Nigerian physician and politician, Dr Doyin Okupe, in an interview with AJIBADE OMAPE, opens up about his remarkable weight loss journey and health transformation
Speaking in an interview recently, you said that losing weight was a blessing in disguise. At what point did you start gaining weight?
I have always been overweight. I started gaining weight steadily after I got married in 1977. I mean, I got so big I was almost like a buffalo, weighing more than 147kg. After I got COVID, it was a life-threatening ordeal, but God was kind and spared my life. After the COVID attack, my weight reduced to 127kg. Then, I had this present ailment which made me lose even more weight. I lost 30kg, coming down to 97kg. During my illness and hospital treatment, I suffered severe nausea and lack of appetite. I couldn’t eat for more than four months. By the time I recovered, I had reached 97kg. However, when the treatment and chemotherapy stopped, my appetite returned, and within about a month, I gained about 10kg back, reaching 103kg. Today, I weigh 93kg. Over the last three weeks, I’ve been through some detoxification programmes and a low diet, and over the previous 21 days, I lost another 10 kg, bringing me to 93kg.
What particular lifestyles would you say contributed to your gaining excess weight?
Oh yes, it’s overeating. I don’t drink or smoke, but I love food. I couldn’t resist eating, and I mean, I could afford it. I was just eating and eating. Not many people know that a bottle of soda contains more than 32 cubes of sugar. I know people who consume two or three bottles a day, which is criminal. I used to eat a lot, but I stopped drinking Coke a long time ago, opting only for water. Also, I must mention that obesity can be determined from childhood, depending on the level of sensitization of the fat cells. Sometimes, parents overfeed their babies, sensitizing the fat cells. Some people gain weight easily even with little food.
Weight gain and how the body processes food can also be genetic. Additionally, in this environment, the majority of meals are carbohydrate-based. For instance, eating Agege bread combined with beans and washing it down with a bottle of Pepsi can amount to almost a thousand calories. Many people are unaware that beans are not purely protein; they contain 57% carbohydrates. Many of us dig our graves with our teeth. Excessive sugar consumption is the enemy of longevity.
Excess sugar in the blood or our consumption of food is responsible for more than 50 to 70 per cent of the diseases we suffer from, including diabetes and hypertension. Sugar leads to obesity, which predisposes individuals to various diseases, including cancer.
So, if you must eat heavily, you must engage in vigorous exercise to maintain your weight. Taking about 10,000 steps a day can help maintain weight. A pedometer can track your steps, which can be downloaded on your phone. Doing brisk walking daily for about an hour can prevent weight gain and improve cardiovascular health. You don’t necessarily need to go to the gym for exercise.
When I was in the hospital for COVID-19, I used to walk diagonally across the room for 30 minutes every day. You don’t need a big space for exercise. Even in my house now, I walk around the room for 30 minutes, and that’s enough. Exercise doesn’t have to be vigorous; even leisurely walking can suffice. If you maintain a healthy lifestyle and control your portion sizes, you can improve your health and avoid excessive weight gain.
As for the high cost of medication due to weight-related conditions, it has been financially burdensome. It’s not a joke when you spend such a significant amount on drugs monthly. My household spends about three times that amount or less on food in a month. I have a supplier who keeps reminding me about my drugs. My drug bag, as we speak, is full of drugs that I no longer take.
I want people to understand that they can extend their lifespan by watching what they eat and reducing their weight. Excessive weight can lead to death. By losing weight, you can improve your health significantly. I used to be hypertensive, diabetic and had fatty liver, but I have overcome these conditions through weight loss and lifestyle changes.
You mentioned that you had sleep apnea. What was the cause?
Sleep apnea is caused by being overweight. Many people have it but are undiagnosed. People who snore excessively often have sleep apnea. It’s a condition where one stops breathing momentarily while asleep. It can be treated with a CPAP machine, which regulates breathing while sleeping. However, losing weight can also alleviate sleep apnea symptoms. I haven’t used my CPAP machine for the last four months since losing weight, and my other health conditions have improved significantly.
You mentioned that you spent over N200,000 on drugs monthly. How did the cost of those drugs affect you financially?
Well, subtract N250,000 from N1,000,000, then you’ll know it’s no joke. I don’t even use that amount of money to eat in a month. My household spends about three times that amount or less on food in a month, and I use that to buy drugs. I have one guy who supplies me with my drugs; he keeps phoning, “Oga, we don’t see you again.” And my drug bag, as we speak, is in front of me. It’s full of drugs that I no longer take. Right now, as I’m talking to you, it’s full of drugs that I no longer take.
