If Modern Life Makes Us Ill Then Why Keep Eating The Same Way with Dr Ayomide Sina-Odunsi (Nigeria)

You can feel the shift when your body stops “bouncing back” and starts sending invoices: low energy, poor sleep, creeping weight gain, and random aches that were not there in your twenties. We sit down with Dr Ayomide Sina-Odunsi, a medical doctor now working as an emergency officer in the humanitarian sector, to talk about what changed when he stopped treating nutrition like background noise and started treating it like a daily practice.

We get practical about sustainable health habits, including intermittent fasting, skipping breakfast when it makes you sluggish, reducing refined carbohydrates, cutting down sugar and fizzy drinks, and eating earlier in the evening to improve sleep quality. We also go beyond the usual “eat more veg” advice and ask harder questions about ultra processed foods, packaging, hidden additives, “zero calorie” products, and even the gap between what is marketed as organic and what actually shows up in your kitchen.

The conversation widens to food access and cost, from supply chains to why healthier options can be priced out of reach in big cities, and why children deserve stronger nutritional protection in schools and public spaces. We end with a habit almost anyone can do: walking. Dr Ayumidi shares how daily walks support mental health, metabolic health, and deep sleep, and why tiny changes consistently repeated beat a one week reset.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a friend who feels stuck, and leave us a review with the one nutrition habit you are testing next.

Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King

Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

Dr Ariel R King 0:41

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Business of Life with Dr. King. Today we have an extremely special guest, Dr. Ayumiti. Welcome, sir.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Thank you very much, Dr. King. It's lovely to be on your podcast.

Dr Ariel R King 0:54

Thank you. Would you please introduce yourself to our audience and also our topic for today?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

My name is Um Ayumidish Nodisi. I'm a medical doctor by background. However, I currently do not practice medicine actively, but I work as an emergency officer in a humanitarian space. And today we will be talking about health and nutrition and how it can be an active activity and not just a passive activity.

Dr Ariel R King 1:29

Thank you. That's such an important, such an important subject. Why don't we start with why do you think health and nutrition is important or why is nutrition important for health?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yes. Well, first to say, I'm not a board certified nutritionist. I'm just a guy who is passionate about health and nutrition. And saying this from a point of you know changing my or making making active changes to my health and nutrition made a big difference in my life. So I think this is something that people or specifically millennials who are in their mid-30s

Nutrition And Ageing For Millennials

SPEAKER_01 2:09

or you know, early 30s, going into their 40s, need to really take a big care about because you know we tend to overlook how much a difference what we put in our bodies are and how disnutrition makes a big impact on our health on the long run.

Dr Ariel R King 2:36

Thank you so much for that. May I ask what changes what changes did you see for yourself and what changes did you institute and and what was the effect of those changes? Those changes.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Okay, so first I would say in my 20s, I mean my mid-30s now, but in my 20s, um, you know, being a young person, you had all the energy. You know, you would go out with friends, you could have food late night, you could eat anything. But getting into your early 30s, you start to realize you're like quite a lot of changes are going on in your body. You start getting ill, you start getting, you know, sicker by the day. And you know, I started to just um, you know, just to do like a research on how to improve and optimize my health,

Intermittent Fasting And Cutting Sugar

SPEAKER_01 3:21

and I realized one of the biggest factors was nutrition. And to change this, it doesn't even require a lot of changes. Just something as simple as you know, intermittent fasting a few days a week, you know, reducing carbs, you know, more proteins, more many um, more vegetables, you know, less sugar. And you realize just something as little as this can make a big difference, and this brings you to start to even do more research, and then you start to go down the rabbit hole of supplementation, exercise, sleep, you know, and then you realize how much of a difference this did. And for me personally, I, you know, over the years, the past few years, I would say four or five years, I've made a difference in how I eat, what I eat, exercise. I'm not the you know fitness fanatic, but the little changes I made in terms of what I put in my body and how I, you know, exercise, sleep, it made a very big difference in my overall health.

