Aajonus defined stroke not as a singular disease entity but as a disruption, either temporary or prolonged, in the flow of neurological transmissions from the brain to the body. He stated explicitly:

This means, in his framework, that what medicine calls a "stroke" encompasses at least two distinct underlying mechanisms:

1. A clot that breaks off from an arterial wall during detoxification, when the body is actively dissolving plaque or other buildup, a chunk can dislodge and lodge in a vessel supplying the brain, cutting off circulation and thus neurological function.

2. A temporary shutdown during detoxification, the neurological system itself can go into a kind of suspension as part of a detox process, with no permanent clot or injury necessarily involved. This is critical because Aajonus distinguished this from a "true" medical stroke, and argued it could be mistaken for one.

He reinforced this definition repeatedly in the context of a patient named Jacob who presented with left-side numbness, a drooping face, and loss of motor control, symptoms that the hospital diagnosed as stroke. Aajonus treated this differently: the question for him was not "what kind of stroke" but "what is the body trying to accomplish, and how do we support that process?"

He also distinguished between stroke as an acute event and what he described as the cumulative drying and weakening of tissues in the brain. In a palm reading workshop context, he observed asymmetry in a person's body, one side very strong and resilient, the other side very dry and very weak, and said: "Did you have a stroke at all? No, not that I know of. Because it's mostly dry in the brain, so it looks like you did." This implies that for Aajonus, even subclinical states of brain dryness registered in the body as stroke-like patterning.

The medical definition of stroke as something caused by high blood pressure or by high blood velocity was directly rejected. Aajonus stated:

He argued instead that these elevated states are the body's response to a problem, specifically, the need to force blood through congested, plaque-narrowed, or otherwise obstructed vessels, and that suppressing them with medication is what actually causes strokes.

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Aajonus identified multiple root causes of stroke, often overlapping and compounding. These are as follows, in depth:

Aajonus stated this was the biggest single cause:

He described hydrogenated oils, found in chips, French fries, donuts, fried foods of any kind, as "plastic oil," not even plastic fat. He said he had demonstrated this by pouring hydrogenated oil on a sidewalk and watching it harden to "that hard of a plastic." He asked the audience: "Think about that. Anytime you eat a chip, a French fry, any fried food, a donut, they are fried in hydrogenated oils. Trans fatty acids. Plastic fat. Not even plastic fat, plastic oil. So what does that do in the system? It blocks the different systems."

The plastic quality of these oils means they cannot be metabolized, broken down, or used by the body for any function. They accumulate and physically obstruct: lymphatic vessels, arterial walls, capillaries. When this obstruction is in the cerebral vasculature, the result is stroke.

This was Aajonus's most emphatic and repeated cause for stroke in people otherwise following his diet. He stated:

He elaborated on exactly what happened to his patients:

He explained the mechanism: commercial chocolate manufacturers remove all animal fat from the product, because those fats would turn rancid and reduce shelf life. Without the natural animal fat matrix, what remains is a highly processed, chemically stabilized food that acts in the body very much like the trans fats he described above, it blocks, dries, and congests.

He called it "very poisonous", placing store-bought chocolate in the same category of dangerous substances as pharmaceutical medications.

Aajonus explained the mechanism by which plaque causes stroke in detail from his own medical history:

He clarified that the danger is not the existence of plaque per se, nor even of high velocity blood flow caused by plaque narrowing, but specifically of plaque made of hardened fats that could break away in large enough chunks to form a clot. He distinguished this from plaque that was being gradually dissolved through diet.

He described his own history of plaque in the right carotid artery (discovered when he was young), with PSV readings of 168 cm/sec and EDV readings of 49 cm/sec, both of which placed him, by medical standards, in high danger of cerebral stroke. He did not treat this with medication; he continued the Primal Diet and watched the plaque dissolve over years.

He stated explicitly: "High blood pressure and high blood velocity do not cause strokes or heart attacks." The danger is not the speed of the blood but the physical instability of hardened plaque deposits.

Aajonus described medication to lower blood pressure as a direct cause of stroke:

He gave the specific physiological reason: when arteries are congested, whether from plaque, from obesity, from toxins, or from other causes, the body needs high blood pressure to force blood through the restricted channels. If you pharmacologically lower that pressure, the blood slows too much, and this is when it will clot:

He described what high blood pressure actually is in this context: an appropriate, necessary physiological response, not a disease. He said if you are 500 pounds or have clogged arteries or veins, your blood pressure should be very high: "If you have clogged arteries or veins, you better have high blood pressure to get the blood working through the system or the blood's not going to get to your body. And it's going to clog and even coagulate. So you've got to move it through faster if you've got a lot of pressure on your veins from weight or you've got some kind of block in your arterial and venous capillaries."

