Introduction: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Wellness Surge Podcast with Dr. Adeola Oke. Each week we discuss our wellness journey with real people like you and me. We have conversations about food, fitness, mental health, financial wellness, and much more, so you can get back to the real you. To make sure that you’re up to date with this and other wellness topics, visit wellnesssurge.com. Information presented here is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Please do not apply any of the information presented here without first speaking with your primary care provider. Now let’s head on to the show.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:00:36] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Wellness Surge podcast. My name is Dr. Adeola Oke, and I’m the host of the Wellness Surge Podcast. And I have with me today, Dr. Lola Adeyemi, and we’re going to be talking about ‘The culture of health’. So Dr. Lola. Say hello to everybody.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:00:52] Hi everyone.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:00:54] Nice to have you here. So Dr. Lola, Adeyemi MPH, MLA is a multi-pruneer. She’s a physician by profession, but an entrepreneur by design. She runs preventitive health service organization called Magna Carta Health that was designed to help people improve their health with the aid of technology.

Beautiful. Magna Carta health was established in 2014. And was bootstrapped to success. Alright. Bootstrapped to success. She currently services approximately 15,000 patients a year and counting.

Her latest startup, Mentoring Her, is a social networking platform that uses machine learning to virtually connect female mentors with mentees to create remarkable relationships, which significantly increases their fulltime potential.

So do you see the connection here. She loves technology. And that’s in the power of technology to better other causes. That’s a good- that’s a win, win situation right there. Dr. Lola received her medical degree from Olabisi Onabanjo University in Nigeria.

She also received an MPH from Johns Hopkins university and an MLA from Harvard university. It’s so wonderful to have you here and actually I also have a personal relationship with Dr Lola. She was the person that held my hand and dragged me like- was like my mentor, right. She mentored me to make my Premium  Super Green Powder.

So I’m forever thankful to her for that. And that’s where, that’s where the connection comes in. Thank you for being here. Thanks for all you’ve done. All right.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:02:35] Thank you for having me.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:02:37] Awesome. So today we’re talking about ‘The Culture of Health’. So what is  the culture of health?

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:02:43] So the culture of health is the conscious appreciation of one’s health and the purposeful actions towards achieving optimal health.

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing, the number of the absence of disease infirmity. And with that definition, you can tell that we need to pay attention to our whole body and our whole health. Right. And so that’s really what the culture of health is. You know, paying attention to your health and doing everything you can to achieve that optimal health.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:03:15] Good. Very good. Very good. All righty. So- okay we know we should be paying attention to our health and everything else, but how can this make us successful? Right? How can this culture of health, make us successful?

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:03:29] It makes us successful because when you pay attention to your health. When,  you imbibe a culture of health, you prevent a lot of things from happening.

It’s more of preventative health, right? Um, and when you do that, you prevent disease, disability, and that’s a win, win situation, right? That’s what we want to do. We want to make sure that: Hey, you either don’t get the disease or if you do have the disease, the outcomes are better. And so those are the benefits of having a culture of health. You potentially live longer and healthier lives.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:03:58] Okay. Yeah. So from my experience, right, people just want a quick fixes, right? Nobody would like prevention. What’s all that, man? What is- why do I have to, prevent. And like, from seriously from working with patients and stuff, they just want quick fix. Oh, what- how can I take? But what I’m getting from this is this.

If you prevent your health, say, take for example stress, right? We all know most people don’t realize that stress is a big deal. It plays a significant role in your life. And if you’re stressed and you don’t control that, it can lead to high blood pressure. Right. And it can lead to stroke.

And stroke, disability, death, right? Yeah. Just one thing. If you nipped it in the bud from the get go, right? Sleep, exercise, eat healthy, stuff like that. Things you consider expensive, right now. Right? Because ‘I don’t have time to exercise, that is too expensive’.  Right. Things we consider expensive right now,  you may have to pay for them later. Right? Is that what I’m getting?

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:04:57] Absolutely. And the thing about it is that, uh, people don’t realize that,  when you get sick, it’s not one thing that makes you sick. It’s a multitude of things. You know, there’s several factors associated with illness. There’s the social determinants of health for instance.

But when you get sick, it’s not just because: okay, yeah. You were exposed to a bacteria or virus. That’s true, but what led to that? What exposed you to that? And okay, that’s one thing. So what if we can prevent those situation from happening? That’s number one, number two, the other things like, okay, you already had a chronic disease, like hypertension, for instance. How am I going to live longer and healthier?

One is obviously taking your medications, which is great. Two is going to see your doctor at the regular times, but there’s so many other things because there’s so many other complications and sequeries of hypertension that we need to pay attention to. Number three, you need to can be forum, right?

