Brain Fag Syndrome

Brain Fag Syndrome
Dear Doctor,
Thanks for spreading the wisdom of healthy living to we ignorant of the essence. I really appreciate your humane contribution to betterment to our society in term of healthy living. May good lord continue to reward you generously. Sir, I have persistent problem of battling fatigue on daily basis. Been a bookish individual, I have long developed the habit turn addict of reading on a daily basis. Early this year I started experiencing a slight ache sparking intermittently on the far right temple of my head. Despite my 8 to 9 hours of night sleep, the symptom has now turned to a full-blown fatigue. The continuing buzzing has commenced traveling vigorously through even the once safe regions of my head, thereby causing intense discomfort. Normally, I do up to 4 to 5 hours of reading at a go. But now I can’t even clock 2hours. I’ve gone on a personal diagnose of swallowing sleeping pills to help ease the persistent throbbing and drumming in my head. Please help doc, I can’t stand this any longer. My head is now like a beehive jam-packed with million buzzing bees. Your avid reader,
Lawry Jones; Ijeshatedo, Lagos
Dear Lawry Jones,
You have what is known as the brain fag syndrome, meaning your brain is fatigued or tired from so much effort to study and succeed. Here is a bit of research on brain--fag : "has been shown to occur very widely in African students in western educational systems south of the Sahara. But in this case, the fag is primarily experienced by stressed-out students in Nigeria and other parts of Africa--a reaction, it is said, to the alien pressures of Western-style book learning. Symptoms include difficulties in concentrating, remembering, and thinking, as well as burning or crawling sensations under the skin and visual disturbances. Studiation madness is a term used in Trinidad for a similar syndrome./Ethiopians refer to the brain-fag syndrome as "overworking of the head" due to the strain of studying. Prince, who first described the syndrome in Nigerian students and characterized its symptoms, emphasized that it stems from a cultural clash between African and Western civilizations./brain fag or brain fog: (West Africa) a condition experience by high school or university students. Symptoms include difficulties in concentrating, remembering, and thinking. Students often state that their brains are "fatigued". Additional symptoms center around the head and neck and include pain, pressure, tightness, blurring of vision, heat, or burning."
You see, about 1960, a certain professor of psychiatry working incidentally in Nigeria here ( Ibadan, I believe) by the name of Prince, described this syndrome and it has been widely accepted all over the world although there is still a considerable amount of skepticism on the part of other psychiatrists who feel that it is just a mere anxiety neurosis or depressive neurosis. The controversy is not strange and in fact has a very interesting aspect to it in that my Ife University Professor of Psychiatry; Olufemi Morakinyo believes in the brain fag syndrome and has written widely on it, while his equally Nigerian colleague working from Canada (formerly of Ibadan); Professor R. Olukayode Jegede feels there is nothing special about brain fag. The two professors are my close acquaintances!!! You see the key to understanding both the professors and the disease is the word "syndrome". Whenever doctors or medical scientists use that word for a disease the full meaning is that they do not totally understand the disease they are trying to describe. One scientist/doctor may see it this way, another sees it differently. Which is not strange either-- it has taken time to fully elucidate the natural history of most diseases that we fully understand today. What with South African President Thabo Mbeki actually claiming -- with some scientists (who are now being proved wrong) that AIDS is not caused by HIV and so on!!! Why? Well AIDS is a syndrome-- half understood -- even till now--although we're getting there gradually. So, what is my advice to you? Well, see a good doctor/ psychiatrist. Also, see your pastor/priest. Being a doctor and pastor to boot, if I were to treat you, I would physically thoroughly examine and investigate you to make sure you do not lack any micro-nutrients that could negatively affect the brain and then give you medications/nutrients that would help brain power; psychologically treat you for anxiety neurosis and --yes brain fag-- including full explanations of the disorder and the controversies it has generated while giving you assurance you would be cured; but spiritually, with prayer to God for hidden spiritual roots to your problem -- for if you ask me I would say, simply, that brain fag could very well be spiritually--engineered difficulties and obstacles placed in the way of especially brilliant, ambitious and academically gifted individuals like you to make sure their destinies are thwarted and ruined. By giving treatment at the 3 levels of human existence I would not fail.
Cheers
Dr.Caleb Bibbi Oluranti