Absorption

The lacteal system is not incidental to absorption, it is the primary channel through which nutrients reach the body's cells. It is a complex, intricate web network attached to the walls of the small and large intestines. Everything digested in the intestines, regardless of origin, takes on the appearance of fresh milk inside this system. Aajonus described it as looking white and milky, like fresh milk. As that lacteal fluid is transferred into the lymphatic system, bacteria there break it down further into a translucent, slightly milky, cloudy substance. It is not transparent, but it is less opaque than the original lacteal fluid. That translucent lymph is then circulated throughout the body, delivering nutrients to every cell, just as the nervous system and the blood are circulated. It is also responsible for removing all waste products from cells, including dead cells, dissolving and neutralizing them, and sending them out of the body.

When the lacteal fluid reaches the lymph system and is transformed into the translucent substance, that represents the nutrients being broken down into their smallest molecules. Only at that point are they delivered cell by cell throughout the entire body. The lymph system is the body's primary cellular feeding mechanism. The blood does not do this work in a healthy body. When the blood is forced to deliver nutrients because the lacteal and lymphatic system is compromised, that is a secondary, compensatory function that places demands on the blood it is not designed to meet.

Raw eggs represent the most rapidly absorbed food Aajonus discussed. Both the egg white and the egg yolk are liquid in their raw state. The egg white, which is all protein, does not require hydrochloric acid to be dissolved because it is already liquid. The yolk, which contains all the fat, all the B vitamins including B12, vitamin E, vitamin A, and all fat-soluble nutrients, does not require much bile because the fat is already in liquid form. For this reason, eggs are absorbed in the first five inches of the small intestine rather than requiring the full 24-hour passage through the digestive tract. Aajonus described his method of sucking the egg white out first so that it goes directly to the liver and helps the liver produce the proper bile to handle the egg yolk. The egg white, once swallowed, reaches the liver and stimulates appropriate bile production in approximately 27 minutes.

Raw meat requires the full digestive process. Ninety percent of its digestion is bacterial. The hydrochloric acid dissolves large chunks into smaller particles, and bacteria infiltrate and eat those particles progressively as they move through the intestinal tract. If meat is eaten in large chunks and swallowed without chewing, hydrochloric acid must be secreted all the way through the intestinal tract, and by the end a portion of the meat has still not been fully digested. Pateing meat, or eating it in a very finely ground state, allows the body to skip much of the hydrochloric acid production and rely more directly on bacterial digestion, resulting in less waste and better absorption of the full protein content. Aajonus estimated that eating whole unpateed meat results in losing approximately one third of it, whereas eating it pateed allows the body to utilize bacterial digestion more efficiently.

Vegetable juice, as distinct from whole vegetables, is absorbed directly through the stomach and duodenal walls before it even reaches the intestines. Aajonus described vegetable juice as alkalinizing, and said it is usually fully absorbed by the time it passes through the lower part of the duodenum, so that it never gets into the small intestines except for a very small amount of particles that may have passed through. Those particles do not cause problems because the cellulose is so hard that neither the digestive system nor bacteria can break it down further. The juice itself, containing the vitamins, enzymes, and minerals extracted from the cellulose, enters the bloodstream through the stomach and duodenal walls. This is the mechanism by which Aajonus recommended vegetable juice for alkalinizing the blood without alkalinizing the intestines, where whole vegetables would disrupt the acid environment required for meat digestion.

Milk is absorbed throughout the intestines. When bacteria feed on milk, as with any food, their waste fluid takes on the milky lacteal appearance and is absorbed into the lacteal system. Milk is 86% water, and because that water is ionically bound to the full complex of nutrients in milk, it is cellularly absorbable in a way that plain water is not.

Whole vegetables are largely not absorbable in humans. Aajonus stated that humans digest one to two percent of a whole vegetable at most. That small percentage comes mainly from the juices within the cells, the vitamins, enzymes, and some minerals released when cellulose is broken apart. The human digestive tract does not have the 60,000 times the enzymes that herbivores possess to disassemble the cellulose molecule. The body will absorb 70 to 80 percent of vegetable juices, but only one to two percent of the vegetable itself. Whole vegetables also secrete alkaline juices continuously as they pass through the digestive tract, which neutralizes the acid environment the intestines need for digesting meats and animal proteins, making whole vegetables actively disruptive of protein absorption.

Nuts and seeds contain phytic acid, which prevents the digestion and absorption of certain minerals, certain proteins, and certain fats unless they are combined in a specific mixture. Aajonus's nut formula addresses this by blending soft nuts such as walnuts, pecans, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds into a flour-like consistency and combining them with other specific foods that neutralize the phytic acid. Without that combination, the phytic acid creates a cascade of absorption failures: blocked minerals leading to blocked protein absorption leading to blocked fat absorption.

