Doctor on Rawfood

The father of eight says he has been practicing herbal medicine for about five years now, after two years of practising modern medicine whose results were disappointing. Since he is 50 years old, this means he has only been practicing since he was 47 but does not clearly tell what he studied before then. “I trained as a medical doctor at Nairobi University then proceeded to Germany where I specialised in dermatology,” he says.He says that when he returned to Uganda to train, he found out that the drugs they were taught to use were not working as they had been said they would. “Calamine for instance did not cure itching as we had been taught it would,” he says. On a visit to South Africa, Ssali says he met a person who was dealing in herbs, though haphazardly.The dissatisfied ‘doctor’ got an insight into what could be got out of nature to aid health.He set out on a mission to learn as much as he could about herbal medicine, buying numerous books and asking the elderly what plants they used to cure different ailments. “I started to make my own drugs from the herbs in liquid form as syrups but realised I would have to devise means of preservation. I thus started to make my drugs in powder and tablet form, for instance aloe Vera tabs,” he says. Today, Dr. Ssali is established at Dama Herbal Clinic in Mitchell Cotts where there are queues of patients waiting to see him with all sorts of ailments at all times of the day. Almost everyone that has been his patient before or had the chance to discuss with him has become an ambassador of the doctor’s theories and procedures. “Back in the village where I come from, everyone now calls me doctor. I practice the health procedures with my family and any other sick people I meet,” confesses Buyondo. Ssali has also trained others like Diana-Rose Nakanwagi who performed the operation on Mr Buwule.With a glowing crease-free skin and unmistakable energy, Ssali hardly looks 50, a result of not having suffered any disease for over 10 years, he says. The trick, he reveals, is in keeping his body waste-free and balancing it as best as he can with the environment that harbors disease causing germs. “I don’t eat after 6p.m. and I rarely eat cooked food because it is only a burden for my body to digest yet it provides so little nutrient,” he explains. He also says he prefers to eat what the cow eats instead of eating the cow itself.According to him, we make our bodies dirty when we don’t follow the physiological cycle and thus fall sick. The physiological cycle, he says, requires that we eat water laden fruits between 4a.m. and noon to aid waste elimination since this is the period of elimination by the body. It is between noon and 6p.m. that we can eat freely, but wisely.“Eat small amounts of food, avoid meat and milk because the body hardly has the enzymes to digest such food. While the meat will remain in your body for seven days, the milk will decay there and become waste circulating in your blood system,” he cautions. His theory is not to live to eat but rather eat to live.After 6 to 8p.m., you should not eat, he cautions. This he calls the assimilation period for our bodies where they are trying to make use of what was consumed throughout the day. “It’s when we force the body to struggle to digest food when it shouldn’t, that we wake up tired or lazy in the morning. Digestion takes up a lot of energy. When the body is not given enough time to digest food, it becomes waste,” he says. “In fact the fat men moving around with sagging bellies are carrying waste.”He says that a healthy diet should consist of 60 percent fresh food which not only helps cleanse our bodies but also provides the minerals and irons we need in the body. In his words, “there is no better hospital in this country than Nakasero market”. “I deal with pressure, ulcers, epilepsy, diabetes, malaria, flu and everything else simply by riding the body of toxins and feeding it with what it requires. These are all caused from accumulation of waste from eating the wrong food at the wrong time of day,” he says.He says if we all bothered to understand how our bodies function, we would not have to spend most of our life fighting disease. “We fall sick because we eat wrongly. If we ate right, there would be no need for doctors,” says Dr. Ssali.His patients range from children to the elderly with both common ailments like malaria, fevers, itching, candida, flu and the seemingly complicated ones like keloids (extensive scars) and lipoma (swellings similar to what Buwule suffered), cardiac arrest and asthma. Buwule says he had to pay about Shs400,000 for his operation in addition to buying several of Ssali’s herbal medicines which were recommended. Patients at Dama Herbal Clinic are never admitted, but rather are given instructions on how to take care of themselves from home in addition to continuous scheduled visits back to the clinic for monitoring. This has led to some of the lost battles that have marred Dr. Ssali’s career so far, although he maintains that there has never been a medical situation too complicated for him to handle. “Some of the patients who have died even after being treated here are those that have not followed the instructions on how to cater for themselves after they leave this place. Persuading them to start eating only to live instead of living to eat for instance is among the most difficult thing to introduce to people,” he explains. Buyondo admits that it was difficult for him to adjust to not eating supper, avoiding sugar and eating raw food as much as he could. Some people however will not go the extra mile, so those with serious cases die.Nakanwagi says the other victims who die are those who come too late for treatment and not even the herbalist can help them.Dr. Ssali says he collaborates with the mainstream doctors at consultation level. “At times, I have to send some patients back for checking to confirm they are cured after I have treated them or refer them for check up before I venture into treating them,” he explains. He otherwise does not employ any modern medicine in his operations apart from the anaesthetic which he uses to numb patients before surgery mixed with herbal medicine to stop the bleeding. He has an assortment of drugs he has made from herbs which include soaps, syrups, beverages and tablets.Although he has recently opened up a consultation branch in Mbarara, Ssali is not interested in opening more branches around the country. “I’m mostly interested in empowering as many people as I can to take care of their health like I have done with those I have treated and the nurses I have recruited,” he says, adding that, “In fact, there are patients I simply instruct over the phone on what to do without letting them come over to see me.”