Curing and Salting

Aajonus explained that sodium, when isolated from the complex matrix of other minerals in which it naturally occurs in raw food, becomes an extremely volatile compound. In its pure crystallized form, sodium is more explosive than nitroglycerin, requiring only a one-to-two degree temperature change to detonate. He cited the U.S. military's expenditure of two billion dollars paid to General Electric over sixty years to develop sodium as a weapon, a project his own father worked on, which ultimately failed because isolated sodium was too unstable and uncontrollable to weaponize. The conclusion Aajonus drew was that the military could not weaponize it externally, so instead it was distributed as a dietary substance to the general population.

When salt enters the body, the blood fractionates and separates its molecules. The key mechanical problem is clumping. Sodium molecules in salt form attach to each other in clusters of four to six ions at a time, forming large, magnetically powerful aggregates. Normally, minerals in the body travel in a balanced smorgasbord that may contain one sodium molecule alongside ten calcium molecules, five magnesium molecules, a couple of potassium molecules, sulfur, phosphorus, and a full spectrum of other nutrients, all in proportions a cell can absorb and use. A single cell, when it opens to eat by ionic attraction, takes in a balanced smorgasbord of anywhere from 93 to 117 different nutrients simultaneously, including all vitamins, enzymes, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that the cell needs to remain properly nourished.

Salt disrupts this process in two ways. First, the clumped sodium aggregate is physically too large to enter the cell's opening. Second, and more damaging, the massive magnetic charge of the clump outside the cell exceeds the magnetism inside the cell, so instead of nutrients being drawn in, the ion molecules that constitute the cell's internal structure, its "guts and stomach," are ripped outward. The cell loses its internal ions and can never eat again. It shrivels from a grape to a raisin and dies. Aajonus repeated this description across many lectures as the central mechanism: salt does not merely fail to nourish, it actively destroys the very apparatus by which a cell receives nutrition.

For cells that are not immediately killed, the clumping of sodium aggregates fractures the smorgasbord clusters of nutrients traveling in the blood. Instead of receiving 93 to 117 nutrients in a complete meal, a surviving cell may receive only 23 to 50, leaving it in a state of permanent partial deficiency. Because every processed food contains salt, a person eating a conventional diet subjects every cell in their body to this deficiency at every meal, producing what Aajonus described as progressive, compounding malnourishment throughout the body.

Aajonus was specific about quantities of cellular damage. Across different lectures, he gave two figures: one grain of salt destroys one million red blood cells, and in other accounts he stated two grains of salt destroy two million red blood cells, or that four grains destroy approximately two million red blood cells. One account cited a high school biology teacher from the early 1960s who demonstrated that one grain of salt kills two million red blood cells through the clumping mechanism. These figures appeared across multiple talks, and the slight variation in exact numbers was consistent with his point that even quantities too small to visualize cause massive, measurable destruction.

He contextualized this scale by pointing out that approximately ten million red blood cells fit on a pinhead, so the amount of salt causing this destruction is invisible to the naked eye. A single shake of a salt shaker, in his estimation, kills roughly 100 million red blood cells. The body's bone marrow produces red and white blood cells continuously, at a rate of approximately three million cells per hour, but this production cannot keep pace with the destruction caused by regular dietary salt use. He compared this to burning down a financial reserve: the body's cellular capital is depleted faster than it can be replenished, so by later life the person arrives at a state of profound depletion.

Dead red blood cells take approximately 24 hours to be cleared from the blood, and the cleansing process itself leaches important nutrients. The combined effect is that salt speeds aging, both by destroying functional cells and by diverting nutritional resources toward cleanup rather than maintenance.

Aajonus referenced a YouTube video of a frog legs experiment repeatedly across his lectures as a demonstration of salt's explosive nature in dead tissue. Three men, who he described as making fun of him and his positions about salt, skinned fresh frog legs, killed the frog, and allowed the legs to reach room temperature, in some cases having been thawed after storage. They then sprinkled salt lightly on each side of the legs, the same quantity a person would use seasoning food at the table, not a heavy application.

The dead frog legs went into spasms and continued jumping and twitching for thirty-two minutes, though the video only shows approximately two to six minutes of footage. Aajonus described this as direct evidence that salt causes explosive chemical reactions in tissue even when that tissue is no longer metabolically active, no longer connected to a nervous system, and no longer living. The legs were not reacting to a nerve signal. They were responding to the chemical explosive properties of sodium acting on the ions remaining in dead muscle cells.

The same group then repeated the experiment with pepper on a frog leg that had not been salted. The leg gave one brief spasm and stopped. Aajonus used this contrast to make a point about relative potency: pepper is a caustic irritant that would burn living tissue, but it is not explosive. It produces a single spasm in dead tissue and nothing more. Salt, which is not caustic in the same sensory way, produces uninterrupted violent spasms for thirty minutes, demonstrating that its mechanism of action is explosive rather than merely irritating.

