By Dr Isaac Ayodele

Thankfully, I requested for topics you want me to address, including your comments and observations.

One of my fans on facebook requested to know what drinks adversely affect diabetics and the drinks diabetics can take.

I wish to honour her today by revealing the worse drinks for you if you are diabetic, watching your weight or you want to be well, healthy and reverse an ailment.

1. Zero Sugar Drinks. I still remember and terribly frightened whenever I remembered those days as I embarked on avoiding everything sugary, which of course is ideal for anyone who wants to be healthy.

My entire body was itching me profusely. I scratched it to the extent that I got blisters and bruises all over my body.

I was later in pain due to too much scratching of my skin. I went for general medical test. Every test was conducted including the dreaded HIV test. The results for all the tests indicated that I was hale and hearty. They all proved negative.

Meanwhile my itching increased. My scratching continued. Blisters and bruises at this point had become unbearable.

What could be the matter? I hid the incident from many but some friends and family members who knew about it whispered to my ears that it must be satanic attack from my unknown enemies. I just wondered.

I remembered I prayed, I fasted and I told church members to pray for me, although I never gave them any prayer point for fear of misinterpretation and I did not want to be a topic of derision.

All the same God answered my prayer miraculously. The truth was that I loved tea a lot. This was a habit I adopted from the northern part of Nigeria where I was bread and buttered.

Part of my education was in Yola, Jos and Zaria in the Northern part of Nigeria. In addition I had my National Youth Service in Abuja.

Those of us with northern background are in love with tea which we called chai.

As a young boy in Yola I would escape from home to go to the tea seller which we called Mai-chai to quickly take a cup or two of the aromatic tea only available in Northern Nigeria. It was very tasty with burodi as we called bread then.

I particularly loved the way the chai was mixed and the stylish way the Mai-chai used to cut the bread made it unique. I preferred it to any other food.

So I was addicted to tea till my adulthood. To keep my tea-taking habit healthy I had to replace sugar with sweetener. My intuition told me one day to stop drinking tea for three days. I did. I never observed that I had no more itches until about 5 days later when I resumed the tea with the sweetener and the itching came back in full swing.

Oh my God!!! I had to take a closer look at the label of the sweetener.

What I read was terrifying that consumers of the sweetener were susceptible to cancer. It was written in a very small point-size hardly readable.

This is what we consume daily in some drinks, package and processed foods in the name of health foods.

The end of sweeteners is bitter after all. It is killing us slowly and we just have to desist from it.

Pardon me. My time is up. Let us continue tomorrow.

I love and adore you.
Thank you.

Dr Isaac Ayodele is a public health expert.

He can be reached via – +234 803 333 5496.

  Dr Isaac Ayodele, Health, Public Health