Aajonus connected brain dryness to stroke-like patterns. In the palm reading example, he found that a person had marked asymmetry, one side of the body with very dry and weak cells, and noted that the brain was predominantly dry on that side, which presented as if the person had had a stroke. The lubrication formula was recommended specifically to get fats and moisture into brain tissues that had dried out.

He described this more generally through his framework that fat deficiency in the nervous system leads to deterioration: the brain is 60–80% fat, the myelin sheath is 60–80% fat, and when these fats are absent or replaced by toxins and cooked/plastic fats, neurological transmission breaks down. Dry, fat-depleted brain tissue is more vulnerable to the kind of disruption that manifests as stroke.

In a related but distinct discussion, Aajonus described how viral meningitis, when treated conventionally with antibiotics (which should not be given for a virus) or IV fluids, can cause the brain to swell so severely that blood vessels rupture:

This is a specific iatrogenic cause of stroke, it does not arise from the person's diet or lifestyle per se, but from the medical treatment itself. The IV injection causes swelling; the swelling causes rupture; the rupture causes stroke.

In one workshop exchange, Aajonus was asked directly: "What gives you strokes again?" His answer was: "Cooked vegetables." While the context is brief, this fits within his broader framework that cooked foods deposit unusable mineral compounds and free radicals in the nervous system, and that cooked vegetables in particular, with their altered mineral chemistry, contribute to arterial and neural congestion.

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Stroke sits primarily within the following principles of Aajonus's framework:

Cooked Food, Trans fatty acids, hydrogenated oils, commercial chocolate (with all animal fat removed and replaced by processed compounds), and cooked vegetables are named direct causes. The plasticity and toxicity of industrially processed foods block systems and cause clots.

Terrain Theory / Root Cause, The underlying terrain condition is fat deficiency in the brain and arterial walls, combined with accumulated toxicity in those fat-rich tissues. A brain that is 60–80% fat and a myelin sheath that is 60–80% fat can only remain healthy if those fats are raw, bioavailable, and present in sufficient quantity.

Detoxification, The Jacob case studies show explicitly that what looks like a stroke can be a detoxification event: the body dissolving plaque or toxins from arterial walls during an active detox, with a clot breaking off temporarily, or the neurological system temporarily shutting down as part of a deeper cleanse. The body is attempting to heal; the appearance is pathological only to those who do not understand what detox looks like.

Sovereignty, Aajonus's repeated emphasis on not taking blood pressure medication, not submitting to CAT scans during neurological detox, and refusing glycerin-laced hospital foods all fall under the sovereignty principle: the individual must maintain authority over their body even under medical pressure, and must protect an active healing process from being interrupted, chemically suppressed, or iatrogenically damaged.

How to Live, The lifestyle factors: avoiding store-bought chocolate, avoiding all fried and hydrogenated foods, and supporting the body's fat reserves through raw animal fats, all fall under the "how to live" framework.

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Paralysis: Not necessarily a sign of permanent brain damage or dead neurons. Aajonus stated explicitly that any paralysis is simply "a break in the flow of neurological transmissions from the brain to the body." It can be caused either by a clot or by a temporary shutdown during detoxification. In either case, the correct response is the same: nourish the body so it can continue to detoxify and heal. He said nothing about paralysis being irreversible, in fact, the Jeff case study throughout We Want to Live documents the complete reversal of extensive brain damage and paralysis through raw food feeding during hospitalization.

High blood pressure: Not a cause of stroke but the body's necessary compensatory mechanism for arterial congestion. Suppressing it pharmacologically is what causes stroke, not the pressure itself. He stated that the three people he knew who had strokes while partially following the Primal Diet were not having strokes because of high blood pressure, they were having strokes because of chocolate.

Brain asymmetry / one-sided dryness: A sign of either a previous stroke or a pre-stroke state. Observable through iridology and palm reading as an asymmetric pattern of cell vitality and hydration across the two sides of the body. This is not permanent damage but a terrain condition that can be addressed through the lubrication formula.

Drooping face, numbness of limbs, loss of motor control: Presented in the Jacob case as symptoms that looked to doctors like a stroke but which Aajonus interpreted as a neurological detox, the left side going numb starting with the hand, progressing to the leg, then affecting the face with drooping. He did not say these symptoms weren't real or serious; he said their meaning was different from what medicine assumes, and the response should be to support detoxification, not to intervene medically.

High blood velocity (PSV, EDV readings): Not a danger signal but a symptom of something causing it, in his case, plaque narrowing the right carotid artery and forcing blood to move faster to compensate. He agreed with eliminating the cause (the plaque) but not with reducing velocity through medication, which he said can itself cause strokes.

Fluid buildup under the skull: In the Jeff case, doctors wanted to drill holes and drain fluids that had built up under the skull. Aajonus objected strenuously, arguing: "The fluids that are in his brain supply healing nutrients and cleanse dead tissue. The raw fats I have been giving him have made that natural process possible, and he recovers." In his framework, these fluids are not a dangerous complication but a healing medium carrying nutrients and facilitating the removal of dead tissue. Draining them would interrupt the natural repair process.

