Breast Milk

The lacteal system is a web-like network woven through the intestinal walls. Every food consumed, whether blueberries, meat, or any other substance, is pulled through digestion and converted into a fluid that looks exactly like off-white milk. This lacteal fluid is what gets absorbed upward into the mammary glands, where it is held and concentrated for nursing. The mammary glands hold this gathered lacteal fluid and secrete it when a baby nurses. Because the glands are drawing from what the woman has eaten and what bacteria and their byproducts have produced in her digestive tract, the entire history of her diet is embedded in what she offers her child.

Aajonus pointed out that toxins travel continually into the mammary glands and contaminate the milk whenever a woman's diet has included cooked, processed, or chemically laden foods. The mammary glands themselves, he said, can be structurally defective when they have developed on a standard American diet, because the tissues did not form under the conditions necessary for healthy development.

Aajonus's core position was direct and consistent across many seminars and writings: he told most mothers not to breastfeed. He arrived at this position not as a rejection of breastfeeding in principle, but as a practical conclusion based on comparing the quality of a modern woman's milk against the quality of raw milk from a cow or goat that has eaten raw food its entire life.

His argument ran as follows: a cow raised on raw food all of its life produces milk whose quality reflects a lifetime of raw, unadulterated nutrition. A woman raised on cooked food, processed food, junk food, pharmaceutical drugs, environmental chemicals, and all the other inputs of modern life produces milk that reflects all of those exposures. Her mammary glands have been developing and functioning in a toxic environment. When she nurses, she is transferring whatever poisons her body is storing and cycling into the milk her baby receives. The baby may not react immediately in ways the mother can see, but those toxins accumulate in the infant and manifest as problems later.

He described one woman who had been a smoker and stopped smoking when she began the Primal Diet. Every time her baby nursed from one breast, the baby developed rashes. Aajonus identified this as the tar and other residues from years of smoking being pulled into the mammary tissue and passing into the milk. He used this case to illustrate his general principle: poisons stored in the body get into the milk, and the mother transfers her toxic burden to the baby regardless of whether she feels well herself.

In another case he described, a Chinese woman's husband insisted she stop breastfeeding because every time she nursed, her child developed a rash. When they switched to raw cow's milk, the rashes stopped. Aajonus cited this as confirmation that the mother's milk was the problem, not milk in general.

He also noted that the mammary glands of women raised on standard American diet foods are defective because of how they developed on those foods. This means the glands themselves, not just the content of the milk, are compromised.

Aajonus consistently qualified his advice against breastfeeding with an acknowledgment that approximately one percent of babies do better on mother's milk than on any other milk, including raw cow's milk. In those rare cases where a baby is actually allergic to raw cow's or goat's milk but tolerates only the mother's milk, he said the mother's milk is the right choice. He described knowing at least one baby for whom this was true, where the mother was eating a good enough diet and producing milk of sufficient quality that the baby genuinely thrived on it and did not do as well on other sources.

Separately, he stated that if a mother has been on a raw food diet, eating lots of raw dairy and raw meat all of her life, her milk will be the best food for her baby. The determining factor is always: who eats more of a balanced raw food diet, the mother or the animal whose milk is the alternative? In nearly every case among modern women, the answer is the animal.

In primitive tribes where mothers nurse while eating entirely raw food, Aajonus observed that children were nursed for up to seven years, and those children were exceptionally healthy. After four years, milk was not the only thing the child consumed, but the child might still suckle once a day up through the seventh year, maintaining both an emotional and physical connection. He found that tribes maintaining this practice had children with much calmer nervous systems.

For infants whose mothers are not on a lifelong raw food diet, Aajonus's primary recommendation was raw cow's milk, kept warm, never refrigerated, given to the infant as the foundational food. He noted that in many primitive cultures with no experience of disease, an exclusive raw milk diet for babies up to two years of age proved entirely healthful.

