WHOEVER came up with the idea that we must eat three times a day and have several snacks is responsible for the escalation in chronic conditions like hypertension, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and many others. You see, in many countries, certainly here in Zambia, we even use how many times a family eats in a day as a measure of poverty. “We were so poor we could only afford one meal a day,” many of us say after our fortunes change. But what if I told you that having one meal a day could be just what you need to achieve optimal health and reverse or prevent some chronic conditions? What if I told you that the reason we eat so many times a day is because we are addicted to sugar and carbohydrates which don’t even have any nutritional value? I bet you wouldn’t believe me, right? Well, you don’t need to hear it from me but straight from a cardiologist who has been using YouTube to try and make people unlearn the bad eating habits we have gotten accustomed to.

His name is Dr Pradip Jamnadas, and he has practised for over 31 years. He definitely changed my life and perspective on food and health. He gave a new meaning to the term “you are what you eat” by explaining the relationship between food and our overall health in a way that finally made me get it. I had an epiphany and my resolve to reset my health got even sharper. Like I told you last week, a doctor had diagnosed me with high blood pressure and given me a bunch of pills to drink, without properly explaining to me the causes or whether it could be a temporal situation given the amount of stress I was shouldering at the time. Now, if you know me, you know that I am stubborn; you cannot get me to do anything before convincingly answering my questions. Mother and I would fight about this all the time. She would tell me, ‘Mukosha, you should do so and so for that condition’, and I would ask her ‘why?’ Sometimes, she would give me a convincing answer and I would oblige but other times, she would use the vague ‘ancestral wisdom’ argument to try and hoodwink me but it would never work. If you can’t tell me the ‘why’ part, I ain’t doing what you’re suggesting, period! So, I refused to take those hypertension drugs and went on a fact finding mission. I wanted to understand ‘what is hypertension, what causes it and can it be reversed?’ As I searched for answers, I came across Dr Jamnadas who made me realise I am a junkie.

“Why are you eating if you just fed? Let me ask you! Why are you eating? You just had a meal two hours ago, why do you have to eat? Are you hungry? You’re not hungry! ‘Oh no, but I have to eat.’ ‘Why?’ Because, there are two things, one, you’re a junkie, you’re an addict. Just like cocaine, just like heroine, you’re an addict,” Dr Jamnadas said and it hit me right in the heart because it was true. There were days I felt like I was always chewing. I would have a big breakfast comprising of some toast, eggs, and on some good days even breakfast sausages and tea or coffee with milk or hot chocolate. Before lunch, I would be hungry again and I would snack on some bread or whatever I could get my hands on. Then at lunch, I would eat two big lumps of nshima, some meat and vegetables. Right after I would finish eating that, I would get such aggressive sugar cravings which would not go away until I ate some chocolate cake, muffins, or cookies. Sometimes I would drive long distances to buy these things! My cravings were very specific and demanded the very best, the most moist, soft and fluffy treats from the best of bakers. So when I listened to Dr Jamnadas, I instantly admitted that I am a junkie.

What is the first step to fighting your sugar addiction? Dr Jamnadas recommends, in fact, orders, intermittent fasting. A human being was not designed to be chewing every other minute.

“That sugar goes to the same part of the brain as dopamine so it gives you that reward sense. So now, you have to have your next high. This is very real guys, that’s why intermittent fasting breaks that habit. How do you make a junkie come off his cocaine? You stick him in a room and don’t give him any heroin or cocaine, that’s it. So, you have to play around with your physiology so that you don’t become an addict. Otherwise [you’ll always be saying] I’ve got to eat now. ‘You’re not hungry’, ‘I just love to eat’, you’re a junkie. So that’s the biggest problem, why we eat so frequently. Number two, is we have been socially indoctrinated to eat. [We just say] it’s time to eat. So, I don’t have an urge or anything and if I don’t eat, I am not going to get cravings, ‘I have got to go eat, I have got to go eat’, no! It’s just that it’s one o’clock so I’ve got to go and eat. And I say who said you’ve got to eat three meals a day and two snacks? The food industry said that! You didn’t say it, your doctor didn’t say it!” Dr Jamnadas exclaimed.