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This was Aajonus's primary recommendation for the person who showed signs of brain dryness and stroke-pattern asymmetry on one side of the body. The formula is:

• 1 egg
• 3 ounces of raw butter
• 1 teaspoon of honey
• 1 and a half tablespoons of lemon juice

Method: Blend into a cream. Takes approximately 20 to 30 seconds. Drink it.

Purpose: To get fats, proteins, and enzymatic lubricants into the brain tissues that are not receiving adequate nutrition, particularly on the side showing dryness and weakness. Aajonus said: "That will actually get into those tissues where it's not getting on your left side." He connected this specifically to the burning sensation the person described, and to the stroke-like pattern he observed.

Aajonus gave his father raw milkshakes daily during the period after his stroke. His father had grown up on raw milk, which Aajonus credited for his general health and longevity (93 years). After the stroke, the failure to recover was attributed to the pharmaceutical load (82 medications a day) and the absence of real nutrition. Every time Aajonus gave him the raw milkshakes, his father became more cognizant and could speak faster.

The principle here is that the brain is 60–80% fat, the myelin sheath is 60–80% fat, and the only way to rebuild or maintain these tissues is with raw animal fat. Cooked fats become "plastic," dehydrated, and unusable; raw fats remain bioavailable and can actually reach and nourish the brain tissues.

In the extensive case study of Jeff (documented throughout We Want to Live), Aajonus fed raw fats to a young man in a coma with extensive brain damage. The doctors had declared Jeff would die within hours; instead, he recovered consciousness and eventually walked out of the hospital. Aajonus specifically referenced "raw fats" as the agent that made the brain's natural healing process possible, enabling the cleansing of dead tissue and the supply of healing nutrients through the brain's own fluid system.

He resisted medical attempts to drain the healing fluids from Jeff's skull, understanding those fluids as a nutrient medium created in part through the raw fat feeding.

For the case of Jacob, who had high blood pressure that doctors believed was causing strokes, Aajonus offered a specific food remedy:

This is offered not as a stroke treatment per se but as a way to address the high blood pressure symptom that was being used as a justification for medication, medication which Aajonus believed would cause rather than prevent stroke.

For plaque, the underlying cause of the kind of stroke produced by a dislodged clot, Aajonus described a protocol he personally used:

He noted he was not fully consistent with this because of travel. He also mentioned consuming vinegar occasionally in his Sport Formula or vegetable juices instead of milk. He noted it was not enough to fully dissolve his plaque in one season.

Citrus / Pineapple: He mentioned that citrus, especially pineapple, also helps remove plaque.

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Jeff was in a coma for six days after an accident that caused extensive brain damage. Doctors declared he would die within hours. Aajonus fed him raw fats throughout his hospitalization. Jeff came out of the coma.

The recovery was not instantaneous or complete at discharge. When Aajonus visited Jeff at home after hospital release, he observed:

His right side was still predominantly paralyzed, his movement was like "a hundred-year-old man in a young-looking body," and his speech was severely affected, labored, slurred, barely intelligible.

However, recovery continued. The final notation in the Jeff case: "Jeff went on to study electronics and computer technology, and graduated. Ten years later, Jeff is still normal and has not had a seizure." His right hand regained function, he regained full walking ability, his speech normalized, and he was able to stop taking Dilantin (a seizure medication) without any recurrence of seizures.

The implication is that full recovery from even severe brain damage and stroke-like neurological disruption is possible on raw foods, but the timeline extends to months and years, not days or weeks.

Jacob presented with progressive left-side numbness (beginning with the hand, extending to the leg, then the face dropping), which the hospital diagnosed as stroke. Aajonus considered this to be a neurological detox event, possibly involving a clot that broke off during detoxification.

The key warning from Aajonus was about the X-ray and CAT scan:

This establishes that the outer boundary of recovery from neurological events, if proper healing is allowed to proceed, is approximately 18 months, during which time any exposure to diagnostic radiation could interrupt or permanently impair that healing.

His father had a stroke and never recovered. Aajonus attributed this directly to the absence of nutrition (he was on 82 medications a day) and to the glycerin in hospital foods. The milkshakes Aajonus brought produced temporary improvement in cognition and speech, but the persistent medication load and the absence of consistent raw nutrition prevented full recovery. This case serves as a negative example: without removing the pharmaceutical burden and providing raw animal fats, the brain cannot heal post-stroke.

Aajonus's personal plaque history documents that gradual reduction of plaque (the underlying cause of clot-based stroke) occurs over years on the Primal Diet. His PSV went from 168 cm/sec to progressively lower values as he continued eating the diet. He described this as a gradual process, not one that occurs in weeks or months.

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