He also developed a liver formula for infants, described in his recipe books, consisting of roughly one-quarter to one-third raw liver blended with two-thirds to three-quarters raw milk, sometimes with a small amount of honey. This was his recommendation particularly when the milk had been chilled and its growth factors diminished, or when the infant needed additional concentrated meat protein. He described a child raised on this formula, half buffalo liver and half milk blended together, with a large hole cut in the bottle nipple to allow the thick mixture to flow. That child, by two and a half years old, was reading four-year-old material in preschool without having been taught. By five years old he knew the names of 187 countries and their political systems. Aajonus offered this as a demonstration of what proper infant nutrition produces in terms of neurological development.

He noted that kefir could be given to infants in limited amounts, no more than two ounces every hour, as a way of ensuring the baby receives nutrients in a form that is already partially predigested.

Aajonus made a clear distinction between cow's milk and goat's milk for infants and children. His general preference for most babies was raw cow's milk, which he described as more sedating, calming, and appropriate for building the nervous system. He observed that infants and children given goat's milk tended to be more hyperactive and unsatisfied.

He described his own observations with goats on a farm: the animals themselves were hyperactive, difficult to manage, and rarely calm, and he found that children given goat's milk reflected similar qualities. Cow's milk, by contrast, was calming because of the nature of its fats, which he described as soothing in a way that goat's milk was not.

He recommended goat's milk primarily for infants or adults who were significantly overweight or diabetic. For all others, cow's milk was preferable. He would sometimes recommend goat's milk yogurt rather than raw goat's milk, particularly for people with blood sugar issues.

Aajonus was emphatic that milk given to infants must never be cold. He explained the mechanism as follows: when cold milk is consumed, it contracts the stomach, preventing the stomach from secreting hydrochloric acid. Without adequate hydrochloric acid, milk proteins cannot be properly digested. The undigested milk, including casein and lactose, then moves into the duodenum and from there into the bloodstream in an undigested state. This irritates the system and can cause allergies. In babies specifically, cold milk causes cramping.

He stated that milk should always be at room temperature at minimum, and ideally warmer. If a baby or adult needed to drink something cold, he advised limiting the intake to no more than two ounces at one time, which the body could warm rapidly enough to avoid prolonged stomach contraction. Anything beyond two ounces of cold milk risked sustained stomach contraction and the problems that follow from it.

The ideal for infants, in his view, was milk kept at or near the cow's body temperature of approximately 101 degrees, raw and never refrigerated, given while still warm from the animal.

Aajonus spoke repeatedly about the destruction of growth factors in milk once it is cooled below certain temperatures. He stated that growth hormone factors in raw milk begin to diminish as soon as the milk is cooled below 72 degrees Fahrenheit. At 46 degrees, they begin to be significantly reduced, and within one day of refrigeration most of them are neutralized.

Because infants depend heavily on these growth factors for neurological and physical development, Aajonus considered the chilling of infant milk a serious problem. He said that when milk remains warm and unrefrigerated, it helps regenerate cells almost as powerfully as meat does, functioning similarly to what it does for a nursing calf. Once refrigerated, this capacity is dramatically reduced.

He described his personal practice when acquiring milk: asking the farmer not to refrigerate it, to take it warm from the cow and leave it in a dark area at ambient temperature, where it would remain viable and bacteria-rich. He noted that unrefrigerated milk kept at 78 to 80 degrees and allowed to sour naturally was in fact the ideal form of the food, because the souring process is simply natural bacterial activity predigesting the milk, which is exactly what would happen in the stomach anyway. Soured, clabbered milk therefore requires less digestive work from the body and is easier to absorb.

He made the point that growth hormones in milk are also damaged by refrigeration generally, regardless of whether the milk is from an animal or a mother.

Aajonus observed that the act of suckling itself has a biological function beyond simply delivering milk. When a baby sucks at the nipple, the suction introduces the baby's oral bacteria into the milk, and conversely introduces bacteria from the milk and nipple into the baby's mouth and digestive system. This bacterial exchange is part of how infants develop their intestinal bacterial colonies.

