Do you know that most of us are 90% or more responsible for our health predicaments? Yes, we are! This is one of the reasons a Nigerian Christian musician, in one of her songs, says: “Ife ne me anyi si anyi naka?” meaning most of the things that happen to us are caused by us.”

As you read this story, for example, some of us are either suffering from different types of visible and/or invisible ailments or down with different degrees of wounds and injuries sustained in different types of accidents. It may surprise you to know that we are the cause of some of the challenges we are passing through.

How did I come about this revelation? I am not a medical person, yet I know that we are, most of the time, the cause of our ill-health.

I made this discovery several years ago as a network marketer with Tasly, one of the most popular health-based network marketing companies in Nigeria.

Below are some of the negative things we do that undermine our health:

1. Apathy To Our Body Make-Up

Some of us own different types of property, including telephones, computers, and cars.  Almost all of us have a deep knowledge of how these pieces of property function and how they are used.  We talk about them with the passion of someone gunning for the first prize at a competition

Unfortunately, however, the same cannot be said of us and our body.  Most of us know so much about our property, but know little or nothing about our body.  We forget that our body is more important than a billion pieces of each of our property put together.

If a man, for example, knows everything about his computer, including its configuration, its capability and how best to use it, but knows little or nothing about his heart, for example, how would he know when something goes wrong or is about to go wrong with his heart?

Would such a man blame God or death if cardiac arrest, one of the commonest causes of death, which always gives signs before it strikes, decides to visit him? I leave you to answer this question.

2. Poor Maintenance Culture Towards Our Body

While discussing about cars with a group of other men, some time ago, a man in that group said: “I don’t think I can risk driving my cars for more than three months without taking them to my mechanic for general check-up and maintenance.”

Immediately after he made that comment, I turned to him and asked him jokingly: “How often do you visit the hospital for check-up?” His reply was: “I hardly fall sick; hence I don’t go to the hospital often. Is it not when you’re sick that you go to the hospital?”

Did you hear that?  Can you see the reply of a man who takes his cars to the mechanic every three months, even when his cars did not complain, but does not go to the hospital until he fell sick?  What a foolish risk?

Most of us are like that man.  We take care of our property, even when there’s no sign that they are faulty, but wait until we’re sick and almost dying before going to the hospital.  We pay very close attention to our property, but do not pay the same attention to our bodies.

My questions therefore are: Why would somebody place more value on his/her property more than he does on his body?

How would somebody who refuses or fails to maintain his body as much as he/she does to his/her body expect not to be sick? Your answer is as good of mine.

One of the local adage of my people says: “Must a woman wait until her child cries before suckling it?

In the same vein, must we wait until we fall sick before deciding to do something about our health?

The answer is NO! We must maintain our body more often than we maintain our ordinary property, if we plan to live healthily and long.

3. Insensitive To Our Instincts

When I was a boy, at the age of 13, to be precise, I had a friend whose mother sold local brewed gin, popularly called Ogogoro, Paraga, Sapele Water, Kainkain, Akpeteshi, Kinkana, Akpuru Achia, among other funny names.  He usually brought some quantity of it for us to enjoy.

One night, during the visit of a certain popular Nigerian musician, Eric Akaeze of blessed memory, from Ogwashi-Uku, to our town, sometime remarkable happened.

My friend brought about a litre of the local gin from home for us to enjoy ourselves that night at the venue of the show.

As we were heading to our town’s hall, where the musician had his show, my friend forgot something at home and had to go back for it.  While he was leaving, he handed over the bottle of gin to me to keep.

Before he returned, I had already helped myself with some quantity of the sweet gin.
When he returned from home and asked what happened to the missing quantity of gin, I lied to him that I fell somewhere around the corner and lost control of bottle, which caused it to fall off my hand and spilled its content.  Without any suspicion, he quickly returned home again and refilled the bottle.

When it was time for us to do justice to the bottle of gin at the party, my friend shared it into two equal halves, took one half and gave me the other half.  After that, we started dancing outside the hall because we were too young to be allowed in.

In less than thirty minutes later, the gin began to control me, causing me to vomit. By the time I had finished vomiting all the food I ate that night, I was no longer able to sit, let alone to stand or walk. Soon after that, I fell asleep and dosed off right in my vomit.

At about 3.47 a.m. the next morning, news got to my elder cousin, now a retired colonel in the Nigerian army, who was inside the hall, that I was in a bad condition outside the hall.

Immediately he confirmed that I was the one lying in the vomit, he flogged me and barked at me to get up and go home immediately, which I did.  Only God knew how I got home safely alone that early morning.

Since then till now, no type of alcoholic drink has entered my mouth.  Neither do I smoke.  I abhor them with passion because they are not good to my health or body system.  I see them as poison, which must not be allowed into my body.