Dr Ariel R King 4:26

So, did you find that changing your diet, you have more energy? And did you start little by little, or did you start by eliminating all of these things at once and you know, a big bang? How how did you start?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

So, first I started little by little. I just, you know, something as simple as skipping a meal. There's this whole you know, recommendations about three times, eating three times daily. I don't know. I just skip one meal, you realize you feel healthier, you feel stronger, and then you start to explore intermittent fasting. You know, you start the 1860s, you start the one meal a day, and then you start to realize which works for you the best. And for me, it started like little by little. And over time, what I just did was, you know, I cut out like complex carbohydrates, I started to reduce my rice portions, bread portions, you know, and this made a big difference in my health. If I say it wasn't a big bang, it was just uh little by little changes here and there, you know, cutting down on um eye sugar sodas, and um cutting down on orange juice, because I really liked them, you know, going for more fiber, natural options, you know, these little changes, which are not something that are drastic or very hard to keep up with, you know, you realize you have more energy. You realize when you fast for longer than you know, six, eight hours, you have more energy. So, yeah, these little things were things I realized, you know, made a difference and maybe big impacting my health. And something something as simple as not eating after 7 p.m. improved the sleep quality that I had compared to the days when I would eat my dinner at like 10 p.m. and sleep at 11, you know, and have a bad night of sleep. So yeah, something as simple as this.

Dr Ariel R King 6:19

That's that's so interesting because many times, you know, when we talk about nutrition, we we we only talk about what to eat, many times what not to eat, especially people that are in very stressful and cities, environments that have a lot of packaged food, for example, even packaged vegetables.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Yes.

Dr Ariel R King 6:39

And talk about what we should eat. But what I've noticed is that some of these things that we should eat sometimes themselves have chemicals in it. One example looking at is the salads.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

For me, for example, what I say is anything that comes in a box or a package, I don't touch it. Yes, not every

Processed Food And Hidden Additives

SPEAKER_01 6:56

single time, obviously. However, I critique everything that comes in a package or pack because it's gone through some form of process and you should question it. You shouldn't just eat blindly, you know. Same with packaged vegetables, packaged fruits. They must have been cleaned or washed with some form of chemicals, industrial chemicals, you know. It's different from when you're buying it straight from the farm. Yes, at the farm, they might have used some chemicals, like, you know, fertilizers. However, it's different from when it's gone through a cleaning process again before coming to the shelves in a supermarket. You know, I lived in Mozambique for five years and I was very lucky to be able to access organic fruits straight from the farms, you know, from the local farmers. And I can tell you, it's very different when you eat a banana from the farm compared to buying a banana at the supermarket in big city, you know, in a western country or even in an African country as well, you know. Yeah. And apart from apart from this uh processed food and industrialized, you know, packaging, there's also that access where in many big cities, many people can't really access very good options. Or and there's something that we I've also noticed in a uh over the past few years is the LDR options are much more expensive than the cheap options. So people kind of just you know settle for what they can, which is like fast food, you know, processed food. And on the long run, this makes a big difference.

Dr Ariel R King 8:34

I mean, that that's that's such a that that's such a good point. And sometimes it is difficult to access food even when you want to. I've noticed that there's a there's a new trend, and it's called made with biomaterial. Some of the foods have this, and I and I ask somebody, what is that? And this is plastics and other things that are literally inside of food. So there's a there's a market. I'm thinking to myself, can it still be called food if it has something of biomaterial like plastics and so on and so forth within the food itself?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah, because honestly, I've been seeing a lot of this recently. I've been doing a lot of reading, however, you know, with research, it's sometimes you also have to question who's publishing, who's funding this research, you know, all of these things, you know, to not be called a conspiracy theorist, it's just things you need to question, you know. Just like for example, there's all forms of option meat or chicken that's coming out now that's you know, they are still possibly studying and saying it's good, you know. Yes, people do eat them, which is fine. However, if you have the options of eating you know real meat or real chicken, why not? You know, if you can afford it, yeah. Same with fruits and vegetables, there's a lot of discussions around GMOs. I know the experts are giving all kinds of uh, you know, uh guidances regarding this, which is fine. However, if you have the options of eating organic, why not? You know, so that's how I see it. However, overall, the conversation is not just about biomedical food or GMOs, it's also about what exactly you put in your body, you know. Because you could be eating by the what's it called? GMO options of fruits and still live a LD lifestyle, you know.