Paying attention, listening to podcasts like this. The paying attention to your whole health, imbibing the culture of health, to see that: Hey, I care about my health so much. I need to make sure that this hypertension does not kill me because it can. But it doesn’t need to, right?

Making sure that if you’re hypertensive, you have a low salt diet. Understanding that if you’re hypertensive, you need to work out and, and, um, have a healthy lifestyle. Um, Identifying that if you’re hypertensive and obese, that that doesn’t not go well together. So you need to have some type of exercise regimen that will help you lose weight and on and on and on.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:06:16] Alrighty. So, are there like any actionable steps? Like, okay, we know culture of health. It’s like sometimes people hear these things, right. But they need like someone to break it down for them.

Are they’re like actionable steps in other forms to be able to start to incorporate and introduce this culture of help into our lives so we can leave the successful lives we want?

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:06:41] Yeah. So, so I think one of the issues with embracing the culture of health has to do with the lack of understanding of what it entails and how beneficial it is. Right?

So let me quickly use a case study before to explain better why it’s important, before I tell you the tips, right? So there’s a young professional, a typical young professional man who has a busy life. You know, anywhere around the world. He’s 45 years old. He has a wife, he has three children.

He’s not a smoker, not a drinker. You know, he just lives a normal, good life, you know, appears to be in a general good state of health. And, he only drinks alcohol socially. He works for approximately nine hours a day. His commute to work is about three hours plus. You know, his weekends are leisurely. Catches up on sleep.

Sometimes go see events and things like that. But then he started having constant headaches. Right. Which he attributed to stress at work. And then, you know, and then he just takes some pain relief and he gets better. And so, and then he noticed that he had some slight warming of his body. Like he was fever out to touch and things like that.

Um, but he didn’t think much of it. Um, so fortunately when he had that fever out the touch feeling, it was a Friday. And so the next morning he went to the- this was an Africa- healthcare physician. He went to see a nearby hospital and they said: Oh, he has malaria.

And they treated him in like 10 minutes of his done. And then he went on his way and Monday morning he had felt better. And then he just kept on going. On Wednesday he’s headaches returned, but he couldn’t get to see the doctors. And he was like, okay, he’ll go back again on Saturday because he’s busy with work. And then he takes painkillers. On Friday at work, he collapsed and he was dead.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:08:23] What!?

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:08:25] Yes, this is a true story. Yes, and yes. And so this happens, but this could have been prevented. Because he was in Africa, they say common things occur commonly. Et cetera, et cetera. They just completely assume that malaria was the only thing that was wrong with him. And he, as a young man in a place where malaria isn’t deadly, he just also took it like, okay. Yeah, he doesn’t go for checkups because that’s the manly thing to do: not check your health.

You don’t check your health. Right?

And then, because he doesn’t have any obvious ailment , his body is fine, it looks good and everything,  we have this false sense of safety and complacenc y . And so we’re not proactive about our health. We take it for granted. And so we have poor health seeking behaviors.

And so  to answer your question. Number one: you need to develop health seeking behavior. You have to search- see, I don’t know what matters most to you, but what matters most to me is my life. And that should be what matters most for everybody. But everybody has other priorities. Money: which is important, education: which is also important, but there’s nothing that should matter or to you than your life and consequently your health.

Because if you have poor health, you’re not going to have a good life. You know what I mean?

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:09:52] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:09:54] And so number one is having a great- a better health seeking behavior. Number two is you need to do a checkup regardless of whether you’re well, or you’re sick at least once a year. And if you can do that, that even takes off the burden off you.

That ok- I don’t know anything about healthcare. I’m not a doctor or I don’t even have the time or the wherewithal, the mental capacity to deal with this. Let me send it to the doctors that I am seemingly well like: Hey doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me, but I want you to check me out. That is one thing of thing that you can do to help yourself because…

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:10:29] Let me ask you a question. Because people think that what age should they start going to see a doctor? Like, you know,…?

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:10:37] Everybody every year. Right. I take my kids for check ups when there’s nothing wrong.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:10:43] Absolutely.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:10:44] So yeah, you do that!

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:10:48] I go for one. You don’t say: because I’m 40, now I can go.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:10:52] Yeah.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:10:52] In your twenties you still need to go.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:10:55] That’s absolutely right. You know, you don’t start living at 30 or 40 or 50. No, but I mean, 30 year olds have cancer. 40 year olds have cancer. 20 something year olds have cancer, unfortunately. You know, but what it is is that they don’t have to die from cancer. 30 something have high blood pressure. 20 something year olds have high blood pressure, but they don’t have to have that happen because there’s a pre hypertensive state.

