Alkalinity and Acidity

Aajonus stated that all carnivores have a pH of approximately 5.5 throughout the body, and that this applies to saliva, urine, blood, fecal matter, and the digestive tract itself. He used the dog, the cat, and the gorilla as reference points, noting that none of them have alkaline urine or alkaline salivary secretions. He repeatedly invited people to test their own pets and observe the results. "Check your dog and cat. Doesn't happen. Check your gorilla, your friendly gorilla. Doesn't happen. They have to be acidic."

He contrasted this with the claims of alternative therapists who said the body should test at 6.6 to 7.0 or even higher. His position was that achieving those numbers through diet or supplementation would not indicate health but would indicate the destruction of digestive capacity. If a person manages to drive their blood, urine, and saliva alkaline, they will digest only a quarter to half of what they eat. The hydrochloric acid and acidic bacteria responsible for breaking down animal proteins and fats are neutralized, and digestion fails systemically.

Aajonus noted that even within a normal day his own pH could drop as low as 5.1, partly because the vagus nerve had been severed at some point, affecting certain regulatory processes. He described this not as a pathology but as an individual variation within the acidic range.

Aajonus walked through the digestive tract anatomically to establish that every station is designed around acidity. In the mouth, the saliva contains only one slightly alkalinizing enzyme, which he identified as thiolin, and that enzyme constitutes only 2 to 5 percent of salivary content. Its purpose is to begin breaking down the small amount of carbohydrate in the diet. The rest of the saliva is bacteria, and he cited analysis showing that humans have 2,300 to 3,200 bacteria per centimeter of saliva, compared to 1,600 to 1,800 in dogs and cats. That bacterial content is oriented toward digesting animal matter.

In the stomach, the primary secretion is hydrochloric acid, which reacts specifically with protein, dissolving chunks of meat into a liquid state. Bile from the gallbladder dumps in at the end of the stomach and breaks down fats. Through the small intestine, the digestive tract maintains an acidic level of approximately 5.5. He stated that 80 to 90 percent of digestion is performed bacterially, by putrefactive bacteria that are acidic in nature.

In the colon, the E. coli and other acid-bearing bacteria (he listed E. coli, salmonella, listeria, and campylobacter as all acid-bearing) perform the final stage of digestion, produce B vitamins and amino acids, and create the bacterial bulk that makes feces movable. If alkaline substances reach the colon, these bacteria are neutralized, feces loses its bacterial mass, becomes marble-sized and granite-textured, and the passage causes tearing damage.

He was explicit that the digestive tract is the critical site. "You have to have an acid environment in the stomach and intestines for proper digestion on this diet, for proper digestion for the human body." When people eat whole raw vegetables, the fiber travels through and continuously secretes alkaline fluids throughout the intestinal tract. This does not affect just one section but progressively neutralizes the acidic environment from the stomach all the way through to the colon, destroying the bacteria at each stage.

Aajonus acknowledged that people who eat cooked food, processed food, and industrial chemicals are in a state of genuine over-acidity and that alkalinizing interventions do provide real short-term relief for them. This is not because alkalinity is the correct target state but because the toxic load these people carry is so extreme that even a healthy body needs help neutralizing it. Heavy metals in particular become free radical acids once inside the body, carrying a positive ionic charge that bounces through tissues causing destruction. Calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium act as alkalinizing minerals that de-ionize these toxic compounds by taking the charge out of them, binding with them and making them too large to re-enter cells.

To neutralize a single molecule of mercury, Aajonus calculated that the body requires 12 molecules of calcium, 10 molecules of magnesium, approximately 40 molecules of phosphorus, and 5 to 12 molecules of potassium. This creates an enormous demand for alkalinizing minerals in anyone carrying a heavy metal burden, and that demand is real and urgent regardless of the overall pH target.

The problem comes when the temporary relief from alkalinizing is generalized into a permanent protocol. Aajonus said a period of alkalinizing might be corrective for 10 days, 14 days, or even a few months, depending on the specific condition. "For some people, it may be corrective for a 10-day, 14-day period, or even a few months period. But beyond that, it becomes very damaging." Once a person has cleared enough toxic acidity that their system is approaching balance, continuing to push alkalinity over-suppresses the digestive bacteria and begins degrading digestive function severely.

