7 Health-Related Reasons More People Die Now Than Before – Part 2.

This is a continuation of the first part published two days ago.

3. Change In Diet

Along with the change in lifestyle brought about by automation, came a change in diet.

For example, machines were built to homogenize milk, process cheese, churn butter, and make ice cream.

Such high-fat treats were previously made by hand. Fried foods, like potato chips, hamburgers, and French fries, became staples in many diets.

The combination of a sedentary lifestyle and a new ‘rich diet’ led to an increase in clogged blood vessels, heart attacks, and strokes.

In short, heart diseases became commonplace.

The rate of heart disease increased so sharply between 1940 and 1967 that the World Health Organization called it the world’s most serious epidemic.

You’ll remember, vividly, with the help of the Holy Book, that God created us as organic beings to eat organic food, but we have decided otherwise.

Every man seems to have his own way; eating whatever he or she likes, which explains why sicknesses and diseases are on the rampage and why life expectancy has continued to fall to a very dangerous level.

The change in diet has taken us far away from the arrangement of God; making inorganic food so attractive to us, thereby destroying us.

We no longer eat natural and fresh food, most of the time. Rather, we depend on the media, through advertisements, to tell or suggest to us what to eat, most of which are junk-foods.

And today, many of us are so proud and comfortable to be seen eating or going to restaurants and eateries to buy inorganic food, when we could have prepared better and more healthy food in their houses.

Since our health, in most cases, is an indicator of what eat, it is really no wonder that we are facing so many health challenges and experiencing a high rate of deaths.

The most unfortunate thing about this ugly trend is that it is not peculiar to an individual nor a particular nation; it’s a global catastrophe.

The whole world is simply eating wrong and spending billions of dollars on healthcare; to take care of obesity and other health challenges that eating wrongly causes.

As you’re reading this story, many people are busy eating and drinking different sickness-causing foods, refusing to learn from the dangers of such a habit.

Ironically, some of us sometimes have the temerity to blame God for their stupidity. Isn’t’ that funny?

Can a normal person, who’s not a magician, put fire on his body and expect it not to burn him or her?

I don’t think so!

“Unhealthy diets are now a greater threat to global health than tobacco. Just as the world came together to regulate the risks of tobacco, a bold framework convention on adequate diets must now be agreed.”

This was part of Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur’s speech at one of the World Health Organisation’s annual summit, during which he stirred up some controversy by stating how problematic the world’s obsession with junk food has become.

He added by calling the world to begin putting limitations on junk food advertising, instituting taxes on unhealthy products, placing regulations on the amounts of fats and sugars that can be used, and halting agricultural subsidies for products that increase obesity.

7 Health-Related Reasons More People Die Now Than Before – Part 2.

4. Bad And Dirty Habits

I have two stories to illustrate this point.

Story #1

My first story was part of my early life as a teenager.

I have shared it at different fora in the past and I hope you wouldn’t mind if I share it with you, here.

Here goes my story!

When I was growing up, at the age of 13, to be precise, I had a friend whose mother sold locally brewed gin, which Nigerians call different funny names, including Ogogoro, Kpaaraga, Sapele Water, Kainkain, Akpeteshi, Kinkana, push-me-I-push-you, and Akpuru Achia.

My friend usually stole some quantity of the local gin whenever he was thirsty of it, having developed the habit of taking it.

On the day, he promised to bring some quantity of the drink for me to taste and try my luck in the habit of drinking.

He promised to bring the drink to the primary school in our town, where many children usually congregated to play and to practice some bad habits, including smoking and drinking.

As he was preparing to leave home that day for our agreed place of meeting, he invited me to come around their house, so that he could hand over the bottle containing the drink to me, for security reasons.

Before I got there, he was already waiting for me with a black cellophane bag in his left hand.

Immediately I got to where he was, he handed over the bag to me and said: “If I hold it as we walk along, either my parents or my elder brother might run into us on the way and begin to question how I got it.”

While we were walking together to our destination, he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten his wallet containing some money at home.

As soon as he dashed back home to pick up his wallet, I uncorked the cover of the bottle and helped myself with some of its content.

When my friend returned from where he went to pick up his wallet, I quickly lied to him that I fell somewhere around the corner, immediately after he left, and lost control of the bottle, which caused it to spill some of its content.

I was afraid he could smell my mouth to find out whether what I told him was the truth or not, but he didn’t.

Instead, he took the bottle from me, dashed back home again with it, and filled it as before, after which we continued our journey to our destination.

When it was time for us to do justice to the content of the bottle, along with our-friends-in-crime, my friend brought out a tiny glass cup used for that purpose, from his pocket, and used it to serve everybody, as much as each person could take.

After some time of taking my own share of the drink, I started feeling dizzy as if everywhere was turning in a circle.

A few minutes later, I lost total control of myself.

That forced me to slump to the ground, where I vomited profusely.

As soon as I started vomiting, everybody around me, including my friend whom I came there with, suspected danger and disappeared, abandoning me to my own fate.

As the news of the disaster got to my maternal-grandmother, through a good Samaritan, she rushed down to where I lay in my vomit and took me back home on her back.

Because of that particular ‘show of shame’ and the pieces of advice, my grandmother offered me concerning my bad behaviour, no drop of alcohol has entered my mouth again, neither did I make any attempt to embrace its twin-brother: smoking.

It wasn’t by my own power nor by my own strength that I was able to put a stop to the habit of taking alcohol and never to attempt smoking, but by the Spirit and grace of God.

Unfortunately, many people have refused or have not been able to take a similar decision, as I did.

Instead, they see drinking alcohol and smoking of anything smokable as a normal part of life, not knowing or forgetting that they are causing themselves ill-health and untimely death.

Some of them are oftentimes seen smoking and drinking themselves to a stupor in public, thereby exposing themselves to different kinds of danger, including robbery attacks and accidents.

What a shame!

What else, if not ill-health and untimely death, do you expect of the lives of such people when a Ukrainian proverb says: “Drunkards know no danger”?

This is not to say that the drinking of alcohol is totally bad.

NO, that’s not what I mean!

The point that I’ve just made is that people should not indulge in bad and dirty habits, especially when such habits are not in agreement with their health.

Story # 2

Another very good example of bad and dirty habits that kill people today is promiscuous sexual behaviour.

God is against us having sex before marriage (fornication), as well as having sex with people that are not our spouses (adultery) when we have married legally.

Disappointedly, many of us do not obey this wise counsel of God; to them, promiscuity and adultery are interesting hobbies.

When a man or a woman chooses to be reckless, sexually speaking, would you be surprised if he or she contracts as sexually transmitted disease and/or dies prematurely?

Of course, NO!

This explains why millions of people, across the world, especially at this of HIV/AIDS, now die prematurely of sexually transmitted diseases or infections.

7 Health-Related Reasons More People Die Now Than Before – Part 2.

*This post was reviewed by Dr. Margaret Bradwell.

                                                                                                                                                                 …to be continued