Patrick Ijewere is a co-founder, Carib Health, which focuses on wellness based on the use of herbs, nutrition, conventional medicine and unconventional healing. In this interview with NGOZI OKPALAKUNNE, Ijewere, stressed the need for African universities to teach African herbs and plants in their institutions. He also spoke on the reasons diseases occur as well as other issues of national interest. Excerpts:
As a Western trained chemist, pharmacist, and medical doctor, could you state the reason you ventured into the use of herbs, nutrition, and unconventional medicine in the treatment of ailments?
l used to be an asthmatic patient and that was from age 11 while I was in secondary school in Lagos. As l got older it became worse. When I went to study in the United States, the condition became worst. At age 39, I encountered a senior colleague in the US who told me three things l must do to stop asthma. To start with, he advised me to change my mindset because in medical college our mind is programmed that chronic diseases like asthma, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer among others are incurable and that the patient will live with them until he dies. Secondly, he stressed the need for me to change my lifestyle and encouraged me to get enough sleep at night and avoid engaging in things that are not in accordance with a healthy lifestyle. Thirdly, he asked me to change my nutrition. I used to enjoy meat, smoked turkey, dairy milk and pork chops. I enjoyed all of that. He challenged me to give up all those things. In 2006, I took up the challenge for two weeks and stopped eating anything from an animal source, for the two weeks, I noticed some massive changes, which pushed me to go for another two more weeks and two more weeks, today we are in 2022, that is 16 years after, l gave up animal products l rarely eat meat, l may go for fish twice a month. I stopped taking dairy products, such as milk, cheese, and ice cream, so in the last 16 years, I have not had an asthma attack and have not spent money on drugs related to asthma.
Besides, I was privileged to see my great-grand mother as a child, her estimate was around a hundred and ten years before she died. Whenever I had malaria, she gets some greens (herbs and vegetables), tears them with her bare hands into a clay pot of hot water, and cover my head to inhale it. After a while, she will pick up the calabash, pour it into a cup, the nasty-looking green stuff, and ask me to drink it. Of course, I did not drink it willingly, so she had to hold a cane beside her.
When l looked back at my specialty, those influences played a huge role, the practice we had today is influenced by these women, call them traditionalists, you can call them herbal practitioners or nutritionists.
On the other hand, while studying pharmacy, my second bachelor’s degree at Howard University, I met a professor who was doing research work on egusi, an African plant, I learned so much from him about the health benefits of egusi. While still there, I also encountered another professor, doing research on bitter leaf, and he was the first person to tell me that bitter leaf can lower sugar in the blood. These are scientists, doing research on African plants and herbs.
In medical school, l studied under another professor who taught me conventional western medicine, however, he told me that there is a lot of knowledge in Africa and that we should be proud of what we have.
With all these experiences, I come to understand that the kind of Western health care we have today is incomplete and needs to expand the concept. Thus, we are about wellness, which is an understanding that the whole body and the world we are living in, is an integrated holistic system. So, Carib Health focuses on Wellness and wellness truly is our starting point. It is a gift from our Father in Heaven, His desire is for all His children to be well and so in the design of the human body and the earth, there is a perfection and there is a programming that gives us wellness. Our role is to understand and be in alignment with these programming by our Father in heaven. Sickness comes when we deviate from what God has given us. Hippocrates said it best.
There have been calls by medical experts and traditional medicine practitioners for the federal and state governments to integrate traditional discoveries and breakthroughs into modern medical practices. How do you see this?
This is a delight, and l am sad it is coming this late in the day. On one of my trips l encountered Professor Okujuagu who had compiled volumes of research done by our universities in the early days on Nigerian plants and herbs where they showed so many nutritional and health benefits. We have over a hundred plants in Nigeria, the ones against malaria, the books are in the library of NNNDA in Kofo Abayomi in Victoria Island, Lagos. Why are they not teaching it in medical schools?
Our older professors who began the university curriculums did these research works, why are they not teaching it in the medical schools today? Why are my medical colleagues telling me that there is no research to back up African herbs and that African herbs are coursing kidney failure, they are making this claim, when they have not done the research, if they are taught in medical school, you will understand where l am coming from today.
Read also: Race, culture, and the understanding of mental illness
Traditional medicines are not western enemies, we as Africans should have taken the knowledge of our parents, and our grandparents and applied it, today that is what we do at Carib Health, we reverse ailments, how do we achieve that? We brought in the knowledge of traditional practices, herbs, nutrition, lifestyle, change in our mindset. Above all, we all need to take care of our spirituality, many go around with anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness, all of these cause hormonal changes in the body, so there is a need to bridge the gap.