He extended this principle to his own practice of drinking milk: he always sucked his milk rather than drinking it freely, using a straw or similar implement, in order to introduce his own saliva bacteria into the milk. Saliva contains digestive bacteria appropriate to a human's intestinal tract, which begin breaking down the milk even before it reaches the stomach.

He described an alternative to commercial kefir starters: instead of using commercial bacterial cultures, which he considered hybridized and no longer related to natural intestinal bacteria, he recommended spitting (expectorating) a teaspoon to a tablespoon of saliva into raw milk and using that as a starter. The bacteria in human saliva, he argued, are more appropriate to the human digestive system than the bacteria in commercial kefir grains, which have been washed and grown so many times in artificial conditions that they bear no real relationship to natural milk bacteria or to human intestinal flora.

He noted that any baby with persistent symptoms such as gas, colic, cramping, or chronic crying typically has a low intestinal bacterial count and is relying on digestive acids rather than bacteria to break down food. The digestive acids produce a great deal of gas. Increasing the bacterial content of the infant's food, whether through naturally soured raw milk or the liver formula, addresses the root problem.

Aajonus described a case documented in "We Want to Live" involving a five-month-old Korean infant who screamed almost continuously throughout the day. The mother had tried multiple bottles, and each time the baby would grab the nipple eagerly but push it away within seconds and resume screaming. The mother and father were exhausted and humiliated.

Aajonus and his colleague Owanza prepared a mixture described as a raw milk and honey blend. When the mother ran the nipple over the infant's lip, the baby grabbed the bottle and sucked it dry within four minutes. After finishing the bottle, the baby smiled. The mother said it was the first time the baby had ever smiled.

This case illustrated for Aajonus that the infant had been in pain from inadequate nutrition and bacterial deficiency, and that raw milk with honey addressed what no formula, pasteurized milk, or commercially modified preparation had been able to provide.

Aajonus described toxins as continuously traveling through a nursing woman's bloodstream and into the mammary tissue. This is not a one-time or occasional event. As long as a woman carries stored toxins from years of cooked food, processed food, drugs, environmental chemicals, or other exposures, those toxins will be circulating and finding their way into the lacteal fluid she produces. Every nursing session therefore transfers some portion of her toxic burden to the infant.

He was careful to note that the problem is not milk itself but the toxins dumped into the milk. When an infant or child appears to have an allergy to milk, Aajonus reframed the reaction: the body is using the milk as a vehicle to attract and dump its stored poisons into the stomach, and the symptoms that result are caused by the toxins, not by the milk. The same principle applies to adults who react to milk. This is why he said he had never met anyone who was truly lactose intolerant to raw milk; the apparent intolerance was a response to toxic lactate and casein from years of pasteurized dairy stored in the tissues, which the raw milk was pulling out and moving through the system.

Aajonus cited historical hospital data to support his position that raw milk is safe and beneficial for infants while pasteurized milk causes disease. He referenced a particular doctor at a Chicago hospital in the 1920s and 1930s who observed a very high rate of infant mortality and changed the hospital's feeding protocol to raw milk. Annual infant deaths dropped from 83 to 85 per year down to four to six per year in the succeeding years, until raw milk was outlawed in 1947.

He also cited published reports from the first five decades after pasteurized milk was introduced, which he said proved that feeding infants pasteurized or processed milk caused disease, while raw milk was safe and healthful. He referenced William Campbell Douglass, Jr., M.D., who presented clinical evidence that pasteurized milk caused osteoporosis, bone malformation, diabetes, and other diseases.

He discussed a study reported in "The Recipe for Living Without Disease" in which two infants were compared: one fed formulas including powdered milk, pasteurized milk, boiled milk, boiled certified milk, and canned milk from birth. That infant suffered severe gastric distress, developed asthma at eight months, and was undersized relative to her parents' builds. The other infant was breastfed from birth by a mother who drank raw milk and lived under excellent health-promoting conditions. Aajonus used this contrast to demonstrate that the type of milk an infant receives is a determining factor in its development.

