Interesting article from CAMNET

Cameroonian baby boomers know only too well the sacrifices made by our families for our education, well-being and progress. Our parents gave up their life’s savings and committed huge amounts of all future earnings to educate us older children, especially.
They mortgaged the comfort and education of their younger children for the betterment of the older ones. These parents did so with the express or tacit understanding that when, we, the older children became successful, we would return home to take care of them in their old age and to bury them when their time came.
They also hoped that as successful older children, we would return to help educate the younger ones. Yet, it appears that our demise as educated and successful older children is early death, as in middle aged, and a return home to our elderly parents to bury us. We also return to the shattered and unfulfilled dreams of our younger siblings.

Why is this phenomenon taking place? It’s the lifestyle, stupid!

In terms of living a healthy and mature (long) life, lifestyle embodies two aspects:
A) Diet, and
B) Physical activity

Historical Perspective

Most of us Cameroonian baby boomers in the USA have been here for at least five years and counting. In this time, we have mal/adapted severally to the physical environment in which we find ourselves.
This mal/adaptation has laid the foundation of our, mostly poor and death prone, lifestyle. A look at life in Cameroon prior to our arrival in the USA may provide us a basis of comparison.

A) Diet
The general diet for the average Cameroonian in Cameroon is rich and balanced in many respects. This is not to say that the Cameroonian may be having this diet by choice.

Most nutritionists and other health professionals recommend a diet rich in vegetables, fruits and complex carbohydrates. The average diet in Cameron is rich in all of these and more.

Vegetables.
Cameroonians eat large amounts of vegetables on a daily basis. From the popular bitter leaf (Ndole) to ‘eru’, and ‘okongobong’ to ‘contry njama-njama’ and the many others in-between, we eat them. The average Cameroonian does not eat all these vegetables because he is aware of their nutritional value. Rather he eats them because they are plentiful and cheap


Fruits
Cameroon is blessed with a variety of succulent fruits and the people love them. From bananas and pineapples, to oranges and grapes fruits, and the many others in-between.
Again, they eat these fruits not from a conscious effort to make fruits part of a daily diet. Instead, they eat them because the fruits abound and are a ready snack when there is no time for a standard meal or while waiting for the cooking to be done. Still, they get ample servings of fruits daily.

Carbohydrates
Experts tell us that complex carbohydrates (unprocessed or minimal processed starchy foods) are best for us. Cameroonians in Cameroon eat these daily. From cocoyams, yams, and plantains to cassava, corn and potatoes (Irish or sweet). And, the many other things between them.

Lentils, like beans are also plentiful and cheap. They are eaten in large quantities as well, mostly because they are a cheap way to come up with a good and satisfying meal.

Meat
For the most part, and for the average Cameroonian in Cameroon, meat is still a luxury. The average person who can afford to buy meat in the market in Cameroon winds up buying beef; mostly red lean meat.
Expensive parts of beef, like organ meat and so-called ox tail are eaten only occasionally
Incidentally this has worked well for them. Fish, fresh, frozen and dried, including wild game constitute the other major source of animal protein in the usual diet, mostly because these are cheaper.

Fats
The major source of oils for consumption is the popular palm oil and groundnut oil, as we like to call peanut oil. In spite of the health draw back in palm oil and its large consumption, we in Cameroon have managed to stay relatively healthy.

In all these, essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals come included, as well as fiber.



B) Physical Activity

I cannot over belabor this fact. The Average Cameroonian walks at least Three miles daily, doing different things and running errands, including visiting friends and going to his/her favorite off license.

Incidentally, this level of physical activities is what creates the balance in dietary excesses as a whole. This balance is what keeps the average Cameroonian in Cameroon healthy and helps him/her live a mature life.

On the hand, the following is what the lifestyle for most of us Cameroonians in the USA is like.

