“Do a Caesarean Section, do a Caesarean Section!”
Recently, I was looking at the people in an event I attended, and my mind kept telling me to do a Caesarean Section!
As I was having this discussion with myself, I was amazed that the most pregnant of the people at the event seemed to be the most acknowledged. They were the ones walking the red carpet to be showcased on a “high table”. As they strutted their stuff to the destination for the high, there were long queues of “lesser beings” running behind them and in front of them, to make their path easy. Some were busy pulling out the chairs that were to house their bottoms for the period they were at this event while others were ensuring that the tablecloth where they were going to seat were creaseless. Interestingly, my scalpel skills were not drawn to the lesser beings. It was the big men and women that seemed to require my proposed intervention.
There and then, it became clear in my mind’s eye that the London bubble where I was sat at that very minute, was a microcosm of my larger Nigerian society back home. We are living in other countries, yet we are not imbibing some of the good things that those countries hold. We are quick to imbibe the wrong culture we meet in our host countries even at the expense of our good ones from home while we pretend not to notice the good things in the societies, we now find ourselves. A ready example is how people say to their parents: call me first before you visit my house, I am very busy yet, they line up at buffet stations in parties, collecting food meant for two people while their plates scream for help. Yes, the average Briton will say that to their parents, but they are unlikely to consume all the food at a party meant for others, all by themselves.
Similarly, we are complaining that young men in their mid-forties and women are beginning to die suddenly at alarming rates in Nigeria. No, perhaps I should rephrase this; middle-aged Nigerians seem to be dying a lot more than before irrespective of location. The answer is not farfetched. Our society as Nigerians, at home and abroad, value the “big man, big woman phenomenon”. The bigger you are, the more valued you are. Your abdominal girth is a sign of the high societal strata to which you belong. It appears as though your success in life is in direct proportion to the size of your abdomen. A very unfortunate phenomenon because evidence base in medicine has shown that the size of your abdominal girth is inversely proportional to the state of our health and length of days. Yes, our waist size matters…the more fat padded we are, especially around our waist, the more we help to contribute to an acceleration of what we all owe nature which is our death. Our “egg on stick appearance” though celebrated by our culture in Nigeria, is a recipe for High blood pressure, Diabetes, Stroke, Fatty Liver, Osteoarthritis, Cancer, Depression, and a long list of pathologies. How blessed you are with this abdominal fat also determines your survival ratio from several illnesses.
Interestingly, even my classmates from medical school are now spotting cute pregnancies and flaunting them with relish. Some have even told me it is important they have one to go along with their greying beards and their ascending professional positions. The ladies tell me that they do not want small children to talk to them “anyhow”, so they must look the part that is respected in society. You can understand why I am now a tad alarmed. It is because if some of the doctors I went to school with now have their brains migrating to their feet by erosive societal values, what do we expect of other Nigerians? I was looking at one of the grossly obese Nigerian Medical Women Association (NMWA) member from one of the states in Nigeria the other day…and I just could not understand what confidence she was instilling in the non-medical women. The ruling class, with their “ruling abdomens” covered by flattering-parachute-like “agbadas” …those ones are a story for the gods.
If you love yourself, friends, relatives and even enemies, kindly reduce your abdominal fat. You can get on the high table without that extra weight. Trust me when I tell you that it will even be easier for you to walk the red carpet and jump on that table. Make simple changes, start gradually, and work up the intensity ladder. Try to stop the beers, know that cigarette kills, close the kitchen and clear the dining table after seven pm, avoid large meal portions and make your taste buds friends with the greens. In addition to the dietary changes, keep active be it by doing regular exercises, taking walks or swapping the car for walks on short journeys. The stairs are your friend. Any time you can, ignore the lifts. Of course, “sexercises” helps and do not forget your water.
It is okay for you to read this and call me judgemental. It is also allowed for you to call me out saying I am ostracizing or body shaming fat people. You could even insinuate I am `beefing` the big men and big women in our society. All that is okay. However, what is not okay is for you to start forming pseudo concern when they are dead and to start asking me “why are people just dying anyhow these days? I am scared oo!” Please know now that if you call me for such, I shall send you the link to this article. In the interim, my selfless and compassionate medical mind is still telling me to quickly help clear out the tons of abdominal fat under which the future of my Country Nigeria “cannot breathe” by doing Caesarean Sections for many of these human resources our Country is blessed with. Let us deliver ourselves of the fat around our abdomens.