A toxicology expert, Prof. Olatunde Farombi, has said bitter cola and ginger provide natural remedies to tackle chronic diseases like cancer, stroke and other ailments if dictated early.
He made this assertion in a public lecture ‘Science, medicine and society: The three intricate nexus in the development of therapeutic signatures’ at the induction of fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) in Abuja.
Farombi, the director, molecular drug metabolism and toxicology research laboratories, University of Ibadan, said chronic diseases are usually within one year and can be treated naturally with ginger, bitter cola that we consume on daily basis.
“Bitter cola and ginger have a therapeutic value that can handle disease before it becomes worst. The intake of these indigenous substances helps in the management of diseases such as COVID-19, cancer, heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Chemoprevention is the term we use for natural products to prevent or delay the onset of diseases and we should not wait for the diseases to get to stage 2 and stage 3 when the disease will be very difficult to control.
“Continuous intake of a chemoprevention in our diet from our fruits, from our vegetables, from our herbs and plant-related substances are actually encouraged to be present in our food to prevent diseases. Nigeria is blessed with lots of research and well-trained scientists not only locally but international researchers that are acceptable all over the world.
“People should change their lifestyles and eat correctly, people should desist from fatty foods, excessive consumption of red meat and products that have fast food. These are agents and food substances that can develop in different kinds of diseases in our body. People should take less of sugar because this has also been implicated in all forms of cancer,” he added.
In his speech on the occasion, the NAS president, Prof. Ekanem Braide, thanked the Federal Government for its support in providing land to build a school for library and conference for the academy.
“We have strategic plan which is to review annual and statistics directive, objective and activities all guided towards moving forward in science,” she said.
Braide said the NAS fellowship aimed to set up a reset and develop foundation that would enable the academy, industry and government to operate in a manner that would promote science and development.
