Adrenaline

Aajonus returned again and again to the extraordinary potency of adrenaline as a way of illustrating both its power and the danger of misusing it. He described the famous case of a woman in the early 1950s who lifted the rear end of a 3,000-pound car that had rolled over her baby's fingers, moving it completely over the baby and setting it down safely. That feat required only a pinprick amount of adrenaline in the bloodstream. He cited this example in multiple contexts to establish the baseline: a single pin drop of adrenaline can give a person 50 times, sometimes 300 times, their normal strength.

When adrenaline is injected into a stopped or failing heart, the amounts used are extraordinarily small. Aajonus specified that a 3 cc injection used to restart a heart during a heart attack contains roughly 50 molecules of adrenaline. The rest of the fluid is carrier solution. He stated the concentration is "barely 0.001, one hundredth of a percent of that fluid." He cited this figure to underscore how concentrated and powerful the substance is at the molecular level, and he used it to criticize the pharmaceutical industry for charging $400 to $500 per injection for something that costs virtually nothing to produce.

Aajonus also warned that too much adrenaline can kill. If an excess is pumped into the body, the heart pounds so hard it goes into a permanent cramp, essentially a whole-body charlie horse of the cardiac muscle, and the heart stops. He described this as death from over-stimulation.

One of the most detailed aspects of Aajonus's teaching on adrenaline concerns its relationship to fat. He stated that adrenaline is 60 to 80 percent fat in its molecular composition, a proportion consistent with all hormones. Because of this, the body uses adrenaline not only for muscular energy but also as a vehicle for binding with and neutralizing toxins, since fat is the body's primary detoxification medium.

When adrenaline is released into the bloodstream in a genuine emergency and sufficient blood fat is present, the adrenaline calls on that fat, burns it, and delivers it to the muscles as concentrated energy. This is the healthy mechanism. The person gets strong, acts, and afterward the system calms. When blood fat levels are adequate, the mind also works properly during the crisis: Aajonus said a person with enough blood fat will make good choices, will decide not to fight when fighting would get them killed, will choose flight intelligently.

When blood fat is insufficient, the outcome is quite different. Adrenaline is still released, but it cannot find fat to burn in the muscles. It then moves to the nervous system and begins leaching fat from the myelin sheath, the protective fatty coating around the nerves. Myelin is approximately 90 percent fat. As adrenaline erodes the myelin, the sheath becomes thinner. Thinner myelin means more electromagnetic energy enters the nervous system from the blood, from the environment, from anywhere, because the myelin is a buffer against that overload. The result is hypersensitivity: irritability, anxiety, an inability to function, an overloaded sensory system. Aajonus described this process as creating neural lesions and scarring.

He gave a parallel from the animal world. Elk at the end of a long winter, when their blood fat is nearly depleted, will fight to the death over things that would never provoke a well-nourished elk. Their adrenaline has no fat to burn, so it irritates the nervous system directly, disrupts neural transmission, causes confused and irrational decision-making, and drives them into fights they cannot survive. The same mechanism operates in humans on poor diets.

There is also a version of this problem that involves overproduction rather than fat deficiency. Aajonus acknowledged that some individuals have normal blood fat levels but still produce a tremendous excess of adrenaline. In such cases, the excess adrenaline will still eventually exhaust the available fat and begin acting on the myelin. He identified two distinct pathways to the same outcome: low blood fat with any level of adrenaline, or excess adrenaline with otherwise normal fat levels.

Aajonus taught that the body will produce adrenaline any time it needs to accelerate its healing and clearance processes, not only during physical danger. When he was struck with a belt as a child, adrenaline rushed to the injured area to move blood faster, move the lymphatic system faster, and accelerate the removal of damaged cells. He estimated that a blow severe enough to rupture 10,000 capillaries in a region would call up significant adrenaline in response.

He extended this to chemical injury. When a person takes a toxic supplement, such as processed vitamin C, which he described as ground into glass-like crystals saturated with kerosene, the body recognizes the poison and releases adrenaline to help bind with it. This produces a sensation of energy and elevation, which people mistake for a health benefit. Aajonus said this is entirely an adrenaline response to toxicity, not a nutritional effect. The same applies to vitamin B1 supplements, to recreational drugs like cocaine, to caffeine, and to any other substance that poisons the system. The high is the adrenaline high of emergency detoxification.

He cited this mechanism to explain why people feel energized by supplements, drugs, stimulants, and even by eating processed junk food. The body sends adrenaline because it needs to bind the poisons and push them out through perspiration and the lymphatic system. People interpret this mobilization as feeling good, but they are running on emergency chemistry, not on genuine nourishment.

Adrenaline was also described as driving perspiration. Since 90 percent of toxins are eliminated through the skin, the body uses adrenaline to raise body temperature and induce sweating during toxic episodes, as one mechanism for pushing those poisons out.

