life, to prevent all these things, to promote healthy life for men, to prevent poor streets for them, mental health, you need to give people the information. So, information, that’s what you and I are doing. Information is very key.

And to achieve that, you have to be there. You have to reach out to people. So, I wake up in the morning.

Anything can wake me up. A call can wake me up. I volunteer with the general hospital, Gbagada, as a community volunteer.

And I was for some years, for quite a reasonable years, like six, seven years, the face of diabetes at the emergency center. Until COVID came and changed that, because living with diabetes exposed me. I’m also an entrepreneur.

I sell and promote point-of-care medical devices and also promote organic processed foods for people made in Nigeria. I don’t believe in eating imported rice. I eat my local rice.

So, I promote things here, because when you eat what is produced here, you reduce its modification, this introduction of things you don’t need. So, I promote healthy food. So, then I do my, I volunteer my community.

So, my day is busy. I have five beautiful daughters that need my attention. My neighbors, they need my attention.

So, I’m a mother to a lot of people. So, my life is busy. And now, globally, I’m now very involved in advocating for a change of policies for Nigeria to do something about diabetes and non-communicable disease.

And also, globally, for the world to do something about low and middle-income countries having a fair share on the table, okay? Because if you check it, we are not getting a fair share, fair attention. But thank God, they’re listening. And attention must refer to WHO and IDF and all the diabetes or non-communicable organizations out there.

They are giving opportunity to low-income countries, what we call the Global South, first, before they ask the Western world to choose. They will say, we want to train this. We want this training.

We give the Global South first. So, my life is around all that, trying to bring Nigeria to the limelight, which thank God, I have done. This year is the best globally, especially in Nigeria.

There was so much talk. People were out there talking about diabetes, and that made me happy. That means the work we are doing is working, and the people are listening.

So, my life is around, and I sell Palm Oil, because I come from a place where they have  the best palm oil in the world. Palm Oil, especially the one from Benin City, where I’m from, is the best. So, I promote it, it’s the best Oil to use to cook anything. It’s the best.

So, I promote, I sell that too. So, I’m a busy entrepreneur, humanitarian woman, and I’m happy to be a woman. So, the message is that diabetes is not a death sentence?

Diabetes is a blessing to me because it’s given me a long life. It’s given my children a beautiful life, and it’s given my environment a beautiful life. It’s given me a lot of family across the world, and it has also helped me to be an angel to so many people.

And today, you are also here because of that, right? So, it’s a blessing in disguise. It’s not a death sentence, but we can prevent it. So, I go to school also, I didn’t add that.

We’re preaching more of, I’m preaching more about prevention. Let’s capture the young. Let them know. Let parents be involved. Parents, please change the diet of your children. Don’t feed them processed food out of laziness.

I was deliberate with my children. I resigned from my work to focus on my beautiful daughters. You can see their pictures there. Now, they are women.

So, I’ve taught them also the same thing they must do, Be deliberate. You can see how you don’t come down with malaria, and how you don’t go to the hospital. My children don’t know what a feeder is, because I never fed them with it, nor with their sister.  So, when you go into a new world, you do the same. So, diabetes is not a death sentence. It’s only when you don’t manage it, or you don’t know, like most people don’t know. That’s why I’m shouting out to the world.

We need to take the information out there. It’s not a spiritual attack. When you have a wound on your leg, you did not match juju, just go and check your sugar, or check your blood pressure. Both of them have similar damage to the organ.

When you are feeling somehow, it only means that you have not paid attention to your body crying out. That’s just it. We can change it.

What is in food? We are meant to eat light, like twice a day. Let’s be fair, drink water most of the time, and you’ll feel beautiful, and you’ll be at peace with your soul. That’s how I see diabetes.

Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Thank you.