Dr Ariel R King 10:28

So that's a very good point. That's a very good point. I know for myself that um my family members love cucumbers. Um in one country I would buy cucumbers and it comes from the local farmers. And I and I know that it does because you can see another cucumbers in plastic, and we stay away from that particular cucumber that's in plastic, you know. And I would go to a second country and order organic cucumbers, start to cut it, and all the green would come off of it. And then I realized, oh my goodness, this vegetable has food coloring, even though it's organic and it costs literally, I think, double what a normal one costs. And I notice that even though I've actively tried to assess what am I eating and how do I eat it, that somehow I'm still missing the mark because I'm buying foods that that are actually have color in them, some kind of color dye, uh, even though it's claims are organic. Can I ask, do you do you think that there should be more movements of people literally trying to get directly from the farms or more options for people rather than just local supermarkets or local stores that don't necessarily have fresh fruits from the farms?

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Honestly, I think it all comes down to supply chain of, you know, I'm gonna give example of Nigeria. I'm I'm Nigerian, I live in Nigeria, I may not know a lot about supply chain of food produce from the farms. However, a few of my friends who have farms do complain about, you know, maybe, for example,

Organic Food Access And Cost

SPEAKER_01 12:01

roads, road access to like rural communities not been very good. So these farmers rely on middlemen who come to get these items to, you know, go sell at the market. Now, you have to look at a situation where the middlemen also have to factor in the costs of moving these things to the markets. And when they get it to these cities, for example, they would possibly want to sell them to supermarkets because you know it's much more profit, there's a there's a bigger profit margin to sell to the supermarket. So this already reduces the supply of those produces in the markets for most people who can afford them to buy. They would have to rely on buying them from the supermarket. And those who can buy them from the supermarket cannot access this produce, even if they are organic. Now, if you look at a GMO produce, for example, maybe it's more in supply, it's more available. You might actually flood the market with this. So the point is yes, the supply is there, however, can they access it based on the you know the cost? And this is something that uh it makes a big difference in in what people can access in terms of uh LD options, you know, or organic options as well. Yeah.

Dr Ariel R King 13:15

Thank you. I think that's so that's so interesting. You know, you were saying something about eating three times a day, and I I was always taught that you eat three times a day, and possibly I won't say two snacks, but two other times, you know, um just before dinner and then in the afternoon. And even for children, raising children, you think that they need snacks several times a day. Um in your personal opinion and from what you've experienced, is there a difference between children and and adults and how many times we need to eat? And in general, are we just eating too much?

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Honestly speaking, I'm gonna tell you straight up, I think we as modern

Are We Eating Too Much

SPEAKER_01 13:52

humans in 2026 are eating too much. And I'm gonna focus on adults. For children, I'm not an expert as a pediatrician. However, as someone who grew up through childhood, because I was a child at some point, I can tell you, yes, children need a lot of um, you know, um energy compared to adults. Because you could run all day, you could play, you know, you basically are growing, so you need more energy, more nutrients. However, the quality of what you give the child is what makes it different in how they grow into an adult, you know. So even if kids may eat three times daily, obviously good options, not just sugar and you know, bad food. But as adults, I think we are eating too much. Now, this idea of eating three times daily, it still needs to be. I'm sure there's a lot of uh guidances online about this. I'm sure there's a lot of conflicted, conflicting uh discussion and rhetoric about it. However, on a personal note, I can tell you for a fact, eating three times daily has always been very bad for me. First of all, I skip breakfast. I don't like breakfast because whenever I eat breakfast, I get sluggish. I feel slow. You know, this could be due to maybe uh insulin levels and things like that. However, for me, when I skip breakfast, I feel like I realize I have more energy. First of all, I don't drink coffee because I've never been a coffee drinker. I just drink it like uh like just a normal drink. It's not something I need to function on my on a day, on a daily basis. However, when I skip breakfast, I feel good. When I have my first meal at 12 o'clock, for example, maybe a nice heavy meal, right? That's it. And then in the evening, I could have something small at six, more proteins, obviously. And you know, I realized I function well. I there was a particular time when I was doing one meal a day, and I realized, so what I did was for my one meal a day, I eat anything I want to eat in any quantity, and I realized it was working for me, you know. So it just depends on what works for you. Uh however, I would say, in terms of you know, adults and how we are today, I think we are eating too much, I think we are eating the wrong things as well. Because, for example, when I speak to some of my like older colleagues or mentors, they tell me that their parents or their grandparents used to eat once a day or you know, twice a day. So I started to I start questioning when did this become the norm to eat three times daily, where you have to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And now the problem actually is not even eating three times daily, the problem is what people actually eat three times daily. You know, you could have three meals, but there could be healthy options if it works for you. However, when you look at what people consume these days, you have to put start to put questioning. Like it causes a lot of inflammation, high risks of diabetes, mellitus, high risk of cardiovascular issues, you know, a range of illnesses come down to nutrition. You know, the people never let their body go through autophagy to just clear out bad cells, you know. And this is one of the issues that uh I think we need to really push and question and educate people more about.