He also pointed out that the people most visibly sick with acidic-seeming conditions are often over-alkaline in the blood even while the intestinal tract is over-acidic. A person eating processed sugars creates acidic conditions in the intestines while the blood is being driven over-alkaline because the body is constantly pulling alkalinizing minerals into the blood to balance the intestinal contamination. This means the blood pH does not reliably indicate the intestinal state, and looking only at blood or urine pH can produce exactly the wrong therapeutic response.

Aajonus described the physiological consequences of forcing the body into an alkaline state in precise terms. When blood, urine, and saliva are driven up to 6.6 to 7.0, the digestive tract becomes over-alkalinized. The hydrochloric acid in the stomach is neutralized. The acidic bacteria throughout the intestines cannot function. Animal proteins are not fractionated into forms the bacteria can consume. Fats are not broken down properly. The result is that a person may digest only a quarter of what they eat.

He cited the yoga ashrams he had visited as a case study. Most had evolved into lacto-ovo vegetarianism, and while he considered that better than pure plant-based eating, the long-term vegetarians he observed had lost the ability to digest many foods. Some had difficulty digesting animal products even when they wanted to return to eating them, because the over-alkalinization of years of plant-heavy dieting had destroyed the acidic bacterial populations and enzyme production needed to handle animal matter.

He made an explicit statement about cancer in this context, pushing back against the popular alternative medicine claim that cancer cannot survive in an alkaline environment: "Do you think cancer can survive in an alkaline blood system? Oh yes, absolutely. Take diabetics. They're almost always over-alkaline because of the high amount of sugar. The sugar is very alkalinizing in the system. Many of them die of cancer." The fact that the Optimum Health Institute, which runs alkalizing programs, does not achieve cancer survival rates above 23 to 25 percent was cited as evidence that alkalizing is not an effective cancer protocol.

While Aajonus rejected the goal of making the body alkaline, he considered alkalinizing minerals essential because of their specific chemical function. Calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium are the highest-concentration minerals in all foods regardless of food type, and their job is to bind with acidic and caustic compounds in the body, neutralize the charge on free radical acids, and allow those compounds to be escorted out. Without adequate alkalinizing minerals, the body has nothing to balance even the byproducts of normal metabolism, let alone the accumulated toxic load from years of cooked and processed food.

Cooking damages these minerals severely. At 141 degrees Fahrenheit, 50 percent of calcium is cauterized, becoming hardened and losing its ability to absorb or perform its alkalinizing function. Calcium evaporates between 260 and 300 degrees depending on the source. Phosphorus begins to be altered at 98 degrees and has effectively disappeared as a gas by 118 to 122 degrees. Potassium and magnesium are burned up and gone by 400 degrees. This is why, he explained, cooked food creates such extreme mineral deficiency: the minerals that were present in the food before cooking are destroyed, yet the body needs them urgently to deal with the toxic byproducts of eating that same cooked food.

He identified phosphorus specifically as one of the most important nutrients for balancing the alkalinity of the body, meaning for providing enough alkalinizing capacity to keep up with acidic toxicity. Bacteria and enzymes that work with phosphorus are destroyed at 98 degrees. He connected this to why body temperature is critical: a cow's body temperature is approximately 105 degrees, and raw fats in that bacterial environment can reach temperatures of 99 degrees without destroying the bacteria, but 98 degrees is already the limit for phosphorus-related enzymes.

Volcanic ash, which has been marketed as a mineral supplement, was dismissed on these grounds: a volcano operates at 1,200 to 3,300 degrees, which means every alkalinizing mineral in volcanic material has been completely vaporized. What remains is molten acid, not alkalinizing minerals.

The heat reduction in potency is not simply all-or-nothing. He stated that cooked alkalinizing minerals are reduced in their alkalinizing effectiveness by approximately five times compared to the same minerals in raw food. This means that if a person is relying on cooked vegetables or cooked dairy for their alkalinizing minerals, they need five times the quantity to achieve the same neutralizing effect as raw food would provide.