Some people are not as lucky as I am, in terms of deciding again bad habits.  They know what is not good for their body, yet they go on eating or taking them into their bodies.

Good examples of such people are smokers and drinkers who cough heavily whenever they smoke or who misbehave or fall sick whenever they drink, respectively.

Even when God warns them as He warned me, they’d would not listen to God.  Instead, they’d continue with their bad habits.

How would such persons be free from sickness or disease, all things being equal?

The lesson that I want you to draw from this long story of mine is: if there’s any type of food, drink or whatever that affects your system negatively whenever you put them into your mouth and system, please, please, and please, discontinue with it.  Look for a better alternative or go for the ones that flow with your system.

Again, if your doctor advises you to keep off some food, please, do so, unless you have a better reason not to do so.

4. Carelessness

A man in Enugu, Nigeria, woke up one day and started manifesting some symptoms of a familiar ailment.  On noticing it, his wife suggested to him to consult their family doctor for an advice.

The sick man turned down his wife’s advice.  Neither did he take the matter to their pastor in their church for prayers. He simply told his wife that nothing evil would happen to him.

Unfortunately, something went wrong.  About ten days later, he went into coma.

In order to save his life, his wife started making preparations on how to fly him to the United States for a treatment.  Before that arrangement could be concluded, the doubting Thomas had given up the ghost.

Some uninformed people would tell you that he was destined to die on that day, and that since it was his time to die that nothing could have prevented him from kicking the bucket, even if he had been flown to the best hospital anywhere in the world.

For me, until the contrary is proved, that man died as a result of his carelessness.  If he had gone to the hospital, his doctor would have cured him, leaving God to heal him.

Apart from this man, several other people have suffered one bad effect or the other as a result of their carelessness.

For example, a factory worker based in Agege, Lagos, Nigeria, contracted conjunctivitis, popularly called ‘Apollo’ some years ago.  Instead of going to the hospital or consulting a local pharmacy for advice or treatment, he decided to apply some drops of kerosene into his bleary eyes.

Three months later, the unexpected happened.  His situation became worsened.  He became partially blind and later became completely blind.  What do you call that if not carelessness?

I can go on and on and tell you stories of how careless some of us could be with their health.

5. Lack Of Discipline And Moderation In Eating

A former banker-co-tenant of mine in Lagos had a wife whose pair of breasts were bigger than a soccer ball and whose pair of buttocks was as big as pillows.

“I am always angry whenever I see her in this condition,” said the man while complaining to me, “because she wasn’t like this when I first married her.  She was delectably slim, fair-complexioned , beautiful and very attractive when she moved into my house, but look at what she has become today. She’s now too fat for my liking.  This also explains why I don’t like going out with her, especially to parties.”

In order to help her lose some weight and remain healthy, he suggested to her to enroll for a weight-loss programme at a nearby hospital that had a good weight-loss programme.  His wife did as he suggested and started with that programme.

In the cause of that programme, his wife was advised to keep off some foods, including chicken, red meat and rice.  She pretended to have stopped eating them at home, in order to please her husband, but ate them secretly whenever she went out of the house.

Instead of losing weight, she became fatter and fatter, the huge fee paid by her husband notwithstanding.  Like a timed bomb which must explode when the time comes, unless when detonated, she died prematurely of diabetes in October 2015.

So many of us people are like my former co-tenant’s wife.  We are neither disciplined nor moderate in what we eat and how we eat what we eat, yet we complain and blame God whenever we are down with the sickness that we cause ourselves.

6. Sin And Disobedience

Is there any sane person who enjoys sickness or disease?  The answer is NO!  Since nobody likes to be sick or to be infected with a disease, then, read on.

The Holy Bible is awash with causes of sickness and disease.  Among them are sin and disobedience.  In other words, Bible teaches us that sin and disobedience are some of causes of the sickness and disease that we suffer.

What this means, therefore, is that since sin and disobedience are some of the causes of our ill-health, we must therefore, as a matter of urgency, avoid sin and always show obedience to the word of God.  As simple as that!

In conclusion, anybody who wishes to have or enjoy good health must:

a. Show interest in what makes up his/her body, as well as be able to know when something goes wrong or is about to go wrong in his/her body;

b. Make it a point of duty to maintain his body more than he/she maintains his/her property;

c. Be able to decipher what his/her bodies wants and does not want, and keep to it;

d. Take every strange sign of sickness and/or disease in his/her body seriously, as well as avoid being taken unawares by sicknesses or diseases;

e. Be disciplined and moderate in his/her eating habit; and

f. Avoid sin and always obey the word of God.

Remain healthy in Jesus name.  Amen.