By Mukaila Kareem
I do not write about politics and in all my newspaper work I have published only one political article. That was when a Nigerian Minister of Finance was removed from office over a controversy involving her participation in the National Youth Service Corps. The NYSC was created to integrate freshly minted graduates under thirty into every part of the country through a one-year national placement outside their ethnic region. My writing usually comes from my lived experience in the village, my trade of physiotherapy and the ancestral benchmark of farming and hunting and gathering societies. These elements help me bring clarity to everyday people.
The challenge has always been the task of introducing a physics term like thermodynamics or distilling it down to entropy without mathematical equations in a metabolic space crowded by diet gurus who are either genuinely ignorant but highly articulate or deliberately deceptive in order to cultivate a loyal following. How can anyone bring such a concept into a conversation dominated by familiar phrases such as calories in calories out, energy balance and the so-called carbohydrate insulin hypothesis. These ideas, in fairness, capture the First Law of Thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The problem is that human life runs more on the Second Law which describes entropy. It is a difficult principle to explain without an everyday picture and for a long time I had not found one that fully satisfied me. I had several drafts of articles that I never submitted because I felt they lacked the clarity needed for a lay reader. That changed after I read an article titled “Once Upon an Ekweremadu” published in Nigeria’s The News Chronicle on November 16th, 2025 by Prince Charles Dickson. While reading it, the word entropy kept rising in my mind.
Without discussing Dr. Dickson’s analysis of the political rise and fall of Senator Ike Ekweremadu, everyone understands the impermanence of power. We have watched people in every sphere of life ascend like sunrise only to disappear into silence a few years later. The same hands that were kissed by sports fans or celebrated by supporters eventually become hands no one reaches for. This inevitable drift from influence to irrelevance is not limited to sports or politics. It is nature’s oldest law. Scientists call it entropy, a word that describes the tendency of every system, from popularity to obscurity, to slide from order into disorder unless energy is invested to maintain it. An elite athlete must continue training to stay at the top and a political leader must continually renew credibility to retain authority.
Our elders understood this long before physics assigned it a technical name. They said that no condition is permanent, summarizing in one proverb what thermodynamics stretches into pages. A leader who stops renewing trust and competence will see his position crumble. It does not matter how loud the sirens were or how high the office stood. Once effort stops flowing, order weakens. Influence fades the same way heat fades.
The human body follows the same truth. At rest, every cell maintains a delicate order created by fuels arranged in the right places and by signals prepared for work. The moment life begins to unfold, disorder begins to creep in. Molecules wander, heat escapes and the metabolic machinery starts to clutter. Without regular movement, this internal government loses control. Glucose lingers longer than it should, fats settle in places they do not belong and oxidative stress increases. It is the biological version of a leader who stops governing while everything gradually falls apart.
This is why exercise is more than a fitness suggestion. A simple thirty minute walk is not a calorie ritual. It is thermodynamic housekeeping that helps the body shed stored disorders. It is how the body regains control before chaos takes over and it reaches far beyond any calorie debate.
In politics, a leader who stops working becomes a memory spoken in the past tense. In metabolism, a person who stops moving invites disorders that eventually appear as hypertension, diabetes, fatigue, weight gain and chronic disease. Both society and biology follow the same principle. When energy is no longer invested, decline is not a possibility. It is a certainty because entropy respects no office and no organ.
Therefore, the next time you hear that no condition is permanent, remember that it is not only a social truth. It is a metabolic fact. Power fades when effort stops and health fades when movement stops. Entropy is always waiting. A clean room requires regular cleaning, or it begins to gather dust within days. Nature agrees with leadership on one principle: Nothing remains stable unless you show up every single day to hold it together.
Mukaila Kareem, a doctor of physiotherapy and physical therapy advocate, writes from the USA and can be reached via makkareem5@gmail.com
