Features
Health, worry and the human stomach
SIKAMAN is gradually becoming a health-conscious nation because piles is now a national disease. Some natives claim that piles, alias kooko, has gone on strike and has attacked different parts of their bodies — buttocks, forehead, inner ear, inner nose, lips, and hair. Now they do not know where next it would attack, and soon a petition would be sent to Parliament to declare piles a national tragedy.
It is interesting when you consider the way people assume that even common malaria is caused by kooko. Well, the medical authorities have come out to say that piles is a disease of only the last end of the alimentary canal. It has a name. Go and check the name in your biology textbook, or ask the nearest herbalist.
The health consciousness of the average Sikaman native is not limited to kooko, though. People are becoming very much aware of their pot-bellies. They can’t be carrying it all their lives, taking into consideration that half the time, it is laden with gallons of beer.
Even Kwame Alomele is gradually trying to unload the burden that precedes him. “I no longer have the stamina to carry a pot. I am now health-inclined and want to be a slim-macho, doing a sport. I am applying to be a member of a golf club and hope to do wonders with the tiny ball. Fact is I want to be up-and-doing like Gordon Avernogbor, the Grandmaster of GBC fame.”
The media have helped to carry this health idea far. Ghana Television does weekly health programmes, and the FM stations have various programmes and tit-bits on health. Radio Gold is on a Diabetes Month health beat, and patients are made to acquire some knowledge about what they may be suffering from and how they can manage their conditions.
In the print media, the Weekly Spectator has singlehandedly launched a powerful health crusade, and the sky is the limit. In fact, the Spectator has been hailed in medical circles as one of the papers that have zealously carried the health mantle aloft in recent times. The Mirror also runs a health column with my good friend Dr. Anyah in the chair.
Tune in to any of the FM stations and you’re likely to hear a health tit-bit that can be useful to you. You’ll hear something like, “if you eat too much yorke gari, you’ll develop coccidiosis, which is a fowl disease. So check the level of gari and beware of zorzor.”
COCKROACH DIET
Well, healthy living in general has to do with healthy eating. At least, that is what the nutritionists say. And the cockroach has been the most qualified nutritionist in the world. The reason is that the common cockroach is so health-conscious that it eats only a balanced diet — anything from rotten fruit to human excreta. It doesn’t reject food.
The experts say fruits and vegetables, which are alkaline in nature, are good for the human body. There is some truth in this. The silver-back bear, perhaps the most powerful animal in the world, is a vegetarian. It can uproot a tree almost effortlessly, and the power in its arms is attributed to its vegetarian diet.
Anyhow, man cannot continue eating fruits and vegetables perpetually as the main diet. The stomach would get bored, the tongue will revolt, and the human body will subconsciously start crying for banku and okro soup plus giant crabs.
Ideally, a balanced diet — carbohydrates, protein, fats and oils, vitamins and minerals — in their correct quantities are enough to ensure healthy living. It means that you can’t fare well when you eat bread in the morning, bread in the afternoon, and kenkey and shito for supper. There would be a traffic jam in your intestines. And believe me, the traffic lights will also go off.
The killer menu is maintained for three days, and you’ll have what is termed as “treasonable constipation,” a sin against your body. No purgative can save you unless rice and okro soup. That combination is the best purgative in town. In 1983, it used to be one of the famous diets in Legon when famine besieged Sikaman. Students had to abandon lectures and stay close to the WC. Anything can happen. You can’t trust your own stomach.
Exercise also begets health, and brisk walking is the golden rule. I have a friend who is a positive thinker, and he told me walking is no problem to him. He once walked from Osu Christianborg to Circle to Abeka and back to Christiansburg.
No ice-water. No one gave him an award, but I congratulated him. Not that the guy is broke and can’t fix himself up in a trotro or taxi. Walking is his hobby. And his health is always excellent, his appetite ever-ready — no need for bitters. As for his sex life, your guess is as good as mine. He can deliver more than AK-47.
Exercise is good, but it must not wear you down. Do not over-exert. What about sex? Research has shown that excessive indulgence in sex is harmful to the central nervous system because it drains the body of its vitality.
Sex is basically for reproduction, but Ghanaman thinks quite differently. Some experts say twice a week or less is just what the body can cope with. Others say abstain and live long.
But what is the body’s most formidable adversary? It is WORRY. Worry has killed many more people than the Second World War did. About 90% of the population are chronic worriers. People are so addicted to worrying that even when there is nothing to worry about, they worry that there is nothing to worry about.
Worry causes hypertension and its attendant complications of heart disease, stroke, renal failure, and mental illness. The question is, how can man stop worrying? There is a formula by which you can stop worrying.
Make a date with Sikaman Palava in the coming weeks and get your formula for longevity, your life without worry.
This article was first published on Saturday, August 16, 1997.
This week I have a very strong desire to put on my Apostolic Cap and talk about the power available to children of God which we can utilise to generate positive outcomes, in our lives.
There is a phrase in the Bible that if Christians meditate on, can immensely transform their lives. In Matthew 28:6 there is a phrase “… as he said…” according to the King James Version.