Diet

Vegetables
It is fair to say that we sparingly eat vegetables. We prefer to have rice and stew, simple; or some plantains and “vegetables”. We do not think of vegetables as a side dish to the meal, yet we should.
On special occasions like ‘born house’ and other occasions where people come together, the traditional ‘ndole’ and such, come with all the special trimmings. And they go fast, while we pick at the salad bowl. In short, vegetables are not part of our daily diet.

Fruits
The same could be said for fruits. We do not eat half as much fruits as we should, as part of our regular diet. We buy and eat fruits occasionally.

Carbohydrates
This is, perhaps, the one area in which we do well, maybe too well for our own good. Carbohydrates have always been the center of our diet as Cameroonians.

Unfortunately, unlike in Cameroon where complex carbohydrates are the rule, here, in the States, they are the exception. Except for a few of us resident in urban inter-ethnic cities like Atlanta and Washington, D.C metro-area, traditional African foods like plantains and cocoyams are not easy to come by.

Fufu, principally, yam flour from Nigeria and other flavors of flour like semolina are not difficult to come by. I remember the days of Jiffy mixed with flakes of mashed potatoes to make fufu. Though these are processed, they are also the closest we can come to the real thing. Though I disagree with the many who come on TV and tell of about ‘Good and Bad’ carbohydrates, and do every thing to discourage us from eating our carbohydrates, too much carbohydrates can still be detrimental to us, given the right circumstances.

Lentils
Beans are the most prominent in this category and are eaten the most. Even so, beans are eaten on special occasions that call for a traditional African flavor, and perhaps secondary school nostalgia. On a regular basis most of eat beans only occasionally

Meat
We love meat and our preference is beef. As long as it is beef we are happy, we do not pay any particular attention to what part of beef we buy. We love ‘Ox-tail’ with all it “white’ trimmings. Agreed, it tastes good but that, for the most part, is our undoing too.
We shun chicken for hen. And, we put the hen in our pots complete with skin and that gross looking chunks of fat underneath. For most of us eating large amounts of beef is a sign of well-being and affluence

Fats
We seem to have the impression that cooking without a lot of vegetable oil would not make the food palatable, so we dump the grease in to the pot and fry the meat. Then we pour some more in the vegetable or ‘egusi’ soup. What about that shinning pot of ‘Ndole’ with all that ‘Ox-tail’ in it! And who will cook real Ndole without groundnuts? And who in America will cook that pot of ‘Eru’ without saturating it with palm oil? I am sure you get my point; we eat way too much oil, both the saturated and the unsaturated. We conveniently over look the health limitations of palm oil, particularly its cholesterol content

Physical Activity
The lifestyle in the USA lends itself to minimal physical activity, even to “Americans themselves”
There is a great deal of emphasis on comfort and entertainment of all sorts; so we are happy to seat in front of the television for long hours watching “ the lifestyle of the rich and famous”, or something of the sort, for example.
We spend equally long hours talking on the phone about matters of little significance, all the while eating our favorite tasty snacks.

The only structured daily activity is work, at which many of us spend disproportionately long hours of our daily lifetime, returning home worn out and exhausted, only to sit down and watch TV, eat or get on the phone. If it is not work, it is going to school, for those who have an interest in education, and the rest of the living can come in any order.

We prefer to drive down to the corner liquor store, or the grocery shop less than five minutes walk away than walk there. In short, we drive to all places, deserving or not.

I am sure there are some here who would argue that they belong to soccer clubs and so get regular exercise.
Yeah, I know about those soccer clubs that meet for practice on some Sunday mornings or afternoons, and have an occasional match here and there. Essentially, Cameroonians in the USA and their, so-called elite, counterparts in Cameroon do not have a sustained regular physical activity routine.

In the net, we are just not getting the amount of physical activity that we need to live healthy

Discussion

Recently, there has been a spate of middle age deaths within our Cameroonian community, from Boston, Massachusetts a few months ago, to Atlanta, Georgia a few weeks ago.
There is now the reported death of another Cameroonian, forty-something years old, in Dallas, TX of heart problems.

