Massage is good - says nutritionist

In Accra, the country's capital, and precisely at Madina – adjacent to the North Ridge Hospital and on the route leading to the Red Co. flats stands a massage clinic whose description compares to nothing than a treasure trove. Yes!, a treasure trove.

This is because not only has it, barely two years in existence, chalked greater heights in the spa business in the country, but also promises to change the face of it in the not-too-distant future.

This is much corroborated in the establishment, in addition to the clinic, of a new school to train professionals in massaging, taking students through basics in the subject area like the anatomy of the body, the seven chakras in the body, the body's energy centres and hemispheres, herbal treatments and their relations to blood groupings, as well as the various blood groupings and the relations to dietary intakes. Already, the school has started operating whilst student numbers keep ballooning by the day.

The clinic is also on the verge of metamorphosing into a full-fledged spa.

The clinic which specialises in massaging, both body and facial, also on routine basis conducts health talks with clients on dietary intakes, dwelling on the institutional credo that "eating well and exercising the body remain all it takes to maintain a healthy body."

The clinic, aside massaging, applies natural and alternative remedies like herbs, roots, spices, proper dieting, lime therapy and dietary supplements (food supplements tabulated and capsulated that assist the individual to replenish lost nutrients in the body) in treating client of diseases like body stress, candidiasis, pimples, just to mention a few, having first gotten information about clients vis-a-vis their blood groupings and dietary guidance.

In an interview with the 'Spectator', the superintendent of the clinic, Dr Pauline Zitolina, cautioned Ghanaians to "eat well" and "exercise the body".

Dr Zitolina, a professional herbal nutritionist and dietician, explained that eating well meant to eat more vegetables which, according to her, remains the "base of health."

"People have decided to go against the vegetable kingdom which is the main base of health," she said, adding that "everything that can assist the body to remain balanced comes from the vegetable kingdom."

An attempt to tap into the knowledge of Dr Zitolina also led this reporter to stumble upon what remains unknown to many Ghanaians about a cause of candidiasis, popularly called 'white', in women.

"People in blood group 0 desirous to live longer, and without having candidiasis, should stay clear of cabbages," she warned.
"This is because their body systems cannot digest and absorb it.

"Rather after a plate of food containing cabbage they will have gastritis (excessive accumulation of gas in the stomach and along the throat region)", she quipped, intimating that the consequence would be the creation of acids in the body “because the food has fermented but cannot be absorbed by the body.”

“The undigested cabbage will then start killing the beneficial yeast in the body, which will make you have first level candidiasis,” she said.

Dr Zitolina trained as professional herbal nutritional and dietician in Indonesia (Bali), having graduated from the Nsuka University and the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, all in Nigeria.

She is also a Massage Therapist who has authored five books, namely Medical Plants-Combat Stress, Slf Health, Candidiasis, Confidential tips for Health and Candidiasis Part III.