Thus phrase forms part of a statement declared by an angel of God to two women who were disciples of Jesus who had gone to his tomb early in the morning on the third day after his death.
According to the Biblical account, the stone covering the entrance of the tomb had been rolled away and an Angel was sitting on it and he made the statement to the effect that the Jesus they are seeking is not there and that he had risen, as he said before his death.
His resurrection affirmed the authenticity and dependability of the word of Jesus and therefore the word of God.
Christianity has to do with faith in the word of God. Pastor Mensa Otabil said if we view Christianity as an inside out view, you would go inside to operate the power that is in you.
As a Christian, the spirit of God and therefore the power of God, dwells in you. Anyone who is aware of this truth, does not go around seeking to have a so called powerful person resolve his or her spiritual issues.
Most Christians who move from prophet to prophet, do not believe that the spirit of God which operates in a Pastor or Prophet, is the same spirit that dwells in him or her.
In fact , that Christian may be more ‘powerful’ than the Prophet or Pastor he is going to for prayers because he is living a holy life, which is pleasing to God, for God is no respecter of persons according to Acts 10:34-35.
God does not give out his spirit in different measures to indwell believers. The spirit of God that dwells in a new convert, is the same spirit that dwells in a Bishop or a Prophet or an Evangelist or an Elder or a Deacon.
All you need to do as a child of God is to believe in the word of God and know that it works and that according to 1 John 4:4 we, Christians, that the Spirit of God dwells in us have overcome the world and Jesus in us, is greater than the Devil who is out in the world, wrecking havoc all around.
If we realise that we have overcome the Devil and everything he controls, then we can believe and act in faith and make declarations and just as Christ declared that he will die and on the third day, he will rise from the dead and it manifested as he said, there shall be a manifestation of our declarations also.
The problem of modern day Christians is that, a lot of them, do not study and meditate on the word of God, so they do not witness the manifestation of the power of God, in their lives.
Such an experience over time, give them the impression that the spirit of God dwells in different dimensions in believers. This then leads them to seek solutions to their challenges from so called powerful men of God.
Some Pastors also fall into this misconception of the measure of the spirit of God in believers. When the size of a Pastor’s church for instance, is not increasing the way he had been praying for self-doubt sometimes begin to set in.
Especially, if he begins to compare his church with that of say a colleague from the same Bible School, then he begins to wonder if there is not a spiritual secret he is not aware of.
This is when, if care is not taken, fellow Pastors who appears to be very successful in the ministry but are using occultic powers, could sway them from the narrow path and get them trapped in the Devil’s clutches and eventually and inevitably, destroy their lives. God bless.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
Introduction
You have been there. Twenty tabs open comparing laptops. A blank page for an email you’ve been “thinking about” for three days. A menu with 30 options and you leave hungry.
This is decision paralysis: the state where the volume of information, options, or perceived stakes prevents you from making a decision at all. It’s not laziness. It’s a cognitive overload response.
In a data-rich environment, it’s becoming the default mode for both individuals and organisations.
This article breaks down why it happens, how it shows up, what it costs, and how to break it.
1. What decision paralysis actually is?
Decision paralysis is a failure of the decision-making system to convert information into action. Psychologists call it ‘analysis paralysis’ or ‘choice overload.’
It has three components:
1. Cognitive overload: Working memory can hold between four to seven chunks of information at once. When you try to track 20 variables, the system freezes.
2. Anticipatory regret: You overestimate the pain of making the wrong choice. The brain avoids the emotional cost by avoiding the choice.
3. Ambiguity aversion: Humans prefer known risks over unknown ones. When outcomes are uncertain, we stall.
The result is not neutral. Not deciding is a decision. It costs time, momentum, and opportunity
2. Why it’s getting worse now
2.1 Infinite options
Amazon has 350 million products. Netflix has 6000+ titles. Dating apps have unlimited profiles. The paradox of choice: more options increase initial satisfaction but decrease final satisfaction and increase regret.
2.2 Information abundance without synthesis
You can find 50 studies on sleep. Each one has caveats, conflicting results, and different methodologies. Without a framework to integrate them, more data creates more confusion, not clarity. This connects directly to the “data-rich, wisdom-poor” problem.
2.3 Reversibility anxiety
In the digital age, most decisions feel permanent. A bad post goes viral. A bad hire is public on LinkedIn. A bad career move is visible. The fear of irreversible error makes people delay.
2.4 Algorithmic mirroring
Platforms show you what you already engage with. This creates an illusion that there’s one ‘best’ option you are missing. You keep searching, convinced the optimal choice is one more scroll away.
3. How it shows up
Personal Level
Cannot pick a career path after six months of ‘research’
Spend two hours choosing a movie and watch nothing
Delay sending an email because it ‘isn’t perfect’
3.1 Organisational level
Teams spend 80 per cent of time in meetings gathering data, 20 per cent deciding
Product teams delay launch waiting for “one more data point”
KPIs multiply but no strategic choice is made
3.2 Common cognitive tells:
Endless comparison tables
Asking for one more opinion
Reframing the problem instead of solving it
Feeling drained after thinking but not acting
By Robert Ekow Grimmond-Thompson
