Bone Marrow

Bone marrow is predominantly fat, at 60 to 80 percent fat depending on the diet of the individual or animal, placing it in the same category as the brain, which is also 60 to 80 percent fat. Because of this extreme fat concentration, it functions as a storage depot for toxins: the body preferentially sends heavy metals, industrial chemicals, and other poisons to the bone marrow and the brain when other fat reserves are unavailable or already saturated. This is especially pronounced in thin people, whose only significant fat deposits are the bone marrow and brain, meaning their marrow is often highly toxic.

The marrow is not uniformly distributed across all bones. Aajonus identified the knees, hip bones, and femur joints as the primary blood-producing sites, with the femur and tibia being the richest sources of marrow. The areas near the knuckle ends of bones are all cartilage and hard bone with no marrow inside. He specified that the rich marrow runs from roughly mid-shaft to mid-shaft on the animal, away from both ends.

Within the marrow, red and white blood cells divide and then mature. Aajonus consistently described this as a process of cellular division: one cell becomes two identical cells, both of which grow to full size. The maturation period, from division to entry into the bloodstream, runs approximately 40 to 65 days depending on the health of the individual, with various estimates in his discussions ranging from 40 to 60 days, 45 to 60 days, or 45 to 65 days. Once mature, the cells enter the bloodstream naturally, migrating out of the marrow on their own or being released when the body requires them.

He was emphatic that red and white blood cells are born and mature in the bone marrow and nowhere else in the adult body. In the fetus, blood cell development occurs first in the kidney and then moves to the bone marrow, where it remains permanently after approximately 46 months. He rejected the idea, which some doctors and scientists hold, that the spleen manufactures or matures blood cells, stating that the spleen only holds reserves of already-mature cells. When immature cells appear in the spleen, it is because the bone marrow has become so toxic that it is evicting young cells prematurely, and the body is using the spleen as a secondary maturation station, a process he described as creating more complexity and more problems.

Because the marrow is so concentrated in fat, it attracts and accumulates heavy metals and other chemical poisons. Aajonus gave aluminum and tin as common examples, noting that these metals, deposited in the marrow, can reduce blood quality by around 20 to 30 percent on average, with up to 30 percent reduction in some cases. If blood is functioning at 60 to 70 percent of its intended capacity because of marrow toxicity, the body may be running on as little as 20 to 30 percent of its normal energy output. He linked this to widespread chronic fatigue, weakness, and low energy levels in the general population.

Specific conditions he associated with toxic bone marrow include anemia, leukemia, multiple myeloma, and cancers of the blood and bone. When the marrow environment is contaminated with heavy metals such as lead and cadmium, the red and white blood cells that develop there are weak, damaged, and mutated. He distinguished between bone marrow cancer, which is leukemia, and bone cancer in the harder bone tissue, noting that the latter can originate from marrow pathology spreading outward. When the body evicts immature cells from the toxic marrow into the bloodstream and the spleen attempts to compensate, the spleen may enlarge dramatically. He was strongly opposed to surgical removal of an enlarged spleen on these grounds, stating that removing it eliminates the body's last option for maturing those displaced cells and guarantees worse outcomes including definite anemia at minimum.

He also noted that when children were thin, which was the historical norm, their only significant fat reserves were the bone marrow and the brain, so environmental poisons went directly into those sites, causing developmental blood problems and neurological damage.

Aajonus described the process of clearing toxic accumulations from bone marrow as one of the slowest and most difficult processes in the body, precisely because the marrow has limited circulation and no direct lymphatic drainage. Poisons must move out through the joints gradually. He stated that in his own case, with the extreme marrow damage caused by radiation across two-thirds of his major blood-producing sites, it took about thirteen years on the primal diet before he was nearly free of bone pain.

He referenced the work of Howell and Pottenger, who demonstrated in animal studies that it took five generations on a perfect diet to bring a diseased lineage back to optimal health. Converting that to human generational cycles of seven to seven and a half years, the math produces a timeline of many decades to fully reverse inherited and accumulated marrow toxicity.

He recommended eating cheese throughout the day to draw metallic poisons out of the body during any significant detoxification, and specifically mentioned this in the context of bone marrow toxicity from aluminum and other metals.

The most distinctive property Aajonus attributed to bone marrow is its stem cell content. He described the marrow as the only accessible food source of what he called non-adult, embryonic-like stem cells, cells that have not yet received instructions about what type of tissue to become. He contrasted these with adult stem cells, which are already differentiated and can only reproduce their own kind. The marrow stem cells, when eaten and absorbed, give the body material it can direct toward growing any type of cell needed, whether heart cells, nerve cells, bone cells, skin cells, or eye cells.

He stated that the only other sources of this type of undifferentiated stem cell are sperm and the ovum, but that neither is practically farmable in the way bone marrow is, making marrow the uniquely accessible source of regenerative stem cells in the diet.

He connected this stem cell property to a story about Don Ho, the entertainer, who was dying after multiple open-heart surgeries and bypasses. A scientist friend in Switzerland had developed a technique for separating cardiac-specific stem cells from blood, culturing them, and reinjecting them. This allowed the heart to regenerate and Ho was reportedly able to return to work. Aajonus used this story to illustrate what stem cells in general can accomplish, then connected it back to the more broadly flexible stem cells available in eaten bone marrow.

He also described using a butter and bone marrow mixture applied to his scalp, noting that stem cells with no specific DNA address are not restricted in what they can become, meaning they can potentially become nerve cells or follicle cells, and that this formula could stimulate hair regrowth.