Aajonus acknowledged that salt's antimicrobial properties are real and that these properties are the basis for cured meats, kosher salting, and preserved foods across many cultures. He noted that the Jewish tradition of soaking meat in salt to produce kosher products was developed during a period when the Torah was written, when Jewish people were living in desert conditions, and that the purpose was to stop all microbial activity in the meat. He did not argue that salt fails to preserve food. His argument was that the same explosive, cell-destroying property that kills bacteria on meat is the property that then operates inside the body when the preserved meat is consumed, destroying red blood cells and depleting cellular nutrition.

He stated that salt preserves food by mummifying it. Dead cells are preserved in salt the same way a mummy is preserved, and that a collection of dead, salt-preserved cells is, in his framework, analogous to cancer: a collection of dead cellular material. He drew a direct line from salted preserved food, to the mummification of body tissue, to the development of cancerous collections of dead cells.

Smoked and cured fish was addressed directly: smoking food is "terrible" because it introduces carbons and ash residue and creates a form of cooking-adjacent dehydration. Whether a food is salted, smoked, or otherwise processed to extend shelf life, the effect from Aajonus's perspective is the removal of bioactive properties and the introduction of denaturing compounds.

In Aajonus's framework, there was exactly one internal medical application for salt: adrenal exhaustion so severe that a person cannot get out of bed due to total absence of energy. For this condition only, he recommended two to three grains of salt, or in some accounts two grains, taken once every four to five days, or once or twice a week, for a limited period. He was explicit that even in this context the purpose is not nutritional supplementation but rather to create a controlled explosive event inside the body, an intentional disruption intended to break up clots and force cellular division to restart metabolic function.

He described spreading the weekly allowance out, not taking all two or three grains at once but distributing them across several days. The duration of this protocol was described as lasting only until adrenal function recovered, which he suggested typically takes approximately nine months on a good diet. He stated that in the thousands of patients he worked with over his career, he had recommended ingesting salt approximately three times total across that entire population. In a separate account related to jaundice, he described recommending approximately three grains every other day to one patient with jaundice, explaining that salt could help break down bile that had permeated the tissues, while acknowledging he would now use vinegar for this purpose instead, having found an alternative.

He was clear that this medicinal use was dissolved into vegetable juice rather than water, because vegetable juice provides additional nutrients that support the body's reaction to the salt. Water alone was considered a less favorable medium. He also noted that people who had not consumed salt for years and then received even this tiny medicinal dose would taste nothing but salt for three to four days afterward, which he interpreted as evidence of how intensely the body experiences and tries to process even this minute quantity.

One additional internal context was described regarding a patient with crystallized minerals bound with bile, for whom Aajonus had previously recommended a salt mixture to attempt to dissolve the mineral deposits. He explicitly stated that he later learned to use vinegar instead and no longer recommended salt for this purpose, demonstrating his own evolution away from any ingested salt application.

The distinction between ingested salt and topical salt was significant in Aajonus's framework. Salt in bath water, in his view, is not absorbed into the body through the skin and therefore does not produce the cellular destruction caused by dietary salt. He recommended two tablespoons of sea salt in a full bath as one component of a neutralizing bath formula, always combined with other ingredients rather than used alone.

His standard bath formula included approximately one quarter cup of raw apple cider vinegar, one to two tablespoons of sea salt, raw milk at roughly one and a quarter to one and three quarters cups, and optionally three tablespoons of coconut cream, which he said would stay at the top of the water and drip over the skin, keeping it soft. In municipal water, the vinegar and salt together neutralize industrial toxins and chlorine in the water. He also described adding a strawberry or seasonal fruit preparation, such as peaches or apricots, for fragrance, poured in after the initial neutralizing time of approximately ten minutes.

In a separate context related to community pool and hot tub sanitation, Aajonus recommended salt chlorinators as an alternative to conventional chlorination systems. These use rock salt or sea salt run through an electrical charge to generate chlorine that does not produce chloroform vapor, which he described as preferable to standard chemical chlorination. He specified that rock salt in this context is unsterilized and unprocessed unlike table salt, which has had chlorine added to it artificially.

Aajonus addressed salt cravings directly and consistently reframed them as symptoms of broader mineral deficiency rather than as a specific need for sodium. His position was that many minerals taste salty to the palate, that the craving a person experiences is not necessarily a sodium deficiency but rather a general mineral deficit that the body is attempting to address through the most familiar salty-tasting substance it knows.

His recommended foods for resolving mineral deficiency and salt cravings were fresh raw tomatoes, celery and celery juice, avocado, watermelon, raw no-salt-added cheeses, raw fish including saltwater fish, and raw shellfish such as oysters and clams. He noted that saltwater fish have already done the work of fractionating concentrated sodium into bioactive compounds the body can handle safely. The fish's own metabolic processes have broken the sodium out of its isolated mineral form and integrated it with fats, proteins, enzymes, and other nutrients, making the sodium biologically available without the clumping and explosive properties of raw isolated salt. He stated explicitly that eating raw shellfish several times a month is particularly effective at quickly correcting mineral deficiency.

