Aneurysms & Factory Farming, Neil Young, John Ritter, Laura Branigan, You & Me.
Originally published on The Conscious Consumers Network: ( 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 researchreveals 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
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.5Most 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’.
“There is a breaking news story I’m investigating that comes to me through an old friend. (Click on the Pure Produce Greenhouse link at the end of this article)6 & check out what very well could be a saving technology for our current produce mineral & pesticide crises… I am doing an interview for a forthcoming article on this technology & it’s founders, so stay tuned for the next C2 E-mail blast. Until then, question authority, buy organic, (more expensive than regular produce, but you get more for your money, including more ‘normal’ levels of nutrition which should be in the deficient produce you’re in effect wasting your money on. Also remember that the price of organic produce would fall if demand were higher). Read more about this in my article: “The Health Conscious Diet Is The Environmentally Conscious Diet“.
So, vote with your dollars to actively participate in keeping this country’s farmlands fertile & healthy. Remember that the U.S. began & established itself as world leader by being an agrarian nation before we had our industrial revolution. In my Viridian REVELutionwe will show how the two go hand in hand. Without a healthy natural resource base, wealth is not possible. The natural resource base is THE ONLY SOURCE of wealth. Wake up America, your dreaming a reality TV opiate of the masses dream. Breathe the air of freedom while it’s still free. (remember when pure water was?.. Not many do anymore).
Those who eat in harmony with the human biology (i.e., vegetarians) have less of a chance of developing aneurysms by way of Atheroma (the thickening of arteries from the depositing of plaque on artery walls). Arteriosclerosis is the hardening of artery walls. Atheroma & arteriosclerosis lead to atherosclerosis. People who develope these diseases usually become so fat & miserable that they want to die anyway, so nature helps them out by stopping their hearts for them. However, even vegetarians are at risk for aneurysm because of the mineral deficiencies in non-organically grown produce. Myself, being a vegetarian for most of my life may have suffered my burst AVM because of a copper deficiency.
An AVM is a congenital condition (meaning something I was born with). This cluster of blood vessels in my brain with no capillaries between them which burst in Feb. of 2004 may have burst because a copper deficiency left my blood vessels in a non-elastic state, then when I increased pressure in these susceptible blood vessels while singing, they gave way. You can read more of that enchanting evening by clicking here.
How ironic that an artist like Neil Young, who for so long has been a proponent of ecological conscientiousness & the American farmer should be blindsided by a condition that I contend came upon him via the destruction of the very farmlands he has fought so long & hard to protect during all his years of involvement with Farm Aid. I offer the data on copper under footnote 5 in support of my my contentions about mineral depleted farmlands & aneurysms:
My Editorial in Neil Young’s music..
The once fertile American lands that were taken from a native people who honored them as owned only by the creator who offered them to his children for their living have, as each of us have, become a “Broken Arrow” . A blessing of these native stewards was “Long May You Run”. This was not meaning to run for your life, but to live long & free in God’s creations. It won’t do no good livin’ on “Sugar Mountain” if the fields on which it stands lay fallow. Deserve a majestic “Country Home” surrounded by lush fields on which to lay with your true love beneath the “Harvest Moon”. Protect “Mother Earth” & stand with usViridians on the edge of a feather, “Expecting To Fly” . We need conscious change before we make ourselves physically 
“Helpless” from the destruction we have wrought in our arrogant defiance of natural, universal law. “Hey, Hey, My, My“, we are headed “Into The Black“. Will we “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World” or loose it all as did Rome in their decadence? SeeThe “Needle & The Damage Done” to imagine with a tempered wisdom, a life “After The Gold Rush” born of a greedy industrial age. Amen, I say unto you, their “Comes A Time” to live by a “Heart Of Gold“. What better time than now? “Only Love Can Break Your Heart“, but environmental destruction will break everything else.
How bad is this situation? Review the following statistics:
‘Factory’ farming, pesticides, & overproduction have taken their toll on America’s soils. 1992 Earth Summit statistics proclaimed the farmlands of N. America are the worst in the world—nearly 85% depleted of their mineral contents. The average American suffers from over 14 mineral deficiencies. Soil chemist Dr. A. F. Beddoe stated the following in a 1999 issue of Smart Business Magazine: “The longer I work with soil chemistry, the more I know our poorly mineralized food is robbing people of life.”