Water absorption was one of the most detailed and specific topics Aajonus addressed under the heading of absorption. His position was unambiguous: plain water cannot be absorbed by cells and cannot deliver hydration. The only way water can enter a cell is carried by ions, specifically by mineral ions that are bound to other nutrients. Every cell has one to two ions inside it, which function as its stomach. When the cell wants to eat, it opens and those interior ions attract exterior ions magnetically, drawing in the nutrients those exterior ions are carrying. Sodium ions typically carry water molecules. Potassium ions may carry glucagon or glycogen. When a cell opens in the presence of an ionically bound nutrient complex, it takes in the ion along with the H2O and other nutrients that ion is transporting.

When a person drinks plain water, or any liquid by gulping rather than sipping, the body is not geared to handle an inundation of water and the excess rushes to the kidneys to be expelled. When water goes to the kidney instead of being carried by ions to the cells, the cells receive no hydration. The nutrients in the food that were supposed to carry water to the cells cannot do so because the water has already been routed out of the body. The cell dehydrates even as the person drinks. Drinking more plain water in response to this dehydration continues the cycle: more dilution, more excretion, more cellular dehydration. Aajonus described Aboriginal people who will go 100 miles through a 140 to 150 degree desert on one cup of vegetable juice, because that juice, being ionically bound, delivers its water content fully to the cells. They do not need to drink plain water because their food's water is 100% cellularly absorbable.

Aajonus described measuring his own absorption by monitoring urine output. When sipping a gallon of milk through a fine glass straw, he would only produce approximately one and a quarter quarts of urine, meaning almost three quarts of the water in the milk was absorbed and utilized. When gulping a gallon of any liquid, he passed approximately three quarts as urine, meaning only one quart was absorbed. This is a concrete demonstration of the difference between sipping and gulping on actual absorption rates.

When water is gulped, saliva also fails to mix with the liquid. Aajonus described his practice of sucking liquids specifically so that the bacteria from his saliva would join the liquid. When gulping, no saliva is incorporated except what happens to be floating on the tongue. The bacteria in saliva are part of the digestive initiation process, and losing them from any liquid means losing part of the bacterial contribution to digestion and subsequent absorption.

Sodium is essential for water absorption at the cellular level. The body cannot absorb water properly without sodium. However, if there is too much sodium from cooked or refined salt, the sodium ions clump together because cooking bonds sodium molecules into large crystals. When the cell tries to absorb a clumped sodium ion, the magnetism of the cluster is greater than the magnetism of the ions inside the cell, and the clumped sodium rips the ions out of the cell instead of being absorbed into it. This reverses absorption and actively depletes the cell. Celery juice, which Aajonus recommended as the primary component of vegetable juice at 55 to 60 percent of the total, provides sodium in a form that remains in individual unclumped ions that cells can actually absorb.

The sport drink formula Aajonus recommended for hydration and H2O absorption consists of three cups of pureed or liquid foods from among tomato, cucumber, watermelon, and whey, with butter or cream and one to two eggs added. This combination provides water that is ionically bound to nutrients, making it fully cellularly absorbable. He described athletes sipping a quarter of this preparation over a five-hour competition period and going through none of the multiple quarts of plain water that conventionally trained athletes consume. Adding unheated honey, lemon or lime juice, and ginger to water also increases its absorbability by binding some nutrients to the water, though Aajonus considered this a secondary option when fresh juice or milk was unavailable.

Aajonus was emphatic and specific about the mechanical act of consuming liquids. Sipping or sucking liquids slowly, rather than gulping them, is essential to absorption. When liquid is gulped, the body interprets it as an inundation and routes the water component directly to the kidneys for excretion. When liquid is sipped slowly, the body processes it at a rate that allows ions to carry the water and nutrients into the cells. Aajonus described using a very fine glass chemistry straw to force himself to sip slowly, because the narrow bore made it nearly impossible to gulp. The result was dramatically reduced urine output and dramatically increased cellular utilization of the milk he drank. He noted that a baby suckling at a nipple is the biologically correct model: slow, continuous suction that mixes saliva at every moment, incorporating bacterial and enzymatic support into the liquid before it is swallowed.

Gulping fluids means that the H2O in those fluids goes to the kidney. Once it is in the kidney, the nutrients that were supposed to carry that H2O to the cells have lost their vehicle. The cells do not receive hydration. The water bond between the ions and the H2O is broken by routing it to the kidneys, and the nutrients and H2O separate. Even in a food as water-rich as milk or juice, gulping produces a significant fraction of that liquid being excreted rather than absorbed. Aajonus estimated that gulping causes approximately 90% of the H2O in food to go to the kidney.