I just want this message to go out to people: we can extend our lifespan by watching what we eat and cutting down our weight. There’s no need to be over-ambitious, and losing weight is very difficult. There are two fats that won’t go away easily: the fats for ladies in the buttocks. It won’t go because nature, being an economist, stores fat in the buttocks of women because of poverty. So that if you have a pregnancy and you deliver a child, the child must suckle. And if you’re poor and cannot eat, nature ensures that it has stored enough fat in your buttocks. It will mobilise that fat to your breast so that the child can get something to eat for the next two years. Even if you starve yourself to death, the weight that you put around your waist and buttocks are the most difficult to remove. And for us men, the weight that we put around our belly is also extremely difficult to lose. Even with all this weight that I have lost, my stomach is down, but it’s not flat. The trick is not to get fat.
Just make sure you don’t get fat, and if you do, especially if you’re young, quickly find a way to lose it. You can have a programme where you can lose weight over six months or three months over one year; there are ways to do that. If you go on a food diet, you know, you will lose weight. Very true. I have lost 10 kg on a food diet in three weeks. Today is the 24th day that I have not eaten any food at all, except fruits. I weighed myself and I have lost 10 kg. I came from 103 to 93, and I’m going for 30 days.
I don’t want my children to go through the problems I have gone through. I have survived this long simply because of God’s grace, and maybe because I was lucky. I trained as a medical practitioner, but how many people will have the grace? God said I will show mercy to those whom I will show mercy. For me, I have confirmed that I have received mercy from God, and I’m grateful for that. I have received unmerited mercy and freedom from God, and it is only by grace that I still live and breathe. He has been with me at every turn of difficulties. I’ve had cancer twice. Fifteen years ago, I had cancer of the prostate. I’m clean. I have received mercy from God. I proclaim it publicly, and I witness to it that Jesus has been very, very kind to me. That’s what has kept me alive.
If I tell you the things that I’ve gone through in my life, you will be astonished. I’ve had two cancers, and I’ve had a total, complete slowing down of my heart rate to 30 beats per minute, which is not compatible with life. But here I am. I’m alive. I prayed. I called on God and he sustained me. I’ve had bleeding haemorrhoids for 20 years. Every day of my life when I went to the toilet, I bled. But today, I’ve been delivered from that problem. I’ve not bled in two years, and I didn’t take any drugs. I didn’t do any surgery. One day, the bleeding was too much, and I was not in my house. I was at a friend’s house, and I was so upset. In that bathroom, I looked up to God. I said, “God Almighty, save me from this. I don’t want any more.” And it stopped. I’m just so totally, completely grateful to God.
But with this recent cancer, it was as if there was no hope. It was something with the sub-tissue of my scapula, right shoulder. Let me tell you, before it was diagnosed, I had pain in my right shoulder, unrelenting pain, not treatable by any drugs for three months. How I kept my sanity, I do not know. I could not help myself to do anything. If I lay down in bed, the maximum effort that I made was to turn around. I cannot stand up on my own. Somebody has to, my wife has to come and pick me up, take me to the bathroom, even getting up from the toilet bowl alone, I cannot do it by myself. It was that bad.
Would you say that your case of diabetes was hereditary?
It was pure carelessness. My dad is not diabetic, my mother is not diabetic, and my grandmother was not diabetic. But because I was grossly obese and I was careless — careless because some five years before I was diagnosed, that’s when I went for my treatment of the cancer of the prostate. I was told that I was pre-diabetic, which means I should be careful. And if I’m not, I’m going to have full-blown diabetes. But when I came back from overseas, I forgot about it completely, and I just continued life as usual. But even then, five years after that, I was still not diabetic. But later on, I was diagnosed as being diabetic. So it was obesity and carelessness. If at that time that I was pre-diabetic, I quickly and immediately changed my lifestyle, I would not have diabetes today. This was probably three years before COVID. That’s about six, seven years ago. It took a long time for diabetes to start if it was seven years ago. That is about nine years after I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, and after I had already been diagnosed as being almost toxically obese.
My body tried, but I was careless, and I didn’t want people to be careless. Let me say this: If you are 40 years and above, do a body check medically once a year. If you are 50 years and above, do it twice a year. You can pick early development very quickly, and 80 per cent of diseases, including cancer, can be cured if they are caught early. But you can only catch them early if you present yourself for medical examination early. Many hospitals do medical exams now for people generally, and it costs between N50,000 and maybe N100,000, but it’s better than waiting and developing cancer and spending N20, N40, N50 million, N100 million on treatment. Treating cancer is extremely expensive to stay alive. So, prevention is better; that’s why I’m taking my time to be open and to talk about these things openly so that people can learn from it. Pay attention to your health. Whether you’re a man or a woman, if you’re a woman, do CPAP care for your cervical cancer. CPAP is very cheap and very simple; you just take a swab and that’s all. Then, check your mammography, depending on your age, once a year or twice a year. The highest killers of women in Nigeria today are breast cancer, cervical cancer, and ovarian cancer. For men, the highest killer is prostate cancer, and it’s treatable. I had it 15 years ago, and I’m talking to you, and a lot of my friends and brothers have also had it. Because of my experience, everybody that I’ve recommended for treatment, all of them are alive today. I don’t want to mention names; all of them, without exception, nobody has died. Nobody has died, so, early detection and early treatment will stop these killers.