Do you think you’re OK because you take a multi-vitamin supplement? WRONG… Only a tiny fraction of mineral supplements on the market are in water soluble form. It is the natural cycle of sun, rain, soil bacteria, & plant root structures that produce the conversion of rock particles into bio-available minerals. These end up within fruits & vegetables grown in healthy soil. Those synthetic (i.e. man-made multi-vitamins) can’t do what the biosphere did for us before we so arrogantly defied it’s ways rather than investigating & developing technology that forms symbiotic relationships with the way the biosphere already perfectly forms & supports the life force.
Our mechanized deathCULTure of drugs & synthetic chemistry continues to feed a vicious circle of side-effect problems that is forming a bio-accumulation vortex that threatens to swallow our entire human sideshow with most of the innocent bio-geochemical life-support systems of the planet. How bad does this situation have to get before we ‘get it’? May your head not blow up in the mean-time..’ Don’t be a SCANNER living in the land of the dead. Do as Sir Winston Churchill once called for & “DESERVE VICTORY!”
• Sources:
1- U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health.
2. CDC-OC: CDC Office of Communication; NCHS: National Center for Health Statistics (CDC)
3.http://www.doctorwallach.com/depletion.html
4. www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines.
5. I draw my conclusions on my aneurysm as well as many others being the result of copper deficiency from the following research obtained from The National Library of Medicine; National Institutes of Healthhttp://www.nlm.nih.gov/
• Kivirikko K & Peltonen L. Abnormalities in copper metabolism & disturbances in the synthesis of collagen & elastin. Med. Biol. 60:45-48, 1982.
• Klevay LM, et al. Effects of a diet low in copper on a healthy man. Clinical Research. 28:758, 1980.
• Lewis AJ. The role of copper in inflammatory disorders. Agents & Actions. 15(5-6):513-9, 1984.
• Milanino R. Conforti A. Franco L. Marrella M. Velo G. Copper & inflammation–a possible rationale for the pharmacological manipulation of inflammatory disorders. Agents & Actions. 16(6):504-13, 1985.
• Solomons NW. Biochemical, metabolic, & clinical role of copper in human nutrition. J. Am. Coll. Nutr. 4:83-105, 1985.
• Williams DM. Copper deficiency in humans. Seminars in Hematology. 20:118-128, 1983.
• Collagen types & matrix protein content in human abdominal aortic aneurysms.
• Rizzo RJ, McCarthy WJ, Dixit SN, Lilly MP, Shively VP, Flinn WR, Yao JS.
Department of Surgery, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, IL 60611.
Deficiencies of total collagen, type III collagen, & elastin have been proposed to explain aneurysm formation.
• Decreased hepatic copper levels. A possible chemical marker for the pathogenesis of aortic aneurysms in man.
Tilson MD.
• The spontaneously aneurysm-prone Blotchy mouse has a mutation on the X chromosome resulting in low hepatic copper levels; & copper is an essential cofactor for lysyl oxidase, which catalyzes reactions leading to the cross-linking of collagen & elastin. Population characteristics & family histories of patients with aneurysms suggest that aneurysmal disease may also be sex linked in man. Hepatic copper levels were determined in 13 patients who died with abdominal aortic aneurysms & in 13 control patients selected on the criterion of severe atherosclerotic occlusive disease of the abdominal aorta. Excluding two patients with severe liver disease, the tissue copper level in the patients with aneurysms was only 26% of the control level. The results suggest that additional studies of the biologic markers for aneurysm formation in the Blotchy mouse should be carried out prospectively in human subjects.
I will be researching ways to work with congress and the farm industry to positively influence this state of affairs and add these solutions to the Activism area. Contact me with your own ideas or post your arguments in the C2 World Town Meeting Forums. Did I miss something? Add/ammend information to this article by clicking here, or discuss it in the forums.