Cases like these abound nearly everywhere you look. There have also been reports of baby boomers dying in their prime years in Cameroon and elsewhere, including England where a funeral service was held just weeks ago.

Noticeably, those reports from Cameroon are usually of educated and successful professionals whose lifestyle is not unlike that of their brethren they left behind in America and other Western countries.

Educational and economic success seems to have a negative impact on our health and longevity. As stated earlier, good health and long life are hinged on diet and physical activity, as in routine exercise. Unfortunately, most educated and successful Cameroonians earn an ‘F’ minus grade here and pay the price with preventable sickness and early death.

Take Diet.
Though it is difficult to discuss diet, within this context without physical activity, I will highlight the major facts in them separately and attempt to tie them together at the end.

The central point in diet is not only what we eat per se, but also how and how much we eat. In some instances we eat too much, as with meat, red meat, for example; and in others, we eat less, far less as with fruits and vegetables.

Our love of meat would not be too bad if we paid more attention to what we bought and how we cooked it. Some of us buy lean meat, which is meat with little or no visible fat. But we ruin it in the way we cook.
We love to fry meat and then cook it in fried tomatoes to make stew (tomatoes sauce).
We do the same thing to cook “jollof rice” which we love to eat.
When we cook vegetable soup, for instance, a good pot will have “egusi”(melon seeds) in it. If it is ‘Ndole” we may insist on putting groundnuts (peanuts) instead of egusi.
As Cameroonians, we love vegetable soup with “fufu”, or even with plantains; it is a good meal. So, we pile in egusi or groundnuts, and then we dump in vegetable oil. Some times we fry the egusi too, first. To make things even “ better” we may even put in that “extra” pinch of salt for better taste. We conveniently overlook the fact that the egusi or groundnut is mostly oil. As you can see, the frying is too much. There is also too much, way to much oil (from the egusi or groundnuts and the oil itself) in the soup or sauce. And that “extra” pinch of salt?

Carbohydrates have taken the fall for the consequences of our lack of physical activity. So it is commonplace to hear of “low carbs”, “good Carbs”, and “bad carbs” diets on TV and weight loss media. The fact of the matter is that if we are going to eat, low carbs or whatever carbs we choose and spend the bulk of our time either working or seating on our butts and watch TV or talk on the phone, we are going to be unhealthy.

We shun fruits and vegetables. In doing so we deprive ourselves of the vitamins and other micronutrients that are so vital in facilitating our metabolism.

Additionally, we loose out on the fiber that provides bulk in our digestive tract and helps to keep us moving our bowels regularly. In case it was not obvious, regularly moving our bowels helps a great deal in preventing the dreaded colon cancer. So it is no wonder that cereals are big business to those who would not have their fiber any other way.

The forgoing is a nutshell of the significance of what we eat and how we eat it. The question of how much we eat is equally as important. The average adult requires between 2000 to 3000 calories a day to sustain his body in all it activities, depending on your gender and frame.

Unfortunately, the adult Cameroonian in the USA and other western countries, and his educated and successful counterparts in Cameroon easily exceeds this requirement. For this group of Cameroonians food is plenty because there is money to buy it. So, we tend to over indulge ourselves and consume more calories than we need on a daily basis. Guess what results from the excess calories! Yeah, you got it, excess body weight and obesity.

With all that delicious vegetable soup and fufu and the usual accompaniments to our ego- serving meals, the aforementioned can be summarized in the following equation:

Too much fufu and Ndole + Too much Sitting and TV = Over fat and body weight

Over fat and body weight, as I call it, “is the beginning of all evil”! And, herein lies our doom to early and premature death.

It may appear simplistic, but excess body weight, as in being over weight and in obesity, is the single major contributor to chronic illness, which complications with result in the middle age death toll that we witness in our community today. Let’s take a look.

Common Chronic Illnesses

Diabetes (High Blood Glucose or sugar, as it is commonly referred to in layman’s terms)
Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), especially for this discussion
Diabetes is the “mother” of all chronic illnesses. I call it the “mother” because complications from diabetes extend to practically all major body systems with deathly effects.