Dr Ariel R King 17:15

I think that's so that's so important. And what do you think about the I mean, there are food industries that need to have a business and they need to make a profit, and that's really important. So there are many food industries that that have to do with dish drinks, sugary drinks, vitamin drinks, vitamin water, so on and so forth. Um, can I ask for yourself personally, what are some of your views about some of these? Some people call them soft drinks, sodas, I don't know, basically water with food calorie and some kind of sugar in it. And what do you think that is for health and how bad is it for our health?

Drinks Marketing And Label Reading

SPEAKER_01 17:52

So, as again, I would say I'm not an expert, however, you know, when it comes to sugary drinks, sodas, you know, calorie drinks, I just think people need to do their own research. You know, when you're buying something off the counter, you want to drink it. You need to first, you need to look at it, like what is what is the sugar content, you know, what are the other, you know, non-sugar items that are in this product. If something is zero calorie, why is it zero calorie? What am I putting in my body? You know, so I I wouldn't say they are bad outrightly. I'm just gonna say you just need to question what you're putting in your body. I do drink soda, I do drink juice, I do drink all of these things sometimes. However, there are some things you see off the counter and you have to question, like, why am I even drinking this? What does this do to my body? And honestly, to be fair, there's some things you drink and you realize, or you feel different because you drank this, and then you have to look back and be like, okay, what was this and why is it like why do I feel like this after I drink this? You know, obviously, we know sugary drinks like sodas and stuff are not very good for people for you know for consumption multiple times a day and for long periods of years, because there's obviously the risk of uh you know, diabetes belitus due to like uh insulin levels. However, when it comes to other range of um drinks being produced in the market now, you just need to question everything. Because at the end of the day, it's a free market. People can make products and sell, they could advertise them to you in a very good way, but you should do your due due diligence to know exactly what it is you're buying and why you're buying it, and if it's very good for your body or not.

Dr Ariel R King 19:35

I think that's a very good point. Do you think that children in general need some kind of, I would say, special protection when it comes to some of these, some of these food items that actually can be harmful to health? Definitely. We we find in sports halls, sometimes in schools, there are machines that sell not just candies, of course, and other things, but also these sugary drinks. So should we really be looking at protecting our children or children in general from some of these harmful foods?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Definitely. I totally believe in this. And this is something that I've, you know, I'm I I I if it is, I'm an advocate for this. You

Kids Need Nutritional Protection

SPEAKER_01 20:12

know, we protect kids, and I think we should also protect kids' nutrition as well. Kids have a, you know, they have a right to the good food options, they have a right to good nutrition. You know, I uh my thirstis in my master's year was food insecurity in high-income countries, you know, and it was a very interesting work that I did. However, when you look back and and look when you look at for me, look back at my childhood, you know, looking at the food options I had, and when you look back at kids today and what they have, you need to question a lot like why are we feeding our children this? You know, so this is something I think should really be in like policies where kids are protected, not just uh physically, emotionally, or mentally, but also you know, nutritionally. They need to be protected in terms of what we give them, what they have access to, you know, what parents feed them, what schools give them, and what they also can buy outside. Yeah.

Dr Ariel R King 21:12

That makes a big difference. I've had people actually tell me that, like you, that their health change when they change their diet. So there are people that I know with various that that have been diagnosed with various diseases that usually need medications, or usually medications are prescribed. Let me say that. And some of them choose instead to say, Well, let me see what I can do with my body to heal my body with a special type of nutrition. And there seems to be evidence, scientific evidence, that food really does change and can help change the trajectory

Food Changes Health Trajectories

Dr Ariel R King 21:49

of a disease or an illness. Um, what's your thought on that?

