• Tells City People
Toby Keeney is the beautiful daughter of Chief Mrs. Quincy Ayodele. She is MD/CEO of the new Quincy Wellness & Naturopathic Centre in Ikoyi, Lagos. Quincy Wellness & Naturopathic Centre formerly known as Quincy Herbals Nigeria, is an integrative Health and Wellness Organization offering solution for a variety of health and wellness issues. The Quincy Journey began on Awolowo Road Lagos, Nigeria in 1996, under the leadership of Dr. Mrs. Quincy Olasumbo Ayodele. The Matriarch, Mrs Quincy Ayodele, comes from a long line of traditional medicine practitioners. She became the pioneer of herbal medicine practiced in a modern way, improving on her paternal grandparents’ recipes, researching the best medicinal plants that could aid in weight loss and improve skin care naturally without adverse effects.
Over the years, the Quincy brand has expanded beyond the shores of Nigeria, garnering several awards, and featuring on Amazon.com, the Grammy’s, Oscars and As Seen on Tv.
Quincy Ayodele worked hard to erase the negative stigma associated with herbal medicine through intensive awareness campaign and re-education of the public about the importance of medicinal herbs. She advocated up to the point of being appointed as an expert member on African Traditional Medicine in the World Health Organization.
The WHO has since recommended integration of traditional medicine into the conventional health care systems in Nigeria as it has been shown to improve positive health outcomes. Considering this appointment, it was apparent that Quincy Herbals had to expand thier services to provide world class, high quality, yet effective integrative treatments using medical, scientific, and evidence-based approaches.
Quincy Wellness & Naturopathic Centre is an integrative wellness centre that provides holistic quality primary care to the community with an emphasis on the treatment of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, infertility, high blood pressure, as well as our signature weight loss and skincare programs. They also offer a fully kitted state-of-the-art laboratory to cater to the needs of clients in getting quick and reliable results of a wide variety of tests with instant interpretations and medical recommendations. Additionally, they offer our ‘Healing Spa’ which delivers therapeutic spa services for facials, chronic pain, trigger point therapy, fertility massage and more. They also provide aesthetic services for microblading of brows, lashes and IV nutrition and skincare therapy. Either way you look at it, they have got you covered! Their goal is to get you to the healthiest versions of yourself you could ever think of.
A few weeks back, Tobi was our guest on our regular City People TV Instagram Live Chat where she revealed the services the new Quincy Wellness offers. Read on.
Congratulations on the Wellness Centre. Maybe we should begin by asking you to tell us about the Wellness Centre and why there was a need to set up that new project.
Thank you very much for that question. We were formally Quincy Herbals and we dealt mostly with Weight loss and Skin care. And that has been the focus for the past twenty-three or so years. However, we noticed that over this past two decades, there are a lot of issues that come with being obese and overweight. And that includes high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, infertility, arthritis, cancer and mental illness. Some people are on anti-depressant or they are depressed which makes them to eat a lot. Marital issues, family issues, the stress of being a Lagosian or being a Nigerian. And we found out that we had to naturally treat all those issues attached to it. So we found that for the past twenty-something years, we have been doing not just weight loss and skincare but every other thing attached to it. So, last year, we said, “You know what? Let’s stop suffering in silence and let’s open something. Let’s evolve to where we are doing this and where we can also treat that person for not just the weight but everything attached to it. And do it in a holistic manner.” And we have been sending people for laboratory works like for the past five, six years. Because at the end of the day, we can’t just diagnose you by looking at you, we have to see what is in your blood. And you will be surprised as to how Nigerians have a lot of things they are just hiding inside their blood.
Are you serious?
Yes! A lot of Nigerians suffer High Cholesterol. Anybody with High blood Pressure, tell them to go for a test you will find that they have high cholesterol – sometimes dangerously high. Some we even have to recommend them to the hospital to do heart surgery.
So, we decided to just do a lab as well. I’m tired of sending people up and down to go and get lab results. And we still do our spa services, our national treatments, and the integrating medicine; which is what the World Health Organization has recommended we do for the past twenty years or so. Many countries are trying to do it but it remains Nigeria. But Lagos state is doing a good job with Traditional medicine, standardizing us, making sure that everything is up to date and they are doing a good job with that.