“So, I want you all to now have conscious feeding, that means you eat when you’re hungry. If you’re not hungry, don’t eat! You’re not going to die! Because what fasting also does is it detoxes you, because you are going to have all these heavy metals in you and toxins, fasting is the only thing that gets rid of toxins”.

Dr Jamnadas insists that skipping some meals cannot cause someone to die.

“You have got to fast, you can do OMAD, this means one meal a day because your ancestors and you are not such good hunters that you can make a kill every two hours. And stop eating at night because you can’t bring the carcass into your cave because then the hyenas will come into your cave and eat you up. You’re supposed to eat only one meal a day and get it over with. And on addiction, consciously think about it because you are becoming addicted to wheat, sweetness, sugar, caffeine, dairy products and snacks. They actually cause addiction. You think you are not addicted? I can prove to all of you, you are in some way or the other addicted. So, this patient comes to me and says ‘oh, I felt so bad, by 4 O’clock I was hungry’, so I said ‘what did you do?’ Then he says ‘I ate! Then I felt good’. So, I said why do you think you were feeling so bad?’ then he said ‘my sugar went so low’. So, I said ‘did you measure your sugar?’ ‘Yea, it was 90’, so I said ‘that’s not low’. So, the feeling bad is not low sugar, you are feeling bad because you’re a junkie!” he said.

Did you notice the foods he listed as being addictive? Wheat, sugar, caffeine, dairy products and in other lectures, he actually added all grain flours like mealie meal, yes, I am trying to get to our beloved nshima. Some doctors I have seen in Zambia actually recommend eating a very small lump while filling up most of the plate with vegetables and then the other quarter of the plate with some protein. But this advice has never worked for me. When that kama hot nshima is accompanied by some delicious beef stew and some nice crunchy green vegetables or a chima perfectly fried tilapia, I always end up eating way more than a palm sized lump. Because it is so good it even makes me forget my English, as you can see from this paragraph. Anyway, before someone shoots me for ‘attacking nshima’, let me leave that comment for another day.

For now, let me fill you in on what Dr Jamnadas recommends we should be eating.

“What you eat has huge repercussions on your hormones, your bacteria, every time you eat, you have to consciously eat. Think twice before you put anything down in your stomach. What should you eat? You should be eating fermented foods, you should be eating bacterial products; you should be eating lots of yogurt, sauerkraut (fermented cauliflower and cabbage), balsamic vinegar, these are extremely healthy for your gut. So, eat only whole foods, please, don’t eat processed foods! Eat only high fibre from a variety of plants and that fibre is not for you, you can’t digest fibre, fibre goes to your gut bacteria,” said Dr Jamnadas.

“Measure your blood pressure, get your weight down to a BMI of 23 and you must do intermittent fasting so you can restore insulin sensitivity which I talked about and to improve your leaky gut. If you have a leaky gut, the food creates an antibody response therefore you get joint pains, mental fog; who don’t you know that has mental fog? Who don’t you know that has dementia already? Where do you think that’s coming from? It’s coming from leaky gut so when you fix that, all of a sudden, this person’s brain starts working better. Because all that inflammatory stuff crosses the blood brain barrier and causes what is known as mental fog and this happens to all people. Even young people come to me and say ‘Oh my God Doc! Every morning I wake up and I have got this fog in my brain’ and I make them change their diet and then they come back and say ‘I feel so much alive, I can think better, my memory is better.”

And speaking of brain fog, that is so real. I experience it every time I am eating a high carb diet. I become so sluggish, I zone out during conversations, my work output becomes dismal I lose enthusiasm generally. But I am in a better place now, and I will fill you in on how I got here in subsequent articles, we’ll also discuss how to reverse some chronic conditions instead of being hooked on drugs for life, but for now, let me just close by reintroducing myself. Hi, my name is Mukosha and I am a recovering junkie.

Reference: Dr Pradip Jamnadas. (2022). Top Two Reasons Why Most People Fail at Intermittent Fasting. [Online]. YouTube. Last Updated: August 23, 2022. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDJHQz2JHeA [Accessed 1 August 2023].

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