He cited Dr. Francis Pottenger, Jr., M.D., who observed infants born to hypothyroid mothers. Those mothers had previously given birth to children who all suffered asthma, infantile rickets, and skeletal underdevelopment. A John Hopkins University graduate's paper called "The Medical History of Milk," which Aajonus said should have been called "The Medical History of Raw Milk," documented that children fed high-bacterial raw milk, including milk with high bacterial counts in the hundreds of thousands per million parts, got healthier faster and were stronger than infants fed processed milk.

He also referenced Dr. Weston Price, who showed that processed milk leads to disease and premature death, and that pasteurized milk causes poor development of facial bones. Nizel of Tufts University reported that decayed teeth were four times more common in children fed processed dairy.

Aajonus described visiting the Philippines and finding that every baby health center in the country was telling mothers that powdered milk was the best milk for their infants. He called this genocide. He described a baby he encountered who had developed leukemia, which he attributed to the powdered milk. He found a dairy on a small island that would sell him raw milk, and he brought approximately six liters of it back to the area.

He considered powdered milk to be so dangerous that he stated pasteurized milk, bad as it is, was better than powdered milk for infants.

Aajonus described the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone developed to force cows to produce more milk. He noted that this hormone makes the cows anxious and that it passes through the milk to consumers. Among the side effects he observed or documented: in young laboratory animals, one or both breasts overdeveloped; in adult humans consuming this milk, the hormone may cause overproduction of milk while nursing, spontaneous lactation when not nursing, or difficulty ceasing lactation after the infant is weaned. He stated that when this hormonally stimulated milk was consumed in pasteurized form, it was found to be carcinogenic. He also noted swollen and overdeveloped thyroids, particularly in females.

He observed that infants who nursed from mothers who drank hormonally stimulated milk developed rashes, colic, and frequent odorous bowel movements including diarrhea. Within days after mothers stopped nursing and switched their babies to healthy raw cow's milk, those symptoms stopped.

Aajonus described milk as the substance designed to relax babies and allow them to sleep and grow. The fats in milk, particularly the cream, soothe and coat the nervous system. Because milk is meant to relax infants and put them to sleep during their most intensive growth periods, it is inherently sedating. He noted that as children are weaned off milk they become hyperactive, and that tribes who continue feeding their children milk through childhood and beyond have calmer, more settled nervous systems.

He stated that the tribes who drink milk their whole lives have the calmest nervous systems, and that even tribes who do not continue milk into adulthood typically feed their children milk until at least seven years of age, which he considered the minimum period needed to properly establish the nervous system.

He was also emphatic that a baby develops its teeth and bones on milk, and therefore anyone claiming that raw milk is inherently bad for teeth or bone formation is contradicting basic biological reality. He described growing all of his bone back around his teeth at age 22 after drinking raw milk from a carriage, after radiation therapy had destroyed his bone tissue and he had been told his teeth needed to be extracted.

For mothers who were too toxic to breastfeed but worried about losing the physical and emotional bonding experience of nursing, Aajonus offered a practical alternative. He told mothers to get undressed and hold the baby against their bare skin while feeding from a warm bottle. The baby would still receive the warmth of the mother's body and the skin-to-skin contact that supports bonding. The emotional and physical connection between mother and child does not require nursing from the breast; it requires proximity, warmth, and touch.

He recommended using 100% rubber nipples, mentioning the brand Natursutten as one option, though he noted that even rubber nipples taste unpleasant and babies tolerate rather than enjoy them. He acknowledged this limitation while maintaining that the nutrients in the raw milk more than compensate.

In one specific protocol, Aajonus addressed the concern of nuclear particles in milk. He recommended adding one tablespoon of moist Terramin clay (mined from an ancient thermal spring, not of volcanic origin) to every quart of milk. The procedure was to shake the mixture for about 30 seconds, let it stand for approximately three hours, shake it again for about ten seconds, then let it stand for another 15 minutes. Without disturbing the milk, the practitioner should siphon the milk above the settled clay to approximately three-quarters of an inch above the clay layer, then drink the remaining milk as normal. He stated that Terramin clay helps the body defray, contain, neutralize, and remedy nuclear particles in milk.

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