Photos courtesy: neilyoung.com/ LauraBraniganOnline, Rolling Stone , MGM UA International (Scanners images)
Good luck humans (you’ll need it)…
Sincerely,
There is also this data in support of my theory:
• In 1926, Dr. William A. Albrecht, the head of the agricultural department at the University of Missouri, tested 100 bushels of Kansas wheat for mineral content.
• In 1968, 42 years later, he tested wheat from the same farm. He found that to get the same amount of mineral content, it took 1000 bushels.
—————————————————-
• In 1936 the United States Senate issued Document 264 relating to proper food mineral balances. Fruits, vegetables & grains now no longer contain levels of certain minerals & we are mineral starved no matter how much of them we consume.
• Soils are also polluted by excess phosphorus & nitrites from useless fertilizers as farmers try to get as much use from the same soil to maximize profits.
• Percentage of Mineral Depletion From Soil During The Past 100 Years, by Continent:
North America - 85%
South America - 76%
Asia - 76%
Africa - 74%
Europe - 72%
Australia - 55%
• While nearly all farmers understand the necessity to maintain the optimal level of organic material & humus in their fields to sustain tonnage production, very few realize the slow insidious leaching & depletion of the life giving minerals (mining) from their land - after all we pay them for tons & bushels, not for an analysis of minimal levels of various minerals in each carrot, potato, broccoli, or bushel of wheat or rice! This belief is summed up in a statement by a professor of soils from Iowa State College of Agriculture Henry Cantwell Wallace (George Washington Carver’s teacher & editor of the Wallace’s Farmer ),
“Nations endure only as long as their topsoil.”
*************•*•**************
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/index.cfm?action=news&ID=71
• Declining minerals in our food…& fewer minerals in our supplements?
David Thomas of Mineral Resources International (UK), a supporter of ANH, reveals his findings on declining mineral content of foods. See ANH comment which follows.
It’s not the fruit it used to be. . .
The Sunday Times (U.K.)
8 February 2004
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
Modern farming methods & plant breeding are stripping produce of many of the nutrients essential for human health.
Over the past 60 years the levels of iron, magnesium & other minerals important for the body’s biochemical balance have declined by between a quarter & three-quarters in fruit & vegetables. The proportion of sugar has doubled in fruit such as apples & pears over the same period — partly to satisfy modern tastes.
The study comes amid increasing government concern at the degradation of the British diet & a surge in nutrition- related diseases such as obesity & diabetes, which some fear will overwhelm the Britain’s National Health Service.
“What we found is that since 1940 the minerals & other nutrients that help to make fruit & vegetables good for you have been in startling decline,” said David Thomas, the author of the paper.
He investigated how amounts of essential minerals such as iron, magnesium, potassium & copper had changed in 64 fruits & vegetables — & found that in almost every case they had fallen.
His research compared modern data with records taken from 1940, when government scientists began systematically analysing hundreds of foodstuffs, initially to work out the best diets for people with nutrition-related diseases such as diabetes.
It showed that, on average, vegetables had lost about half of their sodium & calcium content, a quarter of their iron & 76% of their copper content. The nutrient levels of fruits had also declined significantly with iron, copper & zinc all falling by up to 27%.
Researchers have long suspected that dramatic changes in agriculture over the past 60 years could be changing the quality of the produce. However, the short-term benefits for farmers such as greater productivity, consistent quality & a wider range of varieties meant that these concerns attracted little attention.
Thomas, a mineralogist & fellow of the Geological Society, believed that the problem could be more serious because many essential nutrients such as selenium & molybdenum were not measured until quite recently.
His findings are supported by a study in the British Food Journal by Anne-Marie Mayer, a nutrition researcher at Cornell University, who found similar changes in the nutritional content of 20 fruits & 20 vegetables grown in Britain between the late 1930s & the 1990s.
“There were significant reductions in the levels of calcium, magnesium, copper & sodium in vegetables & in magnesium, iron, copper & potassium in fruits,” Mayer said.
Tags: Aneurysms, Factory Farming, John Ritter, Laura Branigan, Neil Young, Traumatic Brain Injury
May 7th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
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