You mentioned that you had a Fatty liver; what was the cause of that and how did you manage it?
I told you, it’s obesity, excessive fat in the system. It’s obesity from ageing. Ageing is also part of it, but if you reduce your blood sugar, if you reduce the number of carbohydrates you consume and limit fat consumption and all that, gradually, and let me tell you, for fatty liver, clinically they say that if you lose 10 per cent of your body weight, it will go. I have that one on good authority; once you have lost weight, you have, you know, you have extended your lifespan by a minimum of 10 years if not 15.
You talked about having high blood pressure; how did you manage that as well?
I can tell you some of the causes of high blood pressure. One, in the majority of people who have high blood pressure, the cause is unknown; they call it idiopathic. The cause is unknown. Other contributing factors include weight. If you’re overweight, you’re likely to be obese. Two, it’s hereditary; if one parent is hypertensive, one stands a 30 per cent chance of becoming hypertensive. If two of your parents are hypertensive, the percentage goes over 50. Third, diet; if you have too much salt in your food, it increases the level of sodium in your blood, and excess sodium in your blood causes hypertension. If one is hypertensive, it’s worse to eat raw salt; do everything in moderation. People who eat highly salted food, or eat canned food and all that. The last one I’ll say is that age can also cause hypertension because as you grow older, your blood pressure, especially if it’s too low on top, rises. So, at the age of 50, many people will be hypertensive, but it can be corrected by just simple diuretics.
You spoke about having to use an amount of drugs before losing weight; do you think you would stop using drugs shortly?
Well, I continue to monitor myself; I check my blood pressure, I check my blood sugar now, not every day, maybe a regular day or twice a week, and I check my blood pressure every week. So, I’m monitoring it; I keep monitoring it. The other thing I would like to say is that as a doctor, we were not trained to understand and believe in natural treatment; it’s not in our curriculum, and I usually look down on people who talk about natural treatment, herbs, and all that. But in recent times, I’ve come to agree and agree because I’ve seen clinical evidence that some of these natural things like carrots, and mango leaves are beneficial. some people are experts in what they are used for and they work.
We can also change our lifestyle; let us put a lot of green vegetables in and eat. Let us eat less soup, stew; if you must cook, if you must cook stew, put very little oil, very little oil. There’s not much difference between palm oil and vegetable oil. People who have a wrong impression, apart from aesthetic values, the looks, in terms of dietary advantages or disadvantageous, there’s not much difference; it’s fat. You can have a change of lifestyle, and then, the most important thing about losing weight is portion control. So, there are a lot of lifestyle changes; there are lifestyle experts all over the globe, so, people can take counsel, but lifestyle changes also improve your longevity, your cholesterol will be low, and your blood sugar will be low; sugar is the greatest enemy of mankind, all carbohydrates are processed into sugar in your body, so, if you eat except for carbohydrates, you’ll have excessive sugar.
Now that you are fit and healthier, are there any new plans you have for the future?
Before I came to you, I had a very ambitious project of planting 500 acres of oil palms; I’ve already done 200, nearly 200 when the sickness started, and I will complete it by God’s grace; that’s in terms of business. I’m presently involved with a lot of renewable energy. At 72 I’m not in for any active wahala anymore, but that doesn’t mean that work is going to stop; of course, you don’t retire from politics, I’m not retiring from politics, as soon as I’m on my feet, I’ll be up and about.
Should there be more awareness about obesity, diabetes, heart-related conditions, and other illnesses?
I will start an NGO on health education. People are dying because of ignorance, we are even talking about you and me who are going to school, in my hometown people don’t know Jack.
Some days ago, I read a story about a young chap in a primary school who died because he choked. If only the teachers and people around knew about the first aid for people who choke, especially young children, that child would still be alive. If a child is choking, what you do is to deliver five blows between the two scapulas, and after that, press the stomach inwards and upwards, the thing will come out, but then many people are not aware, and if they’re not aware, they’re not guilty.
One would have used the opportunity to appeal to state government and local government chairman to have a department that engages in health education in their locality, we need health education to live a healthy life and to live a long, we need it, and if people are healthy, the amount of drugs and things they consume will be less, the pressure on our medical institutions will be less. If I have enough encouragement, I will start an NGO on health education, just on health education.
