Athletics

Aajonus used iridology to assess how much physical activity a given person needed every day. He described concentric rings visible in the iris, which most iridologists called stress rings, as markers of how much hormone a person produced daily for physical activity. He called them activity rings because he said their actual function was not stress but rather a constitutional program for physical expression. The more rings a person had, the more testosterone, adrenaline, and estrogen their body generated each day that needed to be used through movement.

He placed the number of activity rings in a direct one-to-one relationship with hours of required activity. One activity ring equaled approximately one hour of activity or half an hour of exercise per day. Three to five rings was the average range for non-athletic adults. Athletes had seven to fourteen rings. He said he himself had zero activity rings, which meant he had no constitutional drive to exercise and could sit at a computer for twenty hours a day with no distress. He described sex as the only physical activity he was interested in burning energy on.

Children with high numbers of activity rings were routinely being diagnosed with ADD and ADHD, and Aajonus was explicit that this was a physiological misclassification. He described a nine-year-old girl brought to him in Omaha who had fourteen activity rings, the most he had ever seen, exceeding the range he typically cited for athletes. He told her parents she would never be able to sit still for ten minutes in a conventional school setting. His prescription was to remove her from standard schooling, homeschool her, and structure half her education around athletics. He told them to put her in a sport requiring constant movement, specifically mentioning basketball, tennis, soccer, and baseball. The girl preferred baseball and identified as a pitcher, which Aajonus said was ideal because it required the brain and body to work together at high intensity. He told her parents that fifteen minutes of physical activity every hour was the minimum she needed to allow her brain hormones to operate, because the physical hormones would otherwise dominate entirely.

He distinguished between children whose hyperactivity was driven by actual high hormone production and children whose hyperactivity was driven by sugar and chemicals in their food. The latter group had no elevated activity rings; they were reactive rather than constitutional. He said most children labeled hyperactive fell into the chemical category rather than the genuine high-activity-ring category.

The consequences of not exercising when you had many activity rings were described as severe and consistent. He said there were two doors available every day for people who produced high levels of activity hormones: the door of activity or the door of anxiety. Every day those hormones were produced, and if they were not burned through physical output, they would be expressed as anxiety, worry, irritability, and damaged relationships. He described what happened to athletes on spring break, separated from their team training schedules, as a predictable pattern of aggression and domestic violence because no one had told them they could not simply take days off from exercise just because they were taking days off from their team. He said getting a day off from teamwork was not the same as getting a day off from exercise.

Aajonus returned repeatedly across many talks to the example of tribes in the Andes Mountains who ate primarily raw meats and raw foods and who participated in an annual hundred- to two-hundred-mile kickball run at altitudes of fourteen thousand feet. He described the format precisely: groups of nine to eleven people arranged in a line on mountain trails, with the person at the front kicking a tightly made thatched ball a good distance along the path, then falling to the back of the line while the next person assumed the lead and kicked again. This rotation continued for the entire distance of a hundred to two hundred miles, accomplished over a full day. He emphasized that participants included men in their nineties and even approaching a hundred years old, running in conditions where, he said, most Americans could barely climb a flight of stairs.

He contrasted this directly with American athletes who ran hundred-mile races in this country using two bottles of aspirin, each bottle containing a hundred tablets, just to get through a single event. He described a specific friend, an actor who had made substantial money from commercial work, who ran these hundred-mile events annually, trained by running thirteen miles a day, and required two hundred aspirin tablets to complete the race. After finishing, the friend was confined to his house for three weeks because the aspirin had destroyed his vitamin K and vitamin U, making his skin fragile and bleeding easily. The Andes men did none of this and remained physically capable into extreme old age because, Aajonus said, they ate raw foods and did not fill their bodies with toxicity.

He used this comparison to support his broader argument that athletic burnout and deterioration in the late thirties was not an inevitable consequence of high-level sport. It was a consequence of improper diet combined with medical interventions, particularly ice application to injuries, that prevented the body from healing properly and replaced functional tissue with scar tissue.

Aajonus was direct about why professional athletes in the United States and Western countries typically ended their careers in their late thirties. He attributed it to two combined problems: improper nutrition and the use of ice on injuries.

On nutrition, he said athletes who trained on conventional diets were running high-output physiological systems on insufficient fuel. He described athletes like McEnroe going through two and a half gallons of water a day during competition, then drinking more off the court, with all that water diluting the body's nutrients and electrolytes, weakening the athlete progressively. He said athletes who consumed tremendous amounts of water dried out and became brittle over time, losing their ability to compete.