There are two main types of diabetes, type I or juvenile diabetes and type II diabetes. The third type of diabetes is seen only in some women during pregnancy, the so-called gestational dilates. Things return to normal for the woman once the baby is had.

Type II is what we are talking about here. The difference between the first two is in its etiology. Types II diabetes is commonly diagnosed by accident during a routine medical check up or during a work up for an apparently different medical problem. It usually shows in people in their early 40s

I am not going to delve into the causes of type II diabetes; however, it should suffice to say here and for the purpose of this discussion, that a situation in which excess blood glucose is left unmetabolized (broken down) in your blood stream will result in its elevation beyond normal limits and hence a diagnosis of diabetes. The reason for this kind of failure may range from our bodies’ inability to produce enough insulin (the enzyme that facilitates glucose metabolism) to insulin resistance in the body. Be it as it may, the presence of uncontrolled diabetes will lead to a dominos effect multiple body organ and system failures, in only a matter of time."

Renal Failure (Kidney Failure)
Hypertension (High Blood Pressure)
Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), especially for this discussion

The presence of uncontrolled diabetes will lead to Renal or Kidney failure, that is if you do not lapse into a diabetic coma and die first. Once in chronic renal failure, the possible remedies are kidney transplant or dialysis. It is doubtful that anyone in chronic renal failure will survive beyond a few weeks without either of these.

Hypertension is a common complication with chronic renal failures, as it is with diabetes itself. Just think of it! If we have no kidneys to clear out all the excess fluids and salts in our bodies, the fluids will simply accumulate in there.

The result is edema (swelling), especially in body extremities. This kind of fluid retention in the body will simply aggravate an already bad situation; it will lead to hypertension. The combination of fluid retention due to kidney failure, and hypertension; hypertension itself a result of the fluid retention will further result in Congestive Heart Failure is a situation in which the heart fails to empty its chamber when it pumps. CHF can be either right-sided, left-sided or both. Right-sided heart failure will result in pulmonary edema (swelling) in the lungs, due again to fluid accumulation. Left-sided failure will result in generalized edema, especially, in the extremities. Failure of either side of the heart will, in time, cause failure of the other.


To make CHF more realistic and practical, consider our hearts as the pumping machines that they really are. It has four chambers, the atria (upper chambers) and the ventricles (lower chambers). Each side has an atrium and a ventricle. Blood returning to the heart enters into the atria and is pump out simultaneously to the lungs and the rest of the body through the right and left sides respectively. The pulmonary artery and vein take blood to and from the lungs respectively (every artery takes blood away from the heart, veins return blood to the heart).

Now, consider also that you have a close friend who is in chronic renal failure; your friend’s feet, ankles and legs and thighs as well as hands arms and elbows are very swollen. Your friend is passing out very little or no urine. Additionally, consider that this close friend of yours tells you that s/he feels as though s/he was drowning, s/he is gasping for breathe and can hardly speak without stopping to take a breathe, each time you friend’s heart pumps (beats) very little blood leaves the heart chambers because, the blood vessels are congested with blood due to volume overload, as a result of the renal failure. How do you see this friend of yours and how do you feel about s/he now?

This is a thought and feeling that I will leave with you to contemplate and relate to yourself.

Please, let me remind you that even at this late moment, we are still considering the effects of uncontrolled diabetes.

Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is not a direct consequence of diabetes, but is a condition that is occasioned more by our conscious dietary and physical activity choices. The major problem with coronary artery is blockage. This blockage results mainly from the accumulation of plaque within the lumen of the coronary arteries thus constricting blood flow to heart tissue. Coronary arteries, by the way, are arteries that supply blood and nourishment to the heart muscles.
When the lumen of one such arteries is blocked that the blood flow to that section of the heart is severely restricted, the condition is medically referred to as ischemia or ischemic attack. (Ischemia is usually localized based on the part of the body on which the blood flow restriction is occurring; in our case it would be cardiac ischemia) The result is acute chest pain and other signs of a heart attack\n as it is commonly referred to.