Avocados, tomatoes, celery, and watermelon were described as concentrated natural sources of sodium that the body can use without the destructive ionic properties of salt. The key principle was that sodium occurring naturally within a raw food matrix, where it is bound with and surrounded by a full complement of other nutrients, behaves entirely differently from sodium in concentrated isolated salt form. He stated he had not eaten salt since 1973 and showed no signs of sodium deficiency or dehydration.

Aajonus addressed salt's effect on beneficial gut bacteria through a personal account. After years without salt, he consumed chicken that contained salt and described the result as the destruction of his E. coli bacteria, which had been functioning well. He said that before this incident he had resolved a long-standing constipation problem and that after the salted chicken his constipation returned and persisted for two months. He described salt as entering the gut and destroying beneficial bacteria, causing cellular dehydration, promoting thickened skin, causing bumps and moles, and triggering diverse systemic reactions.

This account was consistent with his general position that salt's antimicrobial action, the same property used in kosher salting and food curing, is indiscriminate and will eliminate both pathogenic and beneficial microorganisms in the digestive tract. He described the gut microbiome as depending on specific bacteria including E. coli to maintain proper function, and salt as directly hostile to these organisms.

In response to a direct question about whether salt should be added to cooked meat, Aajonus stated plainly that cooked meats of any kind do not need salt. This was a direct contradiction of conventional culinary practice and also a position he held against the advice sometimes attributed to him in earlier contexts, where cooked food was said to need salt to help process it. He explicitly rejected this earlier framing and stated his current position: no salt on cooked meat.

The broader point he made about cooked food and salt was that cooked food has no intrinsic flavor left after its nutrients are destroyed, and that the food industry adds salt and artificial flavors specifically to make otherwise tasteless, nutritionally void food palatable. Without salt and flavoring, he argued, cooked processed food would taste like cardboard. The sensory appeal of salted cooked food is therefore not evidence that the body is responding to something beneficial, but rather evidence that the palate has been trained to associate the explosive, ion-stimulating effect of salt with the experience of flavor.

Commercial cheeses almost universally contain salt, and Aajonus addressed this as an unavoidable complication for people eating dairy on the Primal Diet. His advice was that if a person was consuming cheese that contained salt, they should eat a substantial amount of butter alongside it to buffer the drying, dehydrating, and constipating effects of the salt. He described the butter as providing the fat necessary to prevent the constipation and tissue dehydration that salted cheese would otherwise cause.

He also referenced an instance where a patient with jaundice was using sea salt on food and recommended approximately three grains every other day alongside a recommendation to eat a lot of butter with any salted cheese, and stated that the person should eat raw no-salt-added cheeses when available. He noted that most commercial salted cheeses indicate their salt type: if labeled simply "salt," it is generally table salt; if sea salt is used, the label typically specifies this.

Aajonus extended his observations about salt beyond human health to livestock. A farmer named Barb described removing salt from cattle feed following one of his conferences, observing that the cattle, which had previously liked salt and were drinking large amounts of water, showed improvement in water intake patterns over the first three weeks. When her husband Mike found a bag of salt and put it out without her knowledge, several cows developed heavy asthmatic cell counts and detoxification symptoms within three days. When the salt was removed again, the animals returned to normal within three days. Aajonus interpreted this as evidence that salt breaks down cells in animals and causes bacterial responses as the body attempts to address the cellular destruction.

He also applied his position to plants, noting that even salt-tolerant plants will die if given Celtic or sea salt in amounts comparable to human dietary use. Plants consume rock minerals as their primary food source and can handle small amounts of salt through their root systems, but if given the quantities humans typically consume, their roots will explode and rot. He used this to make a comparative point: if plants, which are biologically designed to eat rock minerals, cannot survive dietary-level salt exposure, it is unreasonable to expect that humans, who are not adapted to eating rock minerals directly, could handle it without severe damage.

He noted that very few traditional communities historically used salt, that sea communities used it occasionally but rarely, and that universal table salt use is a modern phenomenon manufactured by industrial distribution rather than emerging from any natural human nutritional need.

In one context, Aajonus used the term "salting process" in an entirely different sense, referring to an internal detoxification mechanism the body uses to dissolve and remove degenerative tissue. This was not related to dietary salt but rather described as a bodily process analogous to the way water dissolves rock. He described this as a "Stage 1" cleansing mechanism that produces a byproduct chemically similar to turpentine, which is as toxic as turpentine and generates low-grade nausea, lethargy, depression, and feelings of being blase. Stage 2 cleansing involves bacteria, viruses, or molds working alongside this process, operating 2.5 times faster and producing byproducts that are 50% less toxic than the turpentine-like substance. This internal "salting process" of the body is entirely separate from dietary salt and represents the body's own mechanism for dissolving and removing accumulated waste and degenerative tissue.

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