On ice, he said applying ice to injuries was the single most damaging thing done to athletes routinely. He explained that ice stopped blood flow to an injured area, which stopped the natural healing process, allowed scar tissue to form in place of regenerated tissue, and led to progressive structural deterioration of joints, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage. He said nine out of ten athletes could not continue competing past their late thirties because the accumulation of scar tissue in their knees, elbows, shoulders, and other joints left them with mechanically compromised bodies and limited remaining functional lifespan. He was explicit that coaches and team owners applied ice not for the athlete's benefit but to suppress pain quickly so the player could return to competition, serving the financial interests of the franchise rather than the long-term health of the person. He said heat should always be applied to injuries and problem areas to increase blood flow and nutrient delivery to the area and support genuine healing, with cold applied only very briefly, one or two minutes at most, if needed to reduce acute pain.

He described the downstream consequence of repeated ice treatment as progressive scar tissue accumulation, eventually requiring surgical intervention to scrape out the scar tissue, after which the process repeated and worsened, leaving the athlete with areas of tissue that had no viable cells capable of regeneration.

Aajonus taught that fat was the body's primary fuel source for physical performance, providing two and a half times more energy per gram than either protein or carbohydrate. He said eighty percent of energy came from fat, fifteen percent from protein, and five percent from carbohydrate. He used wrestlers as his primary example of what properly fat-fueled athletes looked like, pointing out that no successful wrestler was lean or ripped, because the fat both protected them from the physical impacts of the sport and provided the energy to sustain the gymnastics-level movements involved. He said wrestlers worked at twenty-four to thirty percent body fat, which he noted was also the normal healthy range for women.

He was explicit that you could not lift heavy weights without fat, that weightlifters were not primarily muscular but were primarily fat, and that bodybuilders who displayed visible muscle definition were operating at a nutritionally depleted state designed for visual effect rather than functional strength. He said carbohydrate and protein converted to energy through inefficient pathways involving acetate and acetone conversions, which were complex and wasteful processes, while fat converted directly to the body's preferred fuel with maximum efficiency.

For people in high-contact, high-energy, or high-impact sports, he said they needed to be fat specifically because the fat acted as physical protection against impacts. He described how wrestlers trained to fall and land in ways that used their body fat as shock absorption, and he said these athletes performed stunts that exceeded gymnastics in difficulty while sustaining far fewer serious injuries than their leaner counterparts would have.

The Sport Formula was the specific preparation Aajonus developed for athletes requiring hydration and fuel during extended physical activity. He distinguished it explicitly from commercial sport drinks, which he described as entirely chemical with no genuine nutritional value, producing only short-lived electrical stimulation through corn sugar and caffeine. He said the Sport Formula was nutrient-bound, providing genuine electrolytes, fuel, and building materials rather than false stimulation.

The formula evolved over several years and was recorded in slightly different versions across different talks. He encouraged people to find it on WeWantToLive.com and in his newsletters. Below are the specific versions recorded in the source passages.

**Version from 22 February 2009, called the Sport Drink:** Two cups cucumber puree, with some tennis players using three cups. One cup tomato puree. One tablespoon vinegar. One tablespoon lemon juice. One to four tablespoons honey. Two to four tablespoons coconut cream. Two to four tablespoons dairy cream. Two and a half ounces sparkling mineral water. Blend all together. For athletes performing for five or more hours in a tournament, add one egg per cup of the drink, whipped in immediately before drinking each cup.

**Version from 14 December 2008, called the Sport Formula:** Two cups or more of cucumber puree and tomato puree as the primary base, with the base made from any combination of cucumber puree, tomato puree, whey, watermelon puree, or water, making up at least two cups and up to five cups total. Two to three tablespoons wine juice. Two to three teaspoons lemon juice. One to two tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar. Two to four tablespoons dairy cream. Two to four tablespoons coconut cream. Additional ingredients including eggs and honey in the manner described in other versions.

**Version described for a runner who drank one quart per day:** Approximately one-third cucumber juice, one-third blended tomato, approximately half a teaspoon of vinegar, approximately two tablespoons of honey, approximately four tablespoons of coconut cream, two tablespoons of dairy cream.

**Version described as an incredible sport drink:** One and a half tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar. One tablespoon lime juice. One tablespoon lemon juice. Two tablespoons raw cream. Two tablespoons honey. Two tablespoons coconut cream. Three raw eggs. Blended together, this makes approximately one quart.

**Version from the beneficial home baths source, described as the most recent Sport Formula:** Raw apple cider vinegar, maximum two tablespoons for athletes, maximum one tablespoon for non-athletes, and possibly half a tablespoon for sedentary workers. One tablespoon lemon juice. Three to four tablespoons honey, with the note that some athletes have problems with that much honey and may reduce to two tablespoons. One cup water, added specifically when doing high-intensity sport because water is needed in that context. One egg for sports persons, omitted for non-sports persons. Blend together. This quantity is described as sufficient for five hours of hard activity.

