[Tampa, 06/22/05] It seems aneurysms, (defined as an abnormal ballooning of a portion of an artery, related to weakness in the artery wall) have been a recurring news item lately as they have afflicted celebrities: (actor John Ritter [thoracic aortic aneurysm], singer Laura Branigan [brain aneurysm], & most recently legendary rocker Neil Young [brain aneurysm]). Thusly, it may seem this often debilitating & deadly condition is on the rise. Aneurysms are definitely on the rise with yours truly, as I survived a burst brain aneurysm just over a year ago, even after my emergency doctors called me for dead. (CLICK HERE to read that story).

   Neil Young's aneurysm may be found to be particularly ironic, as my research reveals that aneurysm spikes may stem from roots in the American farmlands that Neil Young has fought hard to defend.. (i.e. Farm-AID & in his music.. see my Neil Young 'musical editorial'). My struggle to recover from the brink of death via my burst aneurysm is one thing, but when something like this happens to Neil Young, I get mad & I demand answers!

    As I began to tell others my aneurysm story during recovery, I found that nearly everyone I told either knew someone or of someone who had suffered this fate. The unexpected number of occurrences I found just through the people I had immediate contact with led me to further investigate this issue. News of Neil Young's aneurysm, hyper focused me back on the task. Neil is an all-time favorite songwriter/performer of mine, & the thought of the loss it would have been during this current pre-fab music era sent me digging deep for answers. Digging is a good transitive verb here, because my research has placed me in the dirt.

    Louis Bromfeld (Pulitzer Prize winning author, farmer, & conservationist) stated the following: "As soils are depleted human health, vitality & intelligence go with them." One only needs to look at the skyrocketing rates of diet related disease in industrialized nations to validate the accuracy of this quote with respect to human health & vitality. With respect to human intelligence, it is what we will do about the soil problems raised in this article that will determine whether or not we have much intelligence left. I won’t editorialize on the current state of the average industrialized human's intelligence here, because my mom said that if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.

    2004 statistics on aneurysms are as follows: Undiagnosed prevalence of Aneurysm: about 2 million Americans with un ruptured brain aneurysms2; Undiagnosed prevalence rate: approx 1 in 136 or 0.74% or 2 million people in USA.2

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         Are aneurysms becoming more common? The preliminary correlative conclusion I have reached as a result of my research is this: Aneurysms are on the rise & will continue to become more common as industrialized, profit driven, chemical factory farming continues to leech farmlands of the mineral content needed to grow crops which contain the nutrition vital to human health, intelligence & well being. Specifically, what I have found is that copper, an essential mineral that should be present at much higher levels in many of the fruits & vegetables humans consume is one of the minerals most depleted from our agricultural fields3. A substantial amount of research shows that copper helps keep our blood vessels elastic.5

    Most aneurysms occur because our blood vessels loose elasticity & cannot stretch & return to shape when disorders like high blood pressure & additional factors that contribute to atherosclerosis & other diseases of the cardiovascular system cause changes in blood flow throughout the system. With the vast majority of cardiovascular problems experienced in the U.S. relating directly to the standard American diet, well what’s one more to be ignored as Americans supersize their way toward the glorious shapes of gluttony?

    The U.S. food supply is in what this journalist sees as a rather sinister state of affairs. We are being sold food that in essence, tricks us. Our grocery stores are piled high with fruits & vegetables that fill our bellies with bulk while often feeding us only a fraction of the nutrients contained in produce grown under healthy (i.e. natural) conditions.

    The USDA has recently relented to the fact that Americans are grotesquely obese & unhealthy largely because of the Standard American Diet (what I acronym as S.A.D.). The U.S.D.A. has in effect stated that their traditional food pyramid was all screwed up.4 Now the typical American is going to be officially steered to accept the fact that humans are not designed to eat a meatcentric diet laced with processed carbs, trans fats & processed sugars. Brilliant! Kudos to the USDA for catching up to what every vegetarian, naturopath & body-conscious individual has known all of their life by way of investigating what they put into their own & only bodies rather than blindly accepting whatever they are told or suckered into eating by Madison Avenue.

    However, what good does it do to increase to 9 ‘servings’ a day4 of fruits & veggies if they are nutritionally deficient of what they are supposed to contain (not by U.S. law, but by nature’s). Additionally, we should not forget the other wonderful ingredients we get in those colorful mountains of produce in our superstores… Unaware consumers also get the extra added bonuses of pesticides & petroleum based waxes which keep the produce package’ delightful to the eye so that money can be extracted from the consumer's wallets via the same way they are fooled into buying most things, which is by how things look.
   

    In keeping with the spirit of my Conscious Consumers’ site, let me move on from citing, complaining & preaching about these crimes against nature & onto whatever the heck we might be able to do about this ‘situation – non – comedy’.

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