Between Quincy Herbals and Quincy Wellness, what is the difference between the two?
So in Quincy Herbals, we are still Quincy Herbals. But Quincy Wellness involves Quincy Herbals as well. So with Quincy Herbals, it involves Health because it is a Wellness and Orthropathic centre. It has and always will be our core concentration. But because of that weight loss, we have become experts at chronic illnesses. Nigerians are chronically sick and they don’t even know. And we have been tasked to become experts in infertility. A lot of women can not get pregnant because they have excess fat in their system. Just by virtue of losing that weight using herbs, nutrition, dietary indications, and a lot of different techniques, even massages, they get pregnant just like that. They want to do IVF and they come and lose weight, it’s not working. They get pregnant. And men who are having performance issues. If you find out, it would be because they have a big tummy. They are not fully diabetic but they are on their way. They have high sugar content or they have high blood pressure.
You know, you would be surprised how our body is. We need to look at the body in a holistic manner in order to treat you properly. So, yes, you come for weight loss or diabetes and we find you have other things, we would do everything together. So it’s not like your head is paining you and your neck is bad. Everything is okay, which is what we are about. We are about health and preventing this sudden death we are having in Nigeria right now. People in their fifties are just dropping dead like flies. You don’t know if it’s COVID, malaria or something else. But sudden death should be a preventable issue. People should not be dropping dead in Nigeria.
So what’s your message to those listening to us now?
So Quincy Wellness. We are into Integrative health. So not only do we have the Western portions, the normal cleaning, we have clinical doctors, BSc in Nursing. In fact, even all our managers all have health-related degrees. We practice traditional medicine, western medicine, and herbal medicine in a very scientific approach. And we do offer a range of services from treatment to chronic illnesses to mental health to infertility. And then, obviously, we have our spa sessions as well. We call our spa The Healing Spa. We do not do massages that are not therapeutic. If there is something wrong with you – your neck, your back, your stomach– if it’s even a digestive issue, our healing spa will take care of you.
And, of course, for the women we have our beauty services as well. For people like me, I don’t like to wear makeup. I have no makeup on right now and I like my brows to look ready. So we do micro-blading services and lashes as well for some women. We are a one-stop natural shop, and also for your diagnostic laboratory, medical and arthropathic services. All in one. And we want to replicate this everywhere. We are an international brand already and we plan to continue to be an international brand.
We want a situation where for primary and preventative health, you don’t need to travel to anywhere to get that. You can get that here. And we do it in a holistic manner, from head to toe.
I also noticed that in the running of Quincy Herbals, you seem to have taken the business to the next level. And I’m wondering… can you share with us the journey so far?
We have been in Quincy since I was a child. We started in ’96, I was 12 years old. So we have always been in it. We have been ‘Omo-alagbo’ for as long as I can remember. So she has always put us in the business, all of us. Luckily, I was the one who decided to train medically. And with my training I always looked at how do I use evidence-based medicine and evidence-based research to finance what we are doing at Quincy. So when I joined officially – you know, I grew up in the US; lived there, schooled there, and I moved back later with my kids– we started how do we use evidence-based practices, with traditional medicine. And it’s there. There’s evidence out there. Now, my mum is a World Health Organization expert on traditional medicine. So there is a lot of stuff out there and we just started going from there.
So from there, we started looking at the packaging, standardizing the dozes. Anything you can find here we had standardized it even if Nigeria hasn’t standardized it. We standardize with an international standard so that we can have a progress report for everybody. So anyone that comes here is coming as a patient. We have progress report, we do vitals, we do everything. So I brought that, I would say we brought ‘scientific’ approach and scientific ways to how we work at Quincy. And I think that’s what really helped us to branch out. So we are on Amazon in the US, we are selling products in the US there and it’s the same thing we are selling here. And it’s the same standard; making sure that what you got yesterday, and what you got today, and what you will get tomorrow is going to be the same. And we are into quality. Quality, integrity and result-driven.
Okay. From the experience you have gathered throughout the years, what are the challenges that you think we should pay attention to?
You mean with our health or with Nigerians?
With Nigerians in general.