There’s a pre-diabetic state. We can catch it at that time. So that’s what we want to do. So one thing you can do is go for a check up, and that would  be okay. It  wouldn’t solve everything. Right. Cause you’re going for a checkup and then you go out and then you start drinking five bottles of beer a day. That’s not going to help you.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:11:47] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Very good. Very good. Okay. So, okay. Alrighty. So what I’m getting is this: We be just need to be more open and  sometimes people just don’t want to hear it, right. They don’t want to go to the doctor, because they say: when I go to the doctor, that’s when they find something. True, because there was something there .Because there was something there to find if there wasn’t, they wouldn’t find it. So is there any other actionable steps?

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:12:18] Yeah. So, so yeah, obviously go to the doctor, but then also in yourself, you need to learn about yourself. You understand your body.  You know, physicians, some physicians say that pain is good for you. And I agree because it is the way that your body’s telling you that there’s something wrong.

Right. And so. Know yourself, right? Know, because  sometimes our body gives us telltale signs that there’s something wrong with us, but we don’t pay attention. Especially men. Right. They say, Oh, I’m okay. Oh, this. You can’t do that. You know, I know that sometimes, and this is a women. Women actually push things off , because they’re busy. Because they’re super women. Because they’re super moms, they pay attention to their bodies, but they don’t do anything about it. Because, you know….

Well, the point I’m trying to make here is that you need to pay attention to your body because sometimes your body’s telling you things that you need to pay attention to. Because when you do pay attention, it makes a difference between stage one cancer and stage three cancer. And then the outcomes: you living or dying from cancer.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:13:21] Absolutely. Absolutely. Even I think simple things. Right. So I’ll give an example about myself. So normally I don’t eat like a lot of carbohydrates, but.

One, I think last weekend we were going on a trip and I was like, Oh my husband brought some ginger ale, we had juice. It has sugar in it. He bought some other things and you know what? I drank it. And you wouldn’t believe it. That evening overnight. I could not keep my eyes open. I was so tired, so simple. And then I was like, Oh, no my body does not like the sugar. It drains me of energy. I cannot be a productive human beings if I eat sugar. So simple things like that. I think it’s because if my body doesn’t like it that means, it can cause other things right. Yeah, because it doesn’t like it. It can lead to other things. So little things like that, just pay attention to your body, even if you’re a superwoman, right.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:14:12] Exactly. Pay attention to your body. And then another thing is that there’s a lot of myths associated with healthcare. You need to forget those things. Things like, Oh, um, I’m too young. I think we tried to talk about it earlier. Um, I can’t have a serious problem because I’m young and healthy, the stuff like that. You know, we have some time additional myths depending on what part of the world you’re from, that stops us from coming in.

Then even mental health. This is where mental health comes in. Right. I guess for me, mental health is actually part of having a culture of health. Your mental health is really, really important. You need to pay attention to your emotional and mental health because it feeds into the rest of your body. That there’s some subjects that are taboo.

There’s not that men never get depressed. That’s not true. And the kids do not get depressed or they don’t have anxiety and depression and they’re too young. And that we’re putting into their mind when we talk about it. And no, you need to pay attention to your mental health because it’s all part of your body, you know?

So that’s something else you need to pay attention to that we can do. Or we need to focus on that we’re not doing enough.

Absolutely.

And to find somebody to talk to. There are a lot of organizations like mine that are actually paying attention to people, preventatively and helping you imbibe the culture of health. They say that: Hey! Okay, what are we going to do?

You know, I know this happened the healthcare system in the United States. Uh, it seemed not to be, um, productive. That okay. You just go in and get treated and get out. Um, but some doctors will take the time to sit down with you and say: okay, tell me what’s going on. Somebody will come in with, um, one thing by the time they write down, we find out that it’s something completely different that is wrong with you.

All we have to do is take out time to actually listen to them. And so the point is that there are physicians and healthcare providers. Nurses, and nurse practitioners that are willing to help you. And so we seek out somebody to talk to.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:16:08] Yeah, absolutely. And even if  the physician is like- say they’re busy.

They refer you to somebody else that would take-say like a nutritionist or pharmacist-. Somebody that can take the time to actually delve deeper, talk to you, be your cheerleader so you can achieve your goal. That’s what I do kind of thing. So yes, absolutely. Thank you. Yay. So I hope people- cause I know from experience, a lot of people that I know don’t go into prevention, they don’t see the need to do this or do that.

Like you are just wasting money. Why are you doing that? Blah, blah, blah. I’m like I’m saving money for the future. That’s it. And just, you can choose to save life your way. I can say like: Oh, you’re always on a diet. You don’t eat this. You don’t do comma.

Yes. This is my way. And I hope you can choose. You can choose what you want, but this is my way of doing things.

