Menopause, according to Aajonus Vonderplanitz, is not a disease, a deficiency, or a breakdown of the body. It is a biological transition, specifically, the cessation of the menstrual cycle and the body's deliberate shift from one hormonal production system to another. This transition is a natural, healthy, and purposeful reorganization of the endocrine system.

The precise nature of this transition, as Aajonus explains it, is a changeover in the type of hormones the body produces. The body moves away from producing reproductive hormones, the hormones that govern the menstrual cycle, ovulation, and reproduction, and toward producing growth hormones. This is not a loss. This is a gain. The body is not shutting down its hormonal activity; it is redirecting it.

Aajonus stated explicitly: "Menopause is changeover in hormones that you produce. Instead of reproductive hormones for reproduction, you produce growth hormones."

He further identified this as one of the primary biological reasons that women live longer than men. The shift to growth hormone production after menopause is an advantage, not a disadvantage. It is part of the body's long-term survival and regenerative architecture. He emphasized that the fear, psychological baggage, and medical alarm surrounding menopause are largely unfounded in nature. Women fear loss of hormones, loss of youth, and loss of sexual appeal, but in Aajonus's framework, what actually changes is the purpose and type of hormones, not their presence.

He was unambiguous: the only natural loss in menopause is the cessation of the menstrual cycle itself. Everything else, the hot flashes, the emotional changes, the vaginal dryness, the shifts in energy and mood, is either a detoxification process or a symptom of nutritional deficiency, not an inherent feature of the transition itself.

Additionally, Aajonus noted that even after a woman has completed menopause, she may occasionally experience menstruation. He did not frame this as a problem or an abnormality. He stated: "That is a healthy function where the body cleanses those tissues." The uterine and vaginal tissues continue to have periodic cleansing needs, and the body may fulfill this naturally even after the reproductive phase has concluded.

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Aajonus identified multiple interlocking root causes for the difficult and symptomatic experience of menopause, distinguishing sharply between what menopause is (a natural transition) and what makes it difficult (nutritional deficiency, toxic accumulation, and psychological conditioning).

The foundation of Aajonus's understanding of all hormonal issues, including menopause, begins with the biochemical composition of hormones themselves. He stated that hormones are composed primarily of fat and protein, approximately 60% fat and 25–30% protein, with a small amount of carbohydrate. This is the most important nutritional fact governing all hormone-related conditions.

He stated: "All the hormones will be manufactured by the glands if they get the proper nutrients. What is the major constituent of every hormone? Fat. Protein is the major building block of it. Fat and protein, you have no problem."

This means that if a woman's body has insufficient raw fat and raw protein, it cannot manufacture adequate hormones, whether reproductive, growth, or otherwise. The glands cannot produce what they do not have the raw materials to produce. The menopausal transition is inherently a high-demand period for hormonal raw materials, and women eating cooked, processed, or low-fat diets will suffer more severely because their bodies cannot manufacture the transition hormones properly.

Aajonus frequently described how toxic substances from food, environment, and pharmaceuticals accumulate in the endocrine glands over a lifetime. Preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, and other drugs fed to crops and animals all enter the human body and ultimately lodge in glandular tissue. Over time, these glands may:

• Become overly toxic
• Harden
• Become fatigued or exhausted

He explained that people often do not realize their glands are diseased because overactive or toxic glands produce excess hormones that provide energy, mask illness symptoms, and create a false sense of vitality. When those glands eventually fatigue, often in midlife, precisely the time of menopausal transition, the consequences can be severe and difficult to reverse.

Aajonus gave a specific explanation for hot flashes rooted in a process involving endometriosis and displaced ovarian cells. He explained that endometriosis occurs when the body uses a cell that belongs in one location to heal or fill a need in another location. This happens because the body is not producing cells in a needed area fast enough, so it borrows from another area.

When a woman has a significant amount of endometriosis, ovarian cells distributed throughout the body, those displaced ovarian cells continue to respond to hormonal cycling. A woman may experience pain not only in her ovaries but in her shoulder, heart, lungs, and back, because ovarian cells located in those areas go through their own period cycle along with the primary ovarian cells.

When the body needs to eliminate these displaced cells and their accumulated toxins, it produces massive heat spells, hot flashes. These are detoxification events. The body is using heat to mobilize, break down, and discharge those misplaced cells and the old hormones stored within them.

Directly connected to the above, Aajonus stated that sweating during hot flashes is a form of detoxification. The perspiration that accompanies hot flashes carries with it the old reproductive hormones and their metabolic byproducts, which the body is actively discarding as it transitions to growth hormone production. He said explicitly: "The sweating is a form of detox; you're getting rid of a lot of those old hormones."

This reframes hot flashes entirely, not as a failure or malfunction, but as an active, purposeful cleansing operation.