The accumulation of plaque in our arteries is a result of uncontrolled consumption of foods high in fats and cholesterol. From a Cameroonian stand point; palm oil readily comes to mind. We have an inclination to frying, everything from eggs to hen in jollof rice and ox-tail in vegetable and “stew”.

We love a wholesome vegetable like “eru”; at the same time we use it as a vehicle for cardiac ischemic attacks on ourselves and our dear friends and family by dumping all that palm oil in it. Yah! Man, it’s our lifestyle, stupid!

Think about it for a minute! Given that the accumulation of plaque in our arteries is a result of our dietary and physical activity choices, and you have a close friend who had a sudden cardiac ischemic attack, who or what was attacking what? It does seem as if we were attacking ourselves with deadly force, don’t you think? "

Conclusion:
This conversation could go on some more, however, I believe that we all get the point, so there is no need to continue.

Still, there are a few points that we need to reflect on after this posting is deleted. Cameroon and Cameroonians are loosing people and family members, as well friends who qualify to be called some of their best and brightest to preventable illness and premature death.

Middle-aged people die in such traumatic incidents as accidents of all kinds. They die of HIV/AIDS, but this is a specially known case. There are a few other cases that result in premature death from chronic illness well beyond the control of the victim. But, quite frankly, I am hard pressed to find one such situation that wasn’t preventable or at least manageable.
Otherwise, people should not die young, especially not those considered to be educated and well informed leaders of today and tomorrow. Yet, we die.

The black man appears to have the same fate, no matter where we live, whether we are in the western hemisphere and the Caribbean or in the Sub-Sahara. We all have a great aversion to change and modification, especially modification in our individual and collective behavior.

Take governance, for instance. There is no fundamental difference between
Haiti and perhap Sudan or Chad, nor is there a significant difference between say, Nigeria and Jamaica. Cameroon is not much different from say, the Dominican Republic. We all have the same problems with the provision of social amenities and\n infrastructure.
Fortunately/ unfortunately, many leaders in these black countries went to the same or similar learning institutions as many of their counterparts in America and Western Europe. The westerners have and are doing well for themselves, yet we are still grappling with the ability and will to effect positive change in our lives. So, where have we gone wrong?

We can start to take care of our health and ensure that the enthusiastic promises we made to our parents and family, as young men and women departing for America and Europe are kept. Promises that we will do our best to study and become better people and return home. To return home to fulfill our parents’ greatest aspirations, the hope for which they gave us their best. The hope that we will return to bury them and help raise their other children, our siblings.
The hope that we will return to Cameroon and be the symbol of what education can make us be, and become the vehicle for positive change in our individual and collective life.

We can start to make this change by taking another look at what we eat and how we eat it. We can reduce the amount of fatty meats we eat and equally decrease the amount of oil we cook with. We can make a determination to add a bowl of vegetables to our dinner table daily, even if it’s steamed broccoli. We can, additionally, reduce the amount of calories we consume daily by simply reducing our portions when at table

Regular exercise can be incorporated into our routines for just three times a week. An hour of brisk walk around our neighborhoods would be enough. And we can do it! We should get back into our traditional “African walking” routine to locations a block or two away, especially if all we want is an item or two from the convenient store around the corner or the grocery store down the street. It’s to our good health and long life.

Finally, those of us who have been diagnosed with illnesses like diabetes should keep a close eye on the blood sugar levels and maintain proper body weight. Type II diabetes is easily control with diet and exercise. Your doctor will tell so.

Those with hypertension should also maintain proper body weight and also keep a close eye on the blood pressure. Your doctor, again, will tell you so. Take your medications as prescribed by your physician. Also, take steps to get adequate rest at home by cutting down on your work hours; find time to play with your children and enjoy their company. Soon they will be grown and they won’t be there.

Live well my friends; let us thrive and live long to keep our promises to our parents