Because virtually everyone in modern civilization is continuously exposed to toxins, Aajonus described chronically elevated adrenaline as essentially universal. He said the body is "always in an emergency state," and therefore the endocrine glands, including the adrenals, are always active at a level they were never designed to sustain. The same applies to all other hormones: testosterone, estrogen, thyroxine, and growth hormone are all elevated in most people not because the body needs them for their intended purposes but because those people are chronically toxic.

The consequence of running continuously on adrenaline, rather than on proper fat metabolism, is adrenal exhaustion. Aajonus described what happens when the adrenal glands finally give out after years of being driven beyond their design capacity: the person suddenly cannot function at all. They had been relying on adrenaline to do the work that food should have been doing. When the adrenals stop producing at that rate, everything collapses. He said this is a condition where "even the adrenal glands are shocked."

He tied chronic adrenaline excess to several specific physical consequences. One is the drying out of tissue. He noted that people who run on high adrenaline are using up their fat stores rapidly, and fat is what keeps tissues moist and pliable. He described the likely trajectory as leading to eczema or psoriasis, and observed that people who chronically run on adrenaline, who go eight or ten hours without eating and feel fine because the adrenaline keeps them going, typically have heart attacks in their fifties or sixties because they have dried themselves out internally.

Excess adrenaline, particularly the byproducts that remain in the body after adrenaline has been metabolized or burned, produces irritability, anxiety, and what Aajonus described as a state like PMS that affects men and women equally. These byproducts store in the body like any other toxin and must be cleared. He also pointed to specific physical symptoms of excessive adrenaline exposure: hyperactivity, irritability, and very dry skin or hair.

Even in legitimate emergencies where adrenaline performs its intended function correctly, the aftermath requires attention. Aajonus described the end result of burning a massive amount of adrenaline in the system as producing something like a flu effect, similar to the aftermath of approximately eleven cups of coffee. A great many toxins are generated and must be removed.

For people who have gone through emotional crises, physical emergencies, or any situation where a large adrenaline release occurred, Aajonus recommended specific nutritional support. He said to treat them differently than usual: more protein is needed because tissue will be damaged during high-adrenaline events. He specifically recommended fish for any trauma situation, describing it as the best protein for trauma recovery. Red meat was also identified as supportive.

For people who are constitutionally high producers of activity hormones including adrenaline, testosterone, and estrogen, Aajonus said exercise is not optional. He stated that 95 percent of anxiety exists because the person needs to exercise. If these hormones are produced but not burned through physical activity, the body will spend them in anxiety, irritability, bullying, or "arrogant bravado." He described athletes as typically having 7 to 14 activity lines in the iris, compared to none in his own case, and said that without adequate physical output, these hormones drive a person into pathological emotional states.

He also noted that athletes who live on high adrenaline can feel functional and even powerful while being profoundly unhealthy underneath. He wrote in his books that such people often do not notice their own deterioration because the adrenaline masks symptoms, but the internal drying and damage proceeds regardless.

Aajonus drew a sharp distinction between genuine adrenaline and the chemically manufactured versions sold commercially or used in medical settings. He said the pharmaceutical version is "not real" and does not perform what true adrenaline does, though athletes and others take it anyway because they want the stimulant effect.

He mentioned Lance Armstrong by name as someone who used synthetic adrenaline, calling it cheating and a drug regardless of its relationship to a naturally occurring hormone. He described the commercial adrenaline available for athletes as "the chemical adrenaline that they're making."

On the question of steroids, Aajonus connected them directly to adrenaline: the molecular structure of anabolic steroids was designed to mimic adrenaline, specifically because adrenaline feeds and pumps muscles. But steroids are chemically produced with approximately 3,200 different chemical types in their molecular structure that are foreign to the body, and these cause systematic damage in ways that natural adrenaline does not.

The medical use of injected adrenaline to restart a stopped heart was described by Aajonus as something that works, but he noted that thyroxin is actually the normal hormone for cardiac function, not adrenaline. Adrenaline is used because medicine reaches for it, but it is not the body's own designated cardiac stimulant. He stated that just a few drops of dispersed adrenaline in the blood can bring a heart right back and that once injected, the heart "will be really strong for days from that injection," which further illustrates the concentration and duration of its effect.

The pharmaceutical industry pricing was specifically criticized: Aajonus said the substance could be made available for ten cents per injection but is sold for $400 to $500, which he described as "absolutely insane."

Eating excess red meat, Aajonus observed, stimulates the adrenal glands. This happens because red meat is a strong activator of physical energy metabolism. The result is not necessarily violence but can manifest as irritability, irascibility, crankiness, unhappiness, and excessive acidity. He said this is controllable through diet. People who eat too much red meat and feel irritable are essentially over-stimulating their adrenals into producing more activity hormones than their lifestyle can burn off.

Cats in the wild were described as a parallel. A cat has rudimentary adrenal glands and must stimulate the adrenal cortex of its prey before eating it. This is why large cats will run down prey for a long time, playing with it, driving it until the cat finally takes it down. The prey animal's prolonged fear response fills its tissues with adrenaline, which then nourishes the cat. Dogs do not have this problem because they maintain high adrenaline of their own even when malnourished.