Aajonus identified a systemic disruption to hormonal production caused by plastic molecules (phthalates and BPAs) that enter the body through food packaging, canned goods, and countless consumer products. He explained that plastics chemically mimic fats. When the body uses these plastic-mimicking molecules as raw material for hormone production, it manufactures the opposite hormone from what was intended:

• When the body is supposed to make testosterone, it makes estrogen
• When the body is supposed to make estrogen, it makes testosterone

This creates profound hormonal confusion throughout the body, affecting men and women alike. He said: "So women become men and men become women. So now we have this very little change between men and women. In civilized cultures that eat that are subjected to plastic molecules."

This background hormonal confusion affects the entire hormonal lifecycle, including the menopausal transition.

Aajonus included a non-physical but significant contributing factor: a deficiency of fun and joy. He stated directly: "A fun deficiency is also the cause. If you are not having enough fun you are probably criticizing yourself and others." He encouraged women to be cheerleaders for themselves, to trust and encourage themselves and others. He noted that just as no two flowers on the same stem are identical, no two people will think, act, or experience health in the same way, and self-criticism and comparison create hormonal and psychological distress that compounds the difficulties of menopausal transition.

Aajonus was unambiguous in his opposition to standard medical approaches to menopause. He characterized the pharmaceutical industry's management of hormonal decline as a vicious cycle: people eat toxic food that depletes glandular function, the pharmaceutical industry then measures their hormonal output against arbitrary "normal" ranges, declares them deficient, and prescribes synthetic hormone supplements, without ever addressing the root cause of nutritional and glandular depletion.

He stated: "The pharmaceutical community says, You need this much hormone. This makes you normal. It's absolute bullshit."

He further noted that the medical profession makes no money from wellness, and that the same entities who own pharmaceutical companies also hold major shares in food production, a system structurally designed to maintain illness rather than resolve it.

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Menopause in Aajonus's framework sits at the intersection of multiple principles:

Terrain Theory / Root Cause: The foundational issue is that the body cannot manufacture hormones without adequate raw fat and protein. This is a terrain-level nutritional deficiency that underlies all hormonal difficulties.

Detoxification: Hot flashes, sweating, and occasional post-menopausal menstruation are all detoxification events in Aajonus's framework. The body is actively clearing old reproductive hormones, displaced endometrial cells, and accumulated toxins. The discomfort of these events is the price of detoxification, not evidence of disease.

Cooked Food: The inability to properly produce hormones during menopausal transition is directly tied to a lifetime of cooked and processed food consumption that has depleted enzyme reserves, damaged glandular tissue, loaded the body with toxins (advanced glycation end products, heterocyclic amines, lipid peroxides), and left the body unable to absorb and utilize the nutritional raw materials necessary for hormone production.

Raw Food / How to Eat: The protocol for navigating menopause successfully is entirely rooted in raw food consumption, specifically raw fats, raw proteins, raw vegetable juices, and specific raw foods like yams and coconut cream.

Sovereignty: Aajonus consistently framed menopause as something the medical and pharmaceutical system has thoroughly medicalized and pathologized to generate profit. He positioned his approach as a reclamation of women's bodily intelligence and natural hormonal wisdom against a medical paradigm that profits from treating natural transitions as diseases.

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Aajonus made clear that the body is not malfunctioning when producing hot flashes. It is doing exactly what it needs to do to clear the metabolic debris of decades of reproductive hormonal cycling. The woman who experiences severe hot flashes is likely clearing a large burden of old hormones and displaced cells accumulated over many years.

Aajonus also noted that chemical medications, including hormonal supplements, leave toxic byproducts in tissues, which can manifest as lesions, blisters, and mild acne (as described in one seminar iridology reading).

Additionally, Aajonus described a specific mechanism where stored emotional traumas are released biochemically during detoxification periods. Hormones produced during emotional trauma (including anger, fear, grief) are stored in the body's tissues just like any other byproduct of metabolic activity. As the body detoxifies during menopausal transition, it may be releasing hormone byproducts from traumas that occurred decades earlier. This can cause a woman to feel anger, sadness, or distress that seems disproportionate to her present circumstances, because it is from her past circumstances, being chemically released into her blood.

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He stated clearly: "Fat and protein, you have no problem. So let's say the person, especially if they [eat sufficient fat and protein]..."

• No starch
• No fruit
• Lots of vegetable juice
• Vegetable salads at night
• Lots of protein, lots of meat and lots of eggs
• Cheese and berries (perhaps once or twice a week)
• Cream, if available, specifically to relax the body and ease heat waves/hot flashes

This framework prioritizes fat and protein, eliminates carbohydrate sources that contribute to advanced glycation end products, and uses cream as a specific tool for calming and lubricating the system during the hot flash episodes.

Aajonus gave a highly specific protocol using raw yam juice for post-menopausal hormonal support:

Formula: - 1–2 cups of raw yam juice - 3 tablespoons raw coconut cream per cup of yam juice

Frequency: - Once every 3–8 days

Critical timing requirement: - The yam juice must be consumed within 1 hour after juicing

Purpose: - This protocol is designed to ensure hormonal production that balances mineral levels after menopause. Yam juice provides the hormonal precursors the glands need to continue producing appropriate post-menopausal hormones, while the raw coconut cream provides fat for hormone construction and delivery.

Availability caveat: - Aajonus noted this should be done "if available," indicating that access to fresh raw yams suitable for juicing may be variable depending on location.