**Version described using watermelon, tomato, and cucumber purees:** Watermelon puree, tomato puree, and cucumber puree as thick bases, blended to reach approximately one quart total with additional liquid. The formula was described as very thick because of the purees, so athletes chewed it rather than simply drinking it. Additional ingredients included eggs in the blend.

Aajonus said his athletes went through one quart of the Sport Formula in five hours of hard activity without getting weak or tired. He contrasted this with competitors who drank a gallon to a gallon and a half of water in the same period and progressively weakened because they were diluting their body's nutrients and electrolytes with each additional volume of plain water consumed.

He described the proper way to consume the Sport Formula as sipping rather than gulping, taking no more than three sips at a time. For athletes who were also eating during competition or training, he recommended sipping two ounces of the formula every thirty minutes alongside cheese, eating the cheese first and then sipping the formula ten minutes later, making a total of six to eight ounces of fluid per hour.

He also recommended milk as a separate hydration support alongside the Sport Formula. He said athletes should sip the milk and the Sport Formula together, not gulping either, alternating between cheese, milk, and the formula throughout the activity period.

Aajonus gave a specific explanation for why whey was a valuable ingredient in the Sport Formula and as a standalone support for athletes. During intense muscle activity, lactic acid accumulated in the muscles, causing cramping, charley horses, and muscle knots that could end competition or cause athletes to be benched. He said many athletes experienced severe muscle cramps in their calves and feet during high-output activity because their bodies were not clearing lactic acid efficiently, and that excessive water consumption made this worse rather than better by disrupting the body's mineral balance.

He explained that whey was itself high in lactic acid, and that the lactic acid in whey reacted with the accumulated lactic acid in muscles in a way that converted and cleared it rather than solidifying it into plaques or causing it to mineralize in tissue. He specifically distinguished this reaction from how concentrated minerals or other substances would behave in the same context, saying that whey's lactic acid cleared the muscle-bound lactic acid without causing the tissue damage that other forms of acidic accumulation could produce. He identified this as the mechanism by which Val Mysyk and Walker Kieran, the 2009 number one US high school tennis champions, were able to sustain performance through five hours of competition without cramping or weakening.

**Walker Kieran and Valerie Mysyk (also spelled Valerie Bisick and Ngauamo Adams in different passages), 2009 US High School Tennis Champions:** Both were patients on the Primal Diet from the time they were eight and nine years old respectively. Walker had been severely asthmatic as a young child, unable to drink even pasteurized milk, unable to play sports. On the raw diet, his asthma resolved entirely and he developed the endurance to compete at a championship level. Aajonus described him as able to stand on the court with total endurance and take on any opponent. Both champions drank only one quart of the Sport Formula during five hours of tournament competition. Their competitors consumed one gallon to two gallons of water in the same period and grew progressively weaker. Aajonus said both champions were eventually barred from playing in subsequent years because they were dominating their competition too thoroughly and the politics of high school tennis could not accommodate it.

**Pem Wall, senior martial artist, referred to variously as age 56 through 63 depending on the point in time being discussed:** He competed in world championship martial arts and used jump rope training as his primary conditioning method. Before going on the Primal Diet, his heart rate immediately after completing a jump rope session averaged between 163 and 190 beats per minute over the course of the year he monitored it. After one year on the diet, his heart rate after completing the same sessions averaged 96 to 112 beats per minute. His jump rope sessions were structured as three days per week. On one day he did approximately 2,300 to 2,700 jumps. On a second day he did 3,700 to 7,200 jumps. On the third day he did 12,200 to 14,000 jumps, accomplished in approximately one hour. He used a heavy rope and three-pound shoes. Before the diet, when competing at an age that put him among the oldest competitors in his fifteen-year age bracket, he typically finished in thirtieth to fiftieth place against competitors who were ten to fifteen years younger. After one year on the diet, he came in fifth place. After two years on the diet, he came in fourth place.

**Marathon runner from St. Louis:** This person took two and a half hours off his marathon time in a single year on the diet. Aajonus noted that competitive marathon runners typically aimed to reduce their time by three to five minutes per year. Two and a half hours in one year was described as extraordinary.

**Unnamed 59-year-old martial artist described in a separate passage:** This person had been on the diet for two years at the time of the telling and used jump rope to build stamina in the manner of a boxer. The details about jump rope volumes and heart rate improvement in this passage are consistent with the Pem Wall case study and appear to describe the same person at a different stage.

**Olympic gymnast, unnamed:** She was experiencing recurring colds and flu every three to five weeks, forcing her to stop training for two weeks at a time repeatedly. She was at risk of being removed from the team due to inability to maintain consistent training. Aajonus described her as benefiting from the diet in a way that resolved this cycle, though the source passages do not give full details of her outcome beyond the description of the problem.