I know there are some challenges, because some doctors in the traditional field may not use the measurements they use in the western field, but there is room for collaboration.
Do your products require standardisation and approval by NAFDAC?
In this practice, we use herbal products, nutrition, and conventional products. Take, for instance, someone who had a cough and cold, we will prepare ginger, bitter kola, honey, and turmeric, mix them together and ask the patient to drink. Those things are foods, do they require any standard. If l ask someone to drink pepper soup, I do not need to tell the person the dosage. If you are not sleeping well at night, then l asked you to walk in the sun for 30 minutes twice a day in order to sleep better at night, what is the dosage of sunlight? On the other hand, there are some herbal supplements from Malaysia, the United States, and China that already have dosage, so the approach is very individual to achieve the outcomes the client is ready for.
Nigeria is rich in herbs and roots which are used in the production of medicine and yet they are underutilised. What are your recommendations?
My colleagues should be exposed to this area; the pharmacists are supposed to be exposed to this area as well as the nutritionists. God has given each of us our own garden of Eden which includes everything we need for health and wellness. God is complete, all we need is to study and use the herbs He has provided for us. While, l was in medical college, we were taught about charcoal in the emergency room for food poisoning and medication of overdose. But, my grandmother taught me about the use of charcoal to clean teeth, some of my friends from Cameroon said they use charcoal in their village to clean teeth till today. l have turned back to using charcoal to brush my teeth twice daily. l appreciate Professor Maurice Iwu and Father Anslem Adodo and many more of them who are turning our herbs, packaging herbs for us to use even with dosages, we should accept what God has given to us and build on it.
How long have you been in the practice and what are your success stories?
I finished my specialty training in 1996 at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and l moved to Florida where l worked in the conventional setup, prescribing regular medications for people with high blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma until things switched and l began to switch my practice, things changed, l turned around.
The very first case was a gentleman who came to see us in Florida and the man is still alive today. l see him on the internet, he had stage two of prostate cancer, and he told me that he had been to a center in South Florida where they use nutrition to reverse diseases, he had spent two weeks there and all he wanted was a doctor who will follow up with his laboratory test intermittently, his double digits PSA within six months dropped down to single digit, he is alive today in Florida. Locally here, we have several cases of diabetes, and hypertensives that are off medication today, but there is a process you must go through today, an understanding, a mindset shift, and the willingness to let off some certain old behaviours. In other words, disease comes about because there is an imbalance in the system, if you fixed the imbalance, the body by itself would correct it. So, whether it is high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, or arthritis, we have revised some of these ailments.
Having been in medical practice for long, what do you consider the most common ailment among Nigerians, and what is the way out?
Conventional statistics would say communicable ailments like malaria that kills thousands every year. Today, we see data increasing on the non-communicable diseases such as high blood pressure, and diabetes, l would add to that, our mindset, we glorify everything in the West including their poor quality foods, all these fat foods they are bringing in, we glorify every medication from the West, even the ones that they have taken off the shores of the advanced countries, we are still using them here, we glorify the Western beauty models and that is the reason our daughters and mothers would want to bleach their skins and wear their long hair. Our mindset is our biggest problem, l do not want to say that Nigerians have inferiority complex, because everywhere we go around the world we excel, but our mindset needs a shift from how we practice to standard of beauty, to our political system.
We should be the best of ourselves. Nigerians should edify and beautify what God has given to them because He never makes a mistake.
Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
Government at all levels must budget for health emergencies – Nsofor
BENEDICTA OYIANA is equipping leaders, organisations to remain ahead
Despite financial challenges, aspiring pilots can achieve goals with hard work – Akpu
Why cartoons are more popular than painting in Nigeria – Ganiyu Jimoh
Get the best of world News delivered to your inbox daily
How Nigeria can tackle unemployment, stop capital flight – Odiagbe
GoNigeria Hausa Rap Challenge: Winners share N2m Prize Money
Graduates need digital skills to be employable- Olumodimu
2023: ‘Why Nigerian youths must change their mindset’
How Onuoha built a system that coordinate MSMEs operations, track growth
Business Day, established in 2001, is a daily business newspaper based in Lagos. It is the only Nigerian newspaper with a bureau in Accra, Ghana. It has both daily and Sunday titles. It circulates in Nigeria and Ghana
NNPC renews five oil bloc licenses, expects $500bn in…
Nigeria’s gas flares lowest since 2012 as use…
Food, fuel, others gulp $14.5bn amid dollar scarcity