Aajonus ate bone marrow exclusively raw. He was direct that cooking or boiling bones, such as making bone broth, destroys the marrow and everything valuable in it. He scooped it out with a knife from femur or tibia sections cut by the farmer or butcher. When the marrow has sat at room temperature overnight, about eight hours, it softens enough to pop out of the bone easily with a knife or tool. He mentioned using chopsticks to push it out of long bones. He warned that the bone edges are sharp enough to cause deep cuts to the fingers when handling.

His personal consumption in Los Angeles was one pound of bone marrow per day, approximately one full package, which he described as containing four to five bones with roughly one and a half to two tablespoons of marrow each. When not in Los Angeles he might eat two bone marrows per day. He always ate it alongside his regular meat meal and continued eating butter with that meal as well, though he noted that when eating bone marrow, the butter requirement drops significantly, perhaps to half a tablespoon instead of the usual amount.

He advised others to eat one bone marrow per meat meal, calling that plenty and sufficient to replace the butter that would otherwise accompany a meat meal. He cautioned against eating excessive quantities because bone marrow is extremely concentrated and very difficult to digest, requiring nearly ten times more bile than most fats. When he ate a full package daily, he experienced extremely greasy bowel movements that floated and could not be flushed, with roughly 60 percent of the fat content of an equivalent stick of butter passing through undigested. He concluded that bone marrow does not cause weight gain for this reason, because so much passes through unabsorbed, and he stated he had experimented with many people and never saw additional weight from marrow consumption.

He recommended getting marrow home and leaving it out for a few hours, then popping it out of the bones and placing it in a jar before refrigerating it. He noted that bone causes rapid bacterial manifestation and oxidizes the marrow quickly, so storing it this way in a jar extends its usable life.

Aajonus sourced his bone marrow primarily from North Star Bison in Rice, Wisconsin, available online. He also obtained it from Amish farmers who raised beef and from any farmer slaughtering animals who could cut long bones into sections. The femur and tibia were his preferred cuts, described as having the richest marrow. He noted that marrow can also be obtained incidentally from any cut of meat that includes bone, though the amount is small. He also described obtaining marrow from a freshly butchered cow that had died in childbirth on his property, eating it warm directly from the bone, which he described as tasting like warm butter.

He mentioned that bone marrow from buffalo and beef were his two main sources, noting no meaningful distinction in his descriptions of how to use them.

Aajonus discovered or developed the topical use of bone marrow through experimentation, initially with a hairdresser who had severely dry skin and could not be persuaded to eat enough fat to lubricate her skin from the inside. He began having her apply bone marrow directly to her skin. He traveled to Asia for two months, and when he returned, her skin had transformed completely. She appeared approximately ten years younger, and he estimated she looked forty when she was nearly fifty. He reported that she continued using it daily thereafter.

He stated that applying bone marrow to skin daily for six weeks eliminates approximately 80 percent of wrinkles. He presented this as an alternative to nanotechnology-based cosmetics, which he described as poisoning skin cells to cause them to lose their memory and relax, creating a cancerous condition in the process.

He described having a full-body massage using half butter and half bone marrow, after which he went seven days without bathing with no odor except in the armpits, no dry skin, and no itchy skin. He compared this to his usual four to five day interval between baths. He recommended this mixture as a massage medium.

For hair and scalp specifically, he described applying butter and bone marrow to the scalp, explaining that the stem cells in the marrow, having no fixed DNA address, can become nerve cells or support follicle regeneration. He believed this combination could potentially regrow hair, particularly in cases where air pollution and metallic toxicity had damaged follicles.

He also mentioned that the topical use of bone marrow was something people at his Los Angeles co-op had experimented with at his suggestion, with consistent results for skin improvement.

For the primal facial body care cream, he added bone marrow to the existing formula of coconut cream, dairy cream, and butter applied to the face, making it a four-ingredient mixture.

For leukemia, Aajonus stated directly that if a person stops radiation and chemotherapy and eats fresh, unfrozen raw bone marrow with organic raw beef, the chances of remission and recovery from leukemia are as high as 96 percent, contrasting this with a roughly 2 percent success rate for bone marrow transplants without side effects. He emphasized fresh and unfrozen as essential qualifiers.

For brittle bones and osteoporosis, he recommended eating fresh and unfrozen organic bone marrow with raw beef to speed healing, and cited it in the context of a lack of utilizable fat as a primary cause of bone fragility.

For anemia caused by toxic bone marrow, he explained that the solution is not simply having more red blood cells but having healthy, mature red blood cells capable of carrying oxygen. If the marrow environment is contaminated, even a normal quantity of red blood cells will be functionally anemic because they are immature or too damaged to transport oxygen adequately.

For skin aging and hair loss associated with metallic toxicity damaging follicles, he recommended the butter and bone marrow topical application as described above.

For his own multiple myeloma, he used raw bone marrow as a central part of his recovery protocol over many years, specifically because his marrow had been irradiated across two-thirds of his major blood-producing sites.

Bone marrow requires nearly ten times more bile to digest than ordinary fats. This makes it one of the most digestively intensive foods in the primal diet. Aajonus noted this as the reason it does not cause weight gain even in large quantities: most of it passes through the intestines unabsorbed when eaten in excess. He described the resulting bowel movements as extremely greasy and floating.

He recommended limiting consumption to one bone marrow piece per meat meal and reducing butter intake accordingly at that meal, perhaps to half a tablespoon. He did not recommend eating multiple bone marrows at a single sitting for general use, reserving his own heavy daily consumption for his specific ongoing recovery from bone cancer and radiation damage.

He noted that bone marrow kept out at room temperature for about eight hours becomes soft enough to work with easily, and that warming it makes it tastier and easier to handle. It can be eaten directly, rubbed on the skin, added to a meat sauce, or used as a massage medium.