**Hall of fame basketball player, unnamed:** Aajonus described this person as requiring a cholesterol level of 675 to sustain performance. He said the player was in his seventies and could still outperform younger players on the court, with his cholesterol ranging from 550 to 670.

Aajonus was specific about timing food relative to exercise. For high-output activities like soccer, he recommended finishing eating at least twenty minutes before playing. For tennis players using the Sport Formula, the protocol was to sip the formula in small amounts throughout the activity rather than consuming large amounts at intervals.

He described the vegetable juice problem explicitly when a person reported feeling hot, tired, and weak after having a green juice and going for a walk. He said vegetable juices contained only vitamins and enzymes with no fuel, and that a person who wanted to exercise after a green juice needed to add two or three eggs directly to the juice before going out. For anyone playing tennis, he prescribed two to three eggs in the Sport Formula as a baseline requirement, saying this would change the experience entirely.

He also addressed the question of eating heavily before extreme events. For activities that would cause enormous caloric expenditure, he described an approach involving eating large amounts of meat of all varieties, fowl, red meat, and seafood, along with lots of fat, both the day before and on the day of the activity. He suggested that if a person wanted to eat to the point of bulimia on that day, it was the best approach, and that if they did not eat that heavily, they would need to consume large quantities of eggs and fat and protein in the days following the activity to rebuild.

For people who had previously been highly active but were unable to exercise due to injury, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, or extreme fatigue, Aajonus recommended singing as a substitute. He described twenty minutes of singing as equivalent to one hour on a treadmill in terms of the physical demand placed on the body. He explained the mechanism as the requirement to simultaneously control the throat muscles, the mouth aperture, and the breathing pattern to maintain tone and pitch, which he called the most strenuous exercise available to the human body. He noted that opera singers could not be thin because the energy and fat requirements of sustained vocal performance were too high.

Aajonus described his iridological reading of activity rings as directly applicable to how he advised athletes and high-activity individuals on how to structure their lives. When conducting iris readings, he would assess the number of activity rings as the last element of the reading and use it to tell the person how many hours of physical activity they needed per day, whether they needed a formal exercise program in addition to general daily movement, and what kind of career or daily structure would suit their constitutional output level.

He explained the arithmetic of exercise versus general activity: if a person had seven activity rings, they needed seven hours of physical activity per day. One hour of formal exercise counted as two hours of activity, so one hour of exercise reduced the required general activity time by two hours, leaving five hours of everyday physical activity required. General activity included making food, making the bed, walking to the car, lifting objects, and any physical task involved in daily life. If a person was a mother doing continuous household work, three to five hours of activity occurred naturally. If a person had eight to ten activity rings, they needed an additional formal exercise program every day on top of their general activity.

He said that neurologists called these rings nerve rings, and that most iridologists called them stress rings, but he had moved to calling them worry circles at certain points, specifically to remind patients that the choice between activity and anxiety was theirs to make each day. He said ninety-five percent of anxiety was created by insufficient exercise relative to the level of activity hormones being produced.

For high-activity-ring individuals and children, Aajonus consistently recommended sports requiring continuous movement rather than sports with frequent pauses. He specifically named soccer, hockey, basketball, and baseball pitching as appropriate for very high-activity children. He said volleyball was less suitable because of the waiting involved between serves. He said a child with fourteen activity rings needed to be in a school that provided structured athletic activity for twenty to thirty minutes every hour. Without that, the physical hormones would dominate and prevent any effective mental or academic functioning. He framed this not as a behavioral problem but as a straightforward physiological requirement.

For high-activity-ring adults in non-athletic careers, he recommended massage therapy practiced eight to ten hours a day, physical labor including construction and ditch digging, or any physically demanding occupation as an alternative to formal sport. The criterion was simply that the activity hormones had to be fully utilized each day.

Aajonus described his own brief period of genuine athletic activity in the 1970s as the first time in his life he had ever been able to do anything athletic with the intention of being athletic. He ran backwards around the Hollywood High School track, keeping pace with and outrunning people who were sprinting forwards, going continuously without needing to slow down. He described his heart rate returning to normal within three minutes of stopping. He also ran on soft sand from Venice Beach Pier to the Taklitz Canyon above Santa Monica Pier, a stretch of nearly five miles, on the days he did not run the track. He did 250 push-ups a day during this period. He noted that bicycling before this period had been a matter of survival during the years he lived outdoors rather than sport, so he did not count it as athletic activity in the same sense.

He framed this period as the direct result of being on his raw diet rather than as something he pursued through training or motivation, emphasizing that the physical capacity simply emerged as a consequence of eating properly.

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