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Definitely. So I've been doing a lot of research regarding food. You know, there's a lot of information online regarding, you know, people changing or reversing diabetes, for example, just by you know long-term dry fasting. I'm sorry, long-term fasting specifically. You know, there's change, there's people who've reported reversing cancer, some forms of cancer with you know, maybe fasting or going on an alkaline diet. There's all kinds of information online. However, I can tell you for a fact, personally, for me, my health and the quality of my life changed when I changed my diet. And now, when I say change my diet, I don't Even mean changing my diet drastically. No. I still, you know, I still have an occasional margarita, I still have an occasional soda, I still eat an occasional pizza, you know. However, overall, changing my diet was what changed my health. And going from eating multiple pizzas, you know, every week to eating maybe once a week, you know, made a difference. You know, going from eating three heavy meals every day to eating one heavy meal and one light meal before seven o'clock made a difference. You know, going from living a purely sedentary lifestyle to walking seven to ten kilometers on a daily basis made a very big difference for my health. So I can tell you, despite everything that's online, what people need to do is just do the research on themselves. You know, we are all people of science. Run an hypothesis on yourself. Take a few days of fasting, for example, see how you feel. Take a few days of cutting out one or two meals, see how you feel, see the difference. You know, the problem is people expect changes overnight. They don't want to put in the work, you know. However, when you do something for multiple days, you start to see differences. And for me, the quality of my health may you know had a very big change. My early 30s were, you know, very stressful work, life, you know, navigating all of this. I started to get very sickly, you know, but getting into my mid-30s, I started to make you know make very big differences in how I live compared to that. And I realized I wasn't in my 20s anymore. My body doesn't work the same way, you know, and you have to respect your body. And this made a big difference for me.

Dr Ariel R King 24:20

I like that. I do I understand you say that you're walking every day, or you put in extra.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

I walk almost every day. I try to literally like if you let me just show you my my phone app. So this is my sessions, like every single day, you know.

Dr Ariel R King 24:38

Oh my goodness, yes, oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Like you see five kilometers, 7.3 kilometers. How do you do that?

Dr Ariel R King 24:45

That's amazing. I just do you do you purposely walk rather than going into a car? If you have an option of walking, do you say, okay, I choose to walk, I will refuse to go in the car, or uh public transportation or a bus or whatever

Walking Sleep And Daily Movement

Dr Ariel R King 24:57

it is. Do you literally walk to where you need to go?

SPEAKER_01 25:00

So usually, because my work doesn't uh allow that, because my work is mostly in the office or when I'm in the field working, usually what I do is every evening I just take a walk, take a one or two hour walk, listen to a podcast, get on the phone, because you've had the all day to work. So get on the phone with a family member, you know, get a phone on your phone with a friend, you know, listen to a podcast for an hour or two and just take a walk. The body requires this, you know. Walking one hour minimum of 30 minutes makes a very big difference in your body on the long run, you know. And sometimes I push as much as 10 kilometers on some days, some days more, you know, but I try to limit it to at least five kilometers. I'm not saying this is has to be the norm for everybody. I'm just saying for me, it worked. And I realized the more I do this, the better I feel overall, you know. And on days when you walk more, you feel much better the next day. It doesn't have to be every single day, but something as simple as three or four times a week makes a big difference in your body, also with what you eat. Yeah.

Dr Ariel R King 25:58

And I think most likely makes a difference with your mental health too. And you're in your outcome. Did it affect your sleep positively, also?

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Well, oh yes, it did, because you realize you sleep deeper, you sleep better, and you sleep like a baby, you know. Just exercising a few days a week and you know, changing how you eat a few days a week makes a big difference in how you sleep. And this is not even talking about supplementation or whatever. This is just what we do every day. You know, as you said earlier, like sometimes when I go on vacation or when I travel or when I'm on leave, you know, I may find myself in a season where I look at the map from year to year is like a 10-minute drive. However, it's a 15 to 20 minute walk, maybe going through a short cut or something. I can just take a walk, you know. I'll be like, oh yeah, let's walk it. And then you just take a walk and you realize these little changes here and there make a big difference when summed up, you know. Unlike you know, actively trying to make a big difference of maybe, for example, going to the gym or whatever, that's fine as well. I mean, but something I'm just saying, like what everyone can do on a single on a simple day is just walk, it's the cheapest and most readily available activity anybody can do.

Dr Ariel R King 27:16

Dr. Ayumidi, thank you so much. Um our time is over, and I've I've really been inspired. I'm gonna go for a walk this evening.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yes, please.

Dr Ariel R King 27:25

Thank you so much. And to our audience, thank you so much for joining us. And remember, if I'm not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, when am I? If not now, then when? That was by the philosopher Hillel. And I've added if not me, then who? Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Thank you very much.