Aajonus's solution to the problem of needing alkalinizing minerals without disrupting the digestive tract was vegetable juice. The key distinction between whole vegetables and vegetable juice is what happens to each during transit. When whole raw vegetables are eaten, the fiber passes through the entire length of the intestinal tract continuously secreting alkaline fluids as it goes. This progressively neutralizes the acidic environment at every stage: mouth, stomach, small intestine, and colon. The E. coli and other acid-bearing bacteria are knocked out, B vitamin synthesis stops, feces formation is impaired, and animal foods are not digested.

Vegetable juice, in contrast, contains essentially no fiber and is absorbed almost entirely in the duodenum, the first section of the small intestine, before it ever reaches the intestines proper. He said "it's all absorbed by the time it hits the intestines," meaning the intestinal tract. At most, a small amount of parsley fiber might reach further, but that is insufficient to cause a problem unless the juice is heavily filtered. The alkalinizing minerals, vitamins, and enzymes from the juice enter the bloodstream through the duodenal wall and travel to the blood, where they can do their job of neutralizing acidic toxicity, without ever changing the pH of the intestines themselves.

He was specific about the morning timing: blood is typically over-acidic in the morning, sometimes dropping to 5.1 or 4.9 in people with significant toxic loads. Vegetable juice in the morning corrects this imbalance in the blood without compromising the digestive tract. For most people dealing with toxic conditions from cooked food and industrial exposure, he suggested two to four juices daily. He noted that as he became less toxic over the years, he could only tolerate one juice daily without becoming lethargic, because his system no longer needed the extra alkalinizing.

The composition of the juice matters. He recommended limiting celery to no more than 30 percent of the juice volume because celery does not contain enough carbohydrate to digest itself, creating a net negative. A combination of approximately 30 percent celery, 30 percent carrot, and 30 percent cucumber was described as workable. Carrot juice alone spikes blood sugar too sharply. Wheatgrass juice was explicitly excluded from the category of alkalinizing vegetable juices because it turns acid in the blood, unlike true vegetable juices. He tested wheatgrass mixed with milk at 3 ounces wheatgrass to 27 to 28 ounces of milk for about a year and a half and found it of minimal benefit.

When vegetable juice causes a burning sensation, which happens because the alkalinizing effect pulls acids out of the esophagus and the membrane between stomach and lungs, he recommended adding a tablespoon of cream to the juice. The fat binds with the caustic substances (including bile causing the burning) as they pass through, preventing the irritation.

Former vegetarians were given a specific caution: because they have already been on an over-alkalinizing diet, they have less acidic digestive capacity than they need, and adding vegetable juice on top of that can further suppress digestion of the animal foods they are trying to reintroduce. He advised them to start with smaller quantities of juice and monitor whether meals following the juice take too long to digest. If digestion slows noticeably, the amount of juice should be reduced.

Vegetable juice should not be mixed with other foods except fats (raw cream, raw butter, or coconut cream). The reason is that fats are processed through the liver and do not require the acidic stomach environment, so they are neutral in terms of the acid-alkaline dynamic. All other foods require either an acidic or alkaline environment, and mixing acidic and alkaline foods neutralizes the digestive environment for both, either preventing proper digestion or converting the food into solvents that cause rapid detoxification.

Because vegetable juice provides alkalinizing minerals in a dilute form and because the body's demand for those minerals can be large when detoxifying industrial chemicals and heavy metals, Aajonus identified cheese combined with honey as the most concentrated available source of the alkalinizing minerals calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium. He described the ratio as approximately one-sixth honey to cheese: one tablespoon of cheese to one-sixth tablespoon (approximately one teaspoon) of honey, though he referenced proportions of "3 tablespoons raw no-salt cheese with 2.5 teaspoons unheated honey" in written correspondence.

The cheese alone contains very high mineral concentrations but is difficult to digest without the honey because it is dehydrated. Adding honey allows the cheese to become almost completely digestible. Together, this combination delivers the alkalinizing minerals in a bioavailable concentrated form that raw mineral supplements cannot match. He was clear that mineral supplements in tablet or powder form are rock-derived and cause kidney stones rather than providing usable minerals, because humans do not have the digestive apparatus that plants use to convert rock minerals into bioavailable form.

The cheese and honey combination does not alkalinize in the way vegetable juices do, he emphasized. The minerals serve the specific function of binding with acidic toxins and neutralizing them, but this is different from the broader alkalinizing effect of vegetable juice on blood pH. Both are needed for different reasons.