For balancing hormonal levels generally during the transition:

"Eating a raw diet that includes some cooked starch with plenty of raw fat and some raw unripe fruit 1–2 times daily helps balance hormonal levels."

This is one of the very few places where Aajonus included a small amount of cooked starch in a protocol, paired explicitly with plenty of raw fat. The raw fat serves to buffer any negative effects of the cooked starch and provides the hormonal raw material needed during this period.

"Eating plenty of raw fat, including no-salt-added raw cheese and raw cream (when available), and meat, especially fish, gradually restores health to glands and nerves."

This is the core long-term restoration protocol. Glands and nerves that have been damaged by toxicity, insufficient nutrition, or the demands of the menopausal transition can be gradually restored through:

• No-salt-added raw cheese, fat delivery, mineral binding
• Raw cream, when available, fat delivery, nervous system lubrication, relaxation
• Raw meat, especially fish, protein and fat for glandular and neural repair

"Eating unripe banana eases the ill side effects of hormonal changes."

Aajonus specified unripe banana, not ripe banana. This is consistent with his broader framework of using unripe fruits to supply collagen precursors and trace nutrients without excessive sugar content. Unripe fruit provides different enzymatic and nutritional properties than ripe fruit.

Aajonus specifically recommended cream to help a woman "relax the body and just enjoy those heat waves." This is not presented as a treatment that stops hot flashes (which are a detoxification process that should be allowed to proceed) but as a comfort measure that eases the experience. The fat in the cream provides the myelin sheath with material to buffer the neurological intensity of the experience.

Aajonus included sexual activity as a beneficial practice during menopausal transition:

"For some women, having sex is beneficial because it flushes hormones and expedites the hormonal changes of menopause (not hormonal cessation)."

The key distinction he drew is that sex expedites the hormonal changes, it helps move the transition along, but does not cause hormonal cessation. It assists the flushing of old reproductive hormones, which is part of what the body is already trying to accomplish through hot flashes and sweating.

He further noted: "If lacking a sex partner during this cycle, self-sex is helpful for some people."

He qualified both statements with the phrase "for some women" and "for some people," indicating that this is not a universal prescription but an option that benefits certain individuals in this transition.

In the Early Training transcript, Aajonus mentioned Estriol cream as one of the "few things that are sort of benign forms" of estrogen therapy, distinguishing it from synthetic estrogen therapy, which he called "taboo":

"There is an Estriol cream that you can rub in the vagina and it brings a certain amount of controlled, natural estrogen to that part of the body."

He also mentioned natural progesterone cream from wild Mexican yam: "The progesterone cream is supposed to go in and act as a precursor to the body's producing of its own estrogen."

He did not endorse these as primary interventions, and his framing suggests he considered them far inferior to proper dietary support. He noted that a student had been using the natural progesterone cream and "it did help her", so he was not entirely dismissive, but he presented them as partial measures that do not address the underlying nutritional cause.

Aajonus's foundational claim is that with adequate raw fat and protein, the glands will manufacture all the hormones the body needs, before menopause, during, and after. He stated this principle absolutely: "All the hormones will be manufactured by the glands if they get the proper nutrients." The two most important nutrients for this are fat and protein, and this principle applies regardless of whether the woman is premenopausal, menopausal, or postmenopausal.

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Aajonus gave specific and remarkable testimony about the reversal of menopausal hormonal changes through the Primal Diet:

"And so you've found this stimulates estrogen production for women beyond menopause and helps the thin vagina walls, painful... Yes. And it brings back their period. I've got women in their late fifties now that are still having their periods. Not every month. But they are having them every three to six months. And they went sometimes three or four years without having a period. Back on the diet and the hormones start [producing]."

This is a significant claim: women who had gone three to four years without a period were, after returning to the Primal Diet, experiencing menstruation again every three to six months in their late fifties. Aajonus framed this as evidence of genuine glandular restoration, not as a problem, but as a sign of returning hormonal vitality.

In the Early Training transcript, Aajonus described a protocol (using what appears to be a specific tablet-based supplement, likely glandular) for stimulating estrogen production in post-menopausal women:

• Dosage: Four to five tablets once per day
• Duration per cycle: Three to five days (most commonly four to five days)
• Frequency: About every three to four weeks
• Total treatment period: About three to four months
• Outcome: After three to four months, women return to "normal", meaning their glandular function is sufficiently restored to maintain hormonal production independently

He noted that more vital people react very quickly to this protocol, while others may need the full three to four month course.

For the broader restoration of glandular and nervous system health through diet, which underpins all hormonal recovery, Aajonus's timeline corresponds to his general principle that it takes 7 to 7.5 years to replace every cell in the body once, and that full recovery from a lifetime of cooked food consumption may take 40 years of proper eating. However, significant improvements in hormonal function and menopausal symptoms can be expected within two to three years of consistent Primal Diet practice, with further restoration occurring over subsequent years.

He stated regarding hormonal function more broadly: "So once you start getting the proper protein in your body, then everything will turn around within probably two and a half years."

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