Ah, women! We are still… I won’t say we are… Lagos is trying, I won’t lie. Nigerian women, we faced a lot of discrimination when it comes to business, especially in this traditional medicine – the actual traditional business, not beauty spa and all that, skincare and all that. But traditional medicine is a male-driven field. And being a woman, being educated, being married to a white person, people don’t expect that I’ll be doing this. Women face a lot of, “Oh because you are a missus. You don’t climb up in life. Because you are young, you don’t have the clout, you don’t have the no-how. You are married, you are a woman, you are young.” So if you are a young married woman, you have to be on top of your game so people don’t take you for granted. And I think the youths – I consider myself a youth and we are the future of tomorrow. People that were much younger than me have done crazier things.
How about for health?
For health? Ah, we have a lot of problems. Number one, fibroids. Even women as old as fifty years are having fibroids. And it is a black woman’s disease – we see that even in the US. African Americans have a higher rate of fibroids than whites. And it’s really because of our diets. We are into this Western diet, without even knowing that it’s western and it grows tumors in our bodies. I don’t know if you have noticed, breast cancer is everywhere now. Even young women are dying of breast cancer. And it’s really because of the western diets. We are having that issue with fibrous and breast cancer. Another issue that we are having in Nigeria is mental illness.
Mental illness?
Yes. Mental illness. People think that mental illness is your average werey that you see outside just running up and down. But, it’s beyond that. Women are clinically depressed here. Nigerian women are clinically stressed, clinically depressed, clinically anxious, paranoid, everything you can combine inside one person you find it in the Nigerian woman. We are so busy looking after our family, making sure our husbands are good, making sure our children are fine and at the same time keeping the home, be a businesswoman and be good at their careers. We have a lot on our plates and we don’t realize that we need to take out time for ourselves. Time for us to maintain our bodies. Not just when we wake up to cover up all the stress that we are going through, but to actually maintain ourselves and our health. You would just see that a lot of times the women die before their husbands. Meanwhile, their husbands that they have been using all their strengths to take care of because they didn’t take care of themselves. And the family doesn’t even expect us to take care of ourselves. After all, it’s marriage. Mummy will do this, mummy will do that. So we have a lot of issues. I can list a lot in Nigerian women. We are not doing a lot of preventative measures for ourselves. We are not even eating right. We are not taking time to go and even get massage. People will be like, “What’s massage? I don’t need one.” But you do. Even me personally, I have a massage therapist on sit if I’m too busy to get my massage. And it’s necessary, you’d be surprised. When they come here, we do a daily massage for them. We have some herbs that naturally relieve pain and they just sleep off. And that’s the only time we get – that one hour they spend with us. We need to do better for ourselves.
Let’s talk about men. I can see that you have brought in Men’s health to what you do. Why was there a need for men to be brought in?
It is because we started getting a lot of Prostate health issues. Black men are also prone to prostate disease. Prostate cancer, enlarged prostate. That’s another black man disease. So it’s just like fibroid and breast cancer is a black woman disease, prostate problems are black men disease. And we have got a lot of that. And the fact that we didn’t advertise it doesn’t mean that we are not doing it. We are not sure if we are ready to handle the influx or the acuity of the cancer issues that we would get. We have just always kept it on the down-low. But, it’s becoming an epidemic now. When we take all kinds of herbs and this and that to get their performance up, meanwhile, it can be something as simple as getting a comprehensive test to check your shoulder lobules. Or we see that their PSA has increased and there are things you can use to bring them down. And bringing that down on its own will improve his performance, and also improve their health. And in the meantime, these are things you can use to help yourself up. But we just say take this to help your performance when you are not even healthy to perform. I mean, we have heard some stories of some people dying while being intimate and it’s because they didn’t see the right person. You can do the two; you can be healthy and you can perform.
And men also have big problems with Diabetes, they don’t know. And the way they know the first time is that they just fall blind. Their corneal which is a illness from diabetes… They go blind or you hear they are on dialysis. And you are like “Ah! Kidney failure, where did that come from?” A preventable illness such as diabetes. And if you can prevent it from turning into diabetes, why not? There are ways you can prevent it, you can reverse it. You can even reverse a lot of things.