Aajonus developed specific dietary interventions for managing the problems created by excess adrenaline or its toxic byproducts. The central tool was the Nut Formula, made by blending soft nuts such as walnuts or pecans into a flour and combining them with raw egg and other ingredients. The starch component of nuts was the key mechanism: starches bind with excess hormones, their byproducts, and the poisons associated with them, allowing these substances to be cleared from the body.

He described the byproducts of adrenaline metabolism as storing in the body like any other toxin and producing irritability, anxiety, and PMS-like states when they circulate or are released during detoxification. The only way he found to absorb and remove these byproducts was through starch. He specified that regular grains do not work for this purpose in the same way, and beans do not work, but walnuts and pecans blended into flour do.

If the Nut Formula failed to calm excess adrenaline or hyperactivity, the secondary option was a small amount of cooked starch with plenty of raw fat. Aajonus was careful to frame this as a medicinal use, not a dietary staple. He originally recommended small amounts of cooked starch daily or several times weekly in the first edition of his book, but after seven years of observation he found people were eating too much of it and accumulating acrylamides and advanced glycation end products. He revised his guidance to use the Nut Formula as the primary tool, and to introduce cooked starch only if the Nut Formula failed after ten days, and then only in small amounts paired with substantial raw fat.

Specific timing recommendations were given for hyperactive children with excess adrenaline: eating 3 to 4 ounces of Nut Formula or cooked starch with raw fat approximately thirty minutes before homework time or a test allows the mind to work without being distracted by excess adrenaline. Exercise and creative pursuits were also described as essential for these children, as physical activity burns the excess adrenaline harmlessly. If the adrenaline is not spent in physical activity, it will express itself as anxiety, irritability, bullying, or antisocial behavior. All hyperactive children were described as having potential genius that can be either expressed or destroyed depending on whether the adrenaline is managed.

For anxiousness in general, Aajonus recommended raw no-salt-added cheese and the Nut Formula, or small amounts of cooked starch with raw fat. He specified that naturally sparkling mineral water helps calm the adrenals. Salt was described as especially toxic for anxious states and should be avoided. Raw meats, particularly white meat combined with red meat and plenty of raw fat, help mitigate and soothe the condition. Unheated honey or a few non-steamed dates with raw fat help maintain enzymes and blood sugar levels during anxious periods when tremendous amounts of blood sugar and enzymes are consumed. Anger accompanied by excess adrenaline was said to calm in approximately 20 to 40 minutes with the Nut Formula or cooked starch with raw fat and fresh fruit.

For his own extreme situation of acute anxiety before entering a legal arena, Aajonus described eating a baked potato with lots of butter, which he said was the only cooked starch he had eaten in thirteen years. He framed this as a genuine emergency in which neither meat nor nuts was sufficient to arrest the adrenaline, and he used the cooked starch medicinally.

For nerve damage resulting from adrenaline's erosion of myelin, he recommended the Nut Formula every other day, or very small amounts of cooked starch with plenty of raw fat including avocado, unsalted raw butter, and raw cream to neutralize the excess adrenaline and prevent further nerve damage. Raw fish combined with raw red meat or raw poultry was recommended to heal and restore the nerves and replenish the myelin that had been consumed.

Aajonus connected adrenal exhaustion directly to chronic fatigue. He described it as the end state of having over-secreted the adrenal glands over a long period, working them to death until they can no longer produce. He said this pattern typically accompanies what he called type A personality, but also occurs in other constitutional types who have consumed large amounts of caffeine, whether from coffee or cola drinks, over many years. Caffeine stimulates the adrenals continuously until they break down. Once they are exhausted, the person loses even the artificial energy they had been running on, and the result is the total depletion called chronic fatigue.

The approach in such cases was to nurture and rebuild the adrenal glands, not to stimulate them further.

Aajonus positioned adrenaline within a broader argument about the entire endocrine system. Every endocrine gland, including the pituitary, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, pancreas, gonads, and adrenals, was described as designed for emergency use only. None of these glands should be producing detectable hormone levels in the blood of a healthy person eating a proper diet under normal circumstances. The pharmaceutical industry's practice of measuring hormone levels and insisting that people maintain specific quantities in the blood was described as manufactured demand, a means of selling drugs to people who have been convinced that emergency-state hormone levels are normal and necessary.

He made the same point about adrenaline specifically: a doctor who tells a patient they have low adrenaline and should supplement it is, in Aajonus's framework, confusing the absence of a crisis for a deficiency. If you are healthy and not in danger, you are not supposed to have adrenaline in your blood at all. He said tribal peoples and healthy animals, when tested during calm periods, show no detectable hormones in the blood. Test the same individual after an attack or a danger event, and adrenaline appears.

The thymus was described as helping to convert some adrenaline into hormones that regulate lung and heart functionality, integrating the adrenal output into the broader physiological system rather than letting it act exclusively on the muscles.