Cooking fundamentally alters the absorbability of food by changing the physical and chemical state of its constituents. When food is cooked, the ionic bonds that tie water to nutrients are broken. Once those bonds are broken, the H2O in cooked food is no longer bound to the smorgasbord of nutrients and cannot be absorbed the same way by cells. The water in raw meat, at least 55% of its total weight, is ionically bound and carries nutrients into cells. The water in cooked meat has been separated from those ionic bonds by heat, making it less cellularly available. The same principle applies to all cooked foods. Aajonus stated that once you cook food, you have separated the ionic bond to the H2O.

Cooking also converts metallic minerals from their natural ionic form into free radicals. In their natural ionic state, metallic minerals conduct electricity and reflect light through the neurological system. When food is cooked and those minerals are released as free radicals, they cannot do that work and instead accumulate in the brain and nervous system as toxins. This does not directly bear on intestinal absorption, but it means that cooked food produces substances the body cannot utilize through normal absorption pathways and must instead detoxify.

The clay analogy Aajonus used is instructive for understanding what heat does to absorption capacity. Raw clay is malleable and will absorb. Fire it at even a low kiln temperature and it becomes a hard substance that will no longer absorb, or absorbs very little. Fire it at a higher temperature and it becomes porcelain, which absorbs nothing. He used this to illustrate how the body's own tissues, when exposed to heated, denatured foods and their byproducts over time, lose their capacity to absorb. Intestinal walls that have been deteriorated by processed foods become thin, weak, and sometimes inflamed. In that weakened state, not only is absorption impaired, but tears can form, allowing undigested food to pass through the intestinal walls into the gut cavity, the condition known as leaky gut.

Ionized water, meaning water that has been processed through an ionizing machine, is not an improvement on plain water in Aajonus's framework, it is actively more disruptive to normal absorption. Because ionized water carries an electrical and magnetic charge, it is not bound by mucus or by tissue membranes. It goes right through the intestinal walls without being absorbed in a controlled manner, and drives whatever is in it through those walls indiscriminately. Aajonus said it will go right through tissue because it is not bound by mucus and not bound by the normal tissue barriers. This can damage intestinal walls rather than support controlled absorption.

Aajonus addressed B12 absorption specifically in response to questions about whether the body absorbs B vitamins through the intestines. His position was that the body does absorb B vitamins including B12 through the intestines, and it also manufactures and recycles B12 when raw meat is being eaten. He noted that Hindus in India who subsist primarily on plant foods drink their own urine to recycle B vitamins and proteins that are excreted, because without sufficient raw meat in the diet the body excretes these nutrients in urine faster than it can absorb them from plant sources. He described going on an all-milk diet for six days and becoming lethargic and listless until he ate meat, at which point energy and alertness returned immediately, illustrating that even a highly absorbable food like milk does not provide sufficient B12 and protein to substitute for raw meat in the diet.

Cheese occupies a specific position in the absorption framework. Because it is highly mineral-concentrated, it creates a magnetic pull in the stomach and intestines. As neurological fluids and lymphatic fluids pass through the stomach and intestinal walls, the cheese's concentrated minerals pull heavy metals out of those fluids and bind with them, preventing those heavy metals from competing with the body's own live food minerals. However, this magnetic and absorptive property of cheese is specifically blocked when honey is eaten at the same time. If honey accompanies cheese, the cheese's minerals become digestible and the cheese is absorbed rather than acting as a mineral magnet for toxins. Aajonus distinguished two contexts: eating cheese without honey is for pulling poisons and not for mineral nourishment; eating cheese with honey allows digestion and absorption of the cheese's minerals but eliminates the toxin-binding function.

Vegetable juice presents an unusual case in the absorption model because it is absorbed before it reaches the small intestine at all. Aajonus stated that vegetable juice is alkalinizing and is absorbed through the stomach walls and duodenal walls. By the time it passes into the lower part of the duodenum, it is essentially all absorbed. Very little enters the small intestine except tiny particles that got through the juicing process and that the digestive system cannot break down anyway due to the hardness of the residual cellulose. Those particles may color the stool green but do not disrupt the acid-alkaline balance of the intestines. The juice itself, having been absorbed in the stomach and duodenum, alkalinizes the blood directly without touching the intestinal environment, which must remain acid for proper meat and protein digestion.

The sigmoid colon is the final stage of absorption in the 24-hour digestive cycle. After food has traveled through the stomach, duodenum, small intestine, ileocecal valve, ascending colon, transverse colon, and descending colon, it is held in the sigmoid colon for four to five hours. During this holding period, the body extracts whatever remains of the digested nutrients that have not yet been absorbed, including the waste products of bacteria that have digested food throughout the journey and any last fragments of digestion still occurring. Nothing is wasted if the digestive system is functioning correctly. Only after the body is satisfied that maximum absorption has occurred in the sigmoid colon does peristalsis move the material out as fecal matter. People who are unwell tend to rush this process or fail to complete it, and lose the nutritional benefit of those final four to five hours of absorption.

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