Aajonus listed particular foods in terms of whether they are alkalinizing or acidic in their effect, and in some cases the effect is counterintuitive compared to their common classification.

Raw fresh tomatoes, raw fresh figs, raw fresh pineapple, raw fresh lemons, and raw fresh parsley are the most alkalinizing foods. Tomatoes, apples, citrus fruit, and raw unpasteurized apple cider vinegar are chemically acidic but alkalinize the blood and body when consumed. This distinction between the food's intrinsic chemical pH and its systemic effect was important to him. The tomato specifically provides nutrients that help the body maintain its own correct acidity, helps dissolve dead cells for detoxification, and supports digestion, even though it registers as acidic by standard measurement.

Grains are never alkalinizing. He was direct about this: "Grains are never alkalizing. No. They are always an acid base. Grains can never be alkalizing. As long as they are high in sugar and they are a grain base, they are always an acid." He noted that vegetarian literature sometimes claimed millet and buckwheat were non-acidic, and he had investigated this claim through cattle experiments beginning around 1972. He rejected the claim entirely.

Alkaline fruits such as bananas, peaches, and figs should not be consumed more than once a day and should not be combined with meat, because combining alkaline or acidic fruits with red meats turns too much protein into fuel or solvent rather than building material. Alkaline fruits should be eaten with coconut cream, coconut, avocado, unsalted raw butter, raw cream, no-salt-added raw cheese, or occasionally raw eggs.

Acidic fruits such as lemon, lime, pineapple, and tangerine may be combined with fowl or fish when an added fat is present. They should not be combined with red meat for the same reason as alkaline fruits.

Almost all fruits are alkalinizing, including sub-acid fruits like apples, which are more alkaline than acidic in their systemic effect. The main exception he noted was citrus, which he described in the context of fruit being alkalinizing "unless it's a citrus," though he also listed lemons as one of the most alkalinizing foods, so the context here appears to relate to the chemical pH classification versus the systemic effect.

Cucumbers, which are bland fruits despite being commonly treated as vegetables, are very low in carbohydrate and are alkalinizing. He noted this requires care because even these mild alkalinizing foods contribute to the overall alkalinizing burden if eaten in excess.

Butternut squash and other alkaline substances neutralize the acidic putrefactive bacteria that digest animal cells, reducing the digestion of meat, dairy, and eggs. He explained that this is why eating any alkaline food reduces digestion of animal products across the board.

Raw apple cider vinegar was described as useful as a medicine to alkalinize someone who is hyperactive or who has candida, meaning someone who has stored large amounts of acidity in the body. Its benefit comes from being a beneficial acid for the skin and digestive tract, and it does help the blood go alkaline. However, he noted it lacks the vitamins, enzymes, and holistic enzymatic activity of vegetable juices, and it destroys some bacteria, so it is a more limited tool than juice.

Beets help build bio-hydrochloric acid and aid digestion when a person is too alkaline. They were cited as a corrective food in that specific context.

Squashes in general (bland fruits in his classification) are fine on the diet though they are alkalinizing, and he cautioned that "you have to be careful."

Aajonus described a specific mechanism by which processed sugar creates what appears to be an acidic problem but actually produces over-alkalinity in the blood. When processed sugar is eaten, it creates acidic conditions in the intestines because cooked sucrose is already in acid form and burns away the villi of the intestinal lining. But in the blood, the body's response to this intestinal acid contamination is to continuously pull alkalinizing minerals into the blood to compensate, driving the blood over-alkaline. This is why people with sugar problems may present as over-alkaline in the blood even though their intestines are acid-damaged.

He noted this creates an addiction pattern in which the body craves more sugar because the over-alkaline blood has a repulsion to meat, which is the food that would actually correct the condition by restoring normal acidic digestion. Adding more fat to the diet helps break this cycle by making meat more palatable and assisting the body in tolerating and processing animal protein.

Diabetics were described as "almost always over-alkaline because of the high amount of sugar," and he used this to argue against the cancer-alkalinity hypothesis: many diabetics, who are over-alkaline, die of cancer, which should not happen if alkalinity prevented cancer.