Then, high Cholesterol for men. It is a chronic problem among the urban dwellers. Every man should get their cholesterol checked. And there are herbs that can bring it down. So, it’s something that can be addressed. We have western approaches to natural remedies to make sure that that person gets well. Some people would say their doctors say, “Oh, you need three months for your sugar level to come down.” We are getting your cholesterol levels down in three weeks. Our goal is for you not to come back. At least you would be healthy. Have an idea of how to live your life, have an idea on what to do. And when you spend time on your work, you spend money on illness and medications. Some people’s lifesaving can be wiped in just one hospital stay. Let’s prevent that from happening. And it involves, I think, changing the way we think, our perspective, our mindset and our attitude towards health. Nigerians don’t have a maintenance culture of the country or even ourselves. So how can we have a maintenance culture of our society, of our country? So we need to change that.
So what role does your mum the Founder play now that you have taken charge?
She’s still here oh. She’s my main advisor. There are a lot of things… You know, Traditional medicine is something that you use a lifetime to learn and she’s been doing this for a lifetime. She’s pretty much the pioneer of herbal medicine practice in modern Nigeria, so she’s still here. She’s like our Chief Consultant when it comes to some special cases. And her abundance of leaves, roots and medicinal plants that I can’t finish reading it in the next five or ten years. So sometimes I’ll be like, “Mama, there is this terrible case that is going on. What do we do?” She’ll just say, “No oh, there’s a way. Just do this.” And I’ll go and research it because I am the researcher. I’ll now be like, “It’s true oh. This thing is it. Okay, I will give just one leaf to the patient and the person is fine.”
So she’s not going anywhere. I have told her. “You are here because we need your brain.”
So what is your message to all our viewers watching you from different parts of the world right now?
Let me tell everybody, this is my message. You see this herbal traditional medicine people are sharing? This is the future, especially if done in an innovative way. COVID came, there was no western cure for it. Well, everyone had to turn to traditional medicine for COVID. Till today, they are still saying that the vaccine will come out. Before the vaccine will even come into play, maybe it’s four weeks I’ll feel safe to get the vaccine. The focus now is healthy living, preventing illness using traditional medicine. That’s the focus. So that’s where the world is going to.
There’s going to be a time where medical doctors are going to be prescribing food and herbs as medical medicine. And immoral medications as medicine. There’s going to be a time where medicine will be practiced the way it’s supposed to be. Western medicine will be an alternative. So, that’s my message to everybody.
Let’s talk about your Fashion and Style. How has the job affected what you wear and how you look on a daily basis?
So luckily, I’m not the fashionista in the family. Because I have a fashionista mother and a fashionista sister, so I have to be a fashionista myself. I am a medical practitioner inside my blood. And I love wearing crocs so much. I wear my normal crocs and my white coats and my stethoscope and my sneakers to work, and I enjoy it. Because it means I wear pajamas to work, and I love it. But you know, there’s a time for everything. There’s a time to dress to impress and there’s a time to dress to work. So when I’m coming to work and I’m dealing with patients, I am in my work attire which is coats. But when I’m having events, I’m going to see something or do something, then, of course, I am on my casual style. I like something that is comfortable and doesn’t require so much of… And for that reason, because I do not like to wear a lot of makeup, my skin is always clear and bright, so of course, we have our products that we use. That’s what I use and what my mother uses, that’s what we all use. And it has helped me to avoid a lot of pancake on my face and things like that. And, good makeup starts with good skin. So when your skin is glowing and you are taking the right amount of supplements to help your skin, you really don’t need to wear a lot of makeup. You can walk out of your house looking good from the start. So that’s my only styling. I like comfort and I like good health and I like my skin to glow. Once your skin is glowing, anything you put on it comes out…
How can our viewers get in touch with Quincy Wellness? What is the mode of contact?
Go to our Instagram site, Quincy Wellness. I’m processing it right now. You can go to @Quincywellness. And you can send us a DM. We are always ready to chat. On Facebook as well. And then you can reach us at our numbers. I’m going to give you two of our numbers you can reach me at. And we are ready to see you. And we do quick service, in and out. And we prefer you get the results while we wait. I don’t like if I come and do test and they say come back tomorrow. I personally do not like that so we do not offer that here. We would get your results between five to thirty minutes, no matter what the results are. And any results that maybe need some time we would get it to you or sent to your WhatsApp. We try to make it very convenient for everybody. Lagos is a fast-moving place and convenience is key. So we live to make sure we can reach your needs at any point.
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