Cause I think prevention is better than cure.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:17:04] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:17:05] Yes. Yes. So we’ve kind of gone around a lot. Right? Kind of talked about a few things here today. What is one thing, do you want to make sure that people we’ll get away from discussion today? Even if they did not. If they kind of like glossed over everything.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:17:19] Okay. What I am and how I would like to end this is that: If you do not make time for your body and your health today, you are going to make time for illness tomorrow.

There’s, there’s no doubt about it. Because you know, the body is like a machine that one day will break down. There’s no machine that can go on and on and on right? At one day. And one time in your life, you will get sick. You will be ill. And so. You need to prepare for that time. And so to prepare for that time, it’s like a tuneup, right?

You need to get tuned, your car needs to get tuned. And if it doesn’t get tuned, it will either one day will just break down completely. And you’re never going to be able to fix it again. I don’t want you to get to that point where you’re never going to be able to fix your body again because that’s death or disability.

What I need you to do is pay attention to your health now. By making sure you do your health checkups, um, empowering yourself with knowledge, um, having a better health seeking behavior, improve your lifestyle. Use gadgets. I mean, there’s this bit, there’s all that bit. And also many bits. Walk. Just walk. If you decide to start walking today, a thousand steps, two thousand steps, it’s going to change your life.

It all matters. You know, there’s nothing too little. If he didn’t do something yesterday, but he decided to do it today, it all adds up. So please make time for your health today so you don’t have to make time for illness tomorrow.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:18:53] Awesome. Very good. Very good. Awesome. That was a good one. That was good one.

Alrighty. So how can people get ahold of you say they want to follow up with you after the show, or actually be able to learn more about Magna Carta Health or Mentoring Her.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:19:06] So they can go to our website is www.magnacartahealth.com or they can follow us on social media, magna carta health.

We’re an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and all that kind of stuff. Um, you can find me on social media @drlolaadeyemi, everywhere on social media. And then on Instagram and all that LinkedIn, you can just add me and things like that. And then Mentoring Her as, as the name sounds, @mentoringher not mentor her.

Mentoring Her, um, that’ll be www.mentoringher.com. And we’re on social media as all of that name as well. And then you can also reach out to you. They can reach out to you and then you’ll find me.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:19:49] Absolutely good. Very good. So Mentoring Her, I’m a little  more interested in that though.  I kind of said it right, but yeah, break it down for us.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:19:57] So Mentoring  Her really is an offshoot of. So I’m obviously female and I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a physician, but I’m also an entrepreneur. And I realized when I was getting an award for entrepreneurship, I was, um, I came, there was a compensation about the fact that women mentors were hard to find.

And so I decided to change the narrative and that’s why I started  Mentoring Her. To enable women mentors, to connect with other women through technology, because I realized that was the easiest way to do it. A way to break the barriers of access the women have mentoring, one another. Because of our multiple society.

And that’s basically how Mentoring Her came about. That was my way to somehow support women, folk and girls and women. And so it’s an online virtual platform everybody’s working.  You can be anywhere in the world and it breaks off the barriers of access, time, geography, social, economic, demographic status.

And so you don’t have to know anyone and you just come there, you apply to be a part of the community. We do a, some type of background checkup on you and then join us. And then, you know, you just connect and you find either a mentor or a mentee, and then youguys just, just help one another form meaningful  connections.

It’s not, it’s not a LinkedIn. You just say, hi, I have followers. No, it’s not an Instagram that you follow. It’s something that matters. That says: Hey, Adeola I need help about this. You’re a pharmacist, you’ve done this. I want to be a pharmacist. How did you get there? Oh, Hey, Dr. Lola, um, I want to be a physician or I’m a physician, but I want to do this.

I want to change my career or I have problems with, with school. Anything you want  to do. And basically that’s what it is.

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:21:33] Yeah. So I was very interested in that because yes, like I said, Dr. Lola Was my mentor that held my hand. In my, like from product creation, we, my idea stage, or coming up with different ideas for my pitch and how I was actually using this thing to make my own product.

But how did I go from step A to step B to my final goal? So I always, like I said, I will always forever be grateful to you. Alrighty. So this was a wonderful show. I hope you learned a thing or two. Prevention is better than cure.

Dr. Lola Adeyemi: [00:22:05] Absolutely

Dr. Adeola Oke: [00:22:05] Take care of your body today. So you don’t have to take care of illness in future. Alrighty. Hope you got that. You guys all have a wonderful week and I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye bye everybody.

Bye Bye. Thank you.

Ending: [00:22:21] Thank you for listening and sharing your precious time with us. If you enjoy the show, then follow us and subscribe on iTunes, YouTube, or any app that carries podcasts. Have an awesome week. Best wishes to see you thrive.