Aajonus was consistent and emphatic in attributing the alkalinity myth to the early natural health industry, particularly to Paul Bragg and the other pioneers of that movement. His characterization was that these were genuine pioneers who made real observations, saw that alkalinizing foods provided relief to sick people eating cooked food and chemicals, and then extrapolated from that observation to a universal principle that the body should be alkaline. That generalization then became institutionalized: "It was a theory and it became written in stone, just like the medical profession does, without ever being" tested against actual carnivore physiology.

He named the alternative health practitioners who told patients their urine and saliva should be at 6.6 or 6.7, calling it "garbage information" and "just the opposite" of what is true. He described telling Dr. Travis on a television program that his blood pH was 5.5 and being called a liar, then presenting the blood test results. He described MDs at Washington Medical Center asking him to participate in experiments because his test results were anomalous by conventional standards.

The tribes he cited as evidence for the correctness of acidic physiology were the Maasai, Samburu, Fulani, and Inuit, described as eating meat and dairy exclusively (or in the Inuit case, meat alone), with no vegetables and no fruit except occasional berries during the Alaskan summer. He noted that Eskimo dogs and the Masai and related tribes have essentially no alkalinizing bacteria in their digestive tracts, less than 1 percent, because they have no occasion to use such bacteria.

In written correspondence, Aajonus addressed a claim that acidic blood produces 75 percent negative thoughts and alkaline blood produces 75 percent positive thoughts. His response was that he could not verify the percentages but that he agreed with the general direction of the observation: when the nerves are irritated because the blood supplying them is over-acidic, negativity, hostility, and irritability are common responses. He was careful to add that an alkaline mineral supplement is not the answer because it causes imbalances, and that the correct approach is green vegetable juices, which alkalinize the blood without causing those imbalances.

Aajonus drew a distinction between healthy acidity and unhealthy acidity, and this distinction is necessary to understand the whole framework. The body being at 5.5 pH represents healthy natural acidity appropriate to a carnivore. This is not the same as the toxic over-acidity that results from accumulation of industrial chemicals, heavy metals, and the byproducts of cooked food. The latter is a pathological state in which acidic toxins with damaging ionic charges are damaging tissues. The body at 5.5 on a raw animal food diet is acidic without being over-loaded with toxic acid compounds.

He described this in terms of iridology: a hazel eye showing brown and yellow areas indicates negative acidity in the tissue, meaning bile with toxins settled in the tissue. A type A blood type individual who appears jaundiced rather than ruddy-complexioned is showing a sign of over-alkalinity in the blood and general tissues even while the digestive tract may be toxically acidic. This constitutes "a complex problem" because the therapeutic approaches appropriate for over-alkalinity and for toxic intestinal acidity can be contradictory.

He also described what over-alkalinity looks like iridologically and constitutionally in the context of a specific person: blood, muscle, bone, and skin all alkaline, with the digestive tract toxically acidic, representing "the exact opposite of what it should be," and requiring a carefully calibrated approach rather than a simple protocol.

Because mixing alkaline and acidic foods neutralizes the digestive environment for both, Aajonus structured food combining rules around this chemistry. Vegetables and vegetable juices require an alkaline digestive environment and should not be eaten with acidic foods. Meat, eggs, milk, cheese, nuts, and seeds require an acidic digestive environment. Bland fruits such as tomato and avocado may be eaten with either. Unsalted raw butter, raw cream, and unheated coconut cream are neutral and may go with either acidic or alkaline foods.

The practical consequence is that salads should not precede a meal of animal foods. Eating a salad first, even a raw salad, drives the stomach alkaline and destroys the acid environment needed to digest what follows. "You've already destroyed your acid stomach. Turned it alkaline." Vegetable juice is the only vehicle for getting vegetation into the system without this problem, because of its complete duodenal absorption. Even a small raw salad containing cellulose will secrete alkaline fluids throughout the digestive tract for the duration of its transit.

He also addressed the case of people who have such damaged small intestinal tracts that they have essentially no acid-producing capacity left. In those cases, the digestive tract cannot maintain even a baseline acidic environment, and only foods that are almost entirely self-digesting can be processed. This is described as a condition resulting from long-term leaching of enzymes from throughout the body to compensate for inadequate digestive enzyme production, combined with the absence of meat in the diet, which forces the body to consume its own cells as a nutrient source.

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