Depression

E. coli, which Aajonus described as the primary bacterium of the large intestine, performs the final stage of digestion. After the small intestine has absorbed nutrients to feed the organs and glands, the remaining material passes into the colon where E. coli and related coliform bacteria break down fats and proteins into the smallest finite molecules capable of feeding the brain and nervous system. This process is distinct from everything that happens in the small intestine; the brain and nervous system depend on the colon's bacterial work in a way that other tissues do not.

Aajonus was emphatic that E. coli has been deliberately misrepresented as a pathogen by pharmaceutical and academic interests seeking to frighten people away from natural bacterial exposure. In his framing, E. coli is responsible for releasing 90 percent of all B vitamins from food and for producing the finite protein particles that sustain neurological function. Without a robust E. coli population, the brain and nervous system are chronically underfed regardless of how much food a person consumes, and depression is the direct result.

When the bacterial colony is depleted, whether through antibiotic use, enemas, colonics, toxic food, or pharmaceutical drugs, the brain and nervous system lose their primary food source. Aajonus observed that he had never known anyone who took antibiotics regularly who was a genuinely happy person, either during the course of treatment or for long periods afterward. The bacteria are not simply digestive tools in his framework; they are, as he put it, part of the life of the person.

The cornerstone intervention Aajonus recommended for depression was high meat, which is raw meat allowed to ferment and decompose over time in a covered container, opened periodically to release gases, until the bacterial content is substantial and the smell is extremely strong. The concept came from the Eskimos, whom he observed eating highly decomposed meat with visible joy, which led him to realize that the bacteria in the meat were performing the same function that a healthy E. coli colony would perform in the colon: pre-digesting fats and proteins into the finite molecules that feed the brain and nervous system directly.

Eating an ounce of high meat, in his observation and clinical tracking, relieves depression within 10 to 20 minutes and the effect can last for weeks. He explained this speed of action as evidence of the mechanism: because the bacteria have already broken the food down into the smallest usable molecules, the material bypasses the entire normal digestive process and feeds the nervous system almost immediately. He used this rapid response as an argument against the conventional interpretation that such food would be dangerous. If the meat were genuinely toxic rather than therapeutically pre-digested, no food would produce a consciousness change that quickly.

Aajonus tracked approximately 300 people who consumed high meat for depression. Of those, only one did not become giddy, silly, and happy within 10 to 20 minutes, and that individual had reported not being depressed to begin with; he was simply curious after watching others respond to it. Every person who was genuinely depressed and ate high meat experienced the effect. He had also utilized high meat specifically for clinical depression for approximately four to five years before publicly discussing it at workshops, wanting to confirm the results across enough cases and circumstances. Of roughly 17 people who used it consistently over that period whenever depression arose, all who would eat it experienced relief.

High eggs, meaning raw eggs allowed to ferment and develop strong bacterial content, work through the same mechanism and were mentioned alongside high meat as an equivalent option. The principle is identical: pre-digested protein and fat, already broken down by bacteria, feeding the brain and nervous system without requiring a functional colonic bacterial colony to do the work.

The case Aajonus returned to most often across multiple workshops was a woman who had been taking seven different psychotropic drugs in 27 doses daily for either 18 or 22 years, depending on the account. She was 37 years old and had been depressed since age 10. By the time she came to Aajonus she had been on the Primal Diet for a year and a half, going on and off the program, still struggling with significant psychological instability including what he described as very rapid mood cycling. He had been trying for the full year and a half to persuade her to eat high meat.

One day she called him in a state of severe depression and anger and full anxiety. He told her she had to eat the high meat and walked her through it. The meat at that point was, in his description, so rotten that the smell would make a person want to vomit. She ate it despite the smell. Within 10 to 20 minutes she called back and said she felt fantastic, that she could not believe she had been miserable moments before. She appeared on the Ripley's Believe It or Not episode about rotten meat eating along with a male patient; both had suffered mass depression for years.

A second case involved a well-known yoga instructor who had been slim her entire life but had suffered depression since the age of 11 or 12 years old and had been on five medications daily for 27 years. She had been in a chronic fatigue condition from age 20 until age 27, and even after beginning the Primal Diet it took one year and nine months before the chronic fatigue broke. She still had residual depression even as her physical health improved, and Aajonus attributed this in part to the fact that as she gained energy, she became frustrated by years of built-up inertia and uncertainty about what to do with herself. After approximately two and a half years on the diet, he persuaded her to try high meat. The account of her eventual trajectory was positive but she later switched to an instinctive diet based on eating only what appealed by smell, which Aajonus described as resulting in her death within a year because she consumed 60 to 70 percent fruit and dissolved her mineral composition.

A third case involved a man described as one of the most cynical, depressed, dispirited, anxiety-stricken, and antisocial people Aajonus had ever met. The man had become a landscape artist specifically to avoid dealing with people and worked on large estates to minimize client contact. He was on and off the Primal Diet for about a year and a half. After persistent encouragement from Aajonus, he eventually ate high meat and the transformation was described as complete.

A fourth case referenced in passing involved a man who had undergone radical surgery in which his esophagus was lengthened and his stomach was repositioned into his shoulder. He had been on enormous amounts of morphine for pain management. When he went onto the Primal Diet, approximately 80 percent of his depression resolved. The remaining depression was attributed to the continued pain and morphine dependency, which made consistent adherence impossible. He died after about a year and two months on the diet, but that period was described as a substantial improvement in quality of life including time with his wife and children.

A fifth case, referenced specifically in the context of vaccines and bacteria, described a patient who had been taking five drugs a day for 25 to 27 years and who reached a state of such instability that Aajonus gave her milk kefir suppositories. That case is detailed further in the suppository section below.

Aajonus referenced the work of a researcher named Monroe or Moore (cited inconsistently across transcripts) who studied what happens when bacterial and viral populations are eliminated from the body. The finding, as Aajonus described it, was that in the absence of bacteria and viruses, clinical depression arises. When bacterial and viral populations are reintroduced, colds and flus return, but the clinical depression resolves. Aajonus described applying this understanding to a patient who had been on drugs for 27 years, observing her temperament closely, and eventually introducing the viral and bacterial material back into her system, after which the depression lifted even as she experienced the normal cold and flu activity that accompanied the bacterial reintroduction.

Aajonus connected this to his broader framework about the necessity of bacteria, virus, mold, and parasites to health: when the body has their assistance, it is more organized, vital, and happy. When it must rely on the chemical solvent process to break down waste, with no microbial assistance, it becomes depressed on a cellular level that is then experienced throughout the body and mind.

For people whose dietary digestion was so compromised that very little fat and protein reached the colon, Aajonus described a suppository approach. The formula he specified was three tablespoons each of butter, cream, and coconut cream, plus approximately one quarter teaspoon of honey (described as about the size of a bean). These are shaken or mixed together and inserted rectally before sleep. The rationale is that the colonic bacteria, primarily E. coli, feed on fats, and if the small intestine is absorbing nearly everything before it reaches the colon, the colon becomes fat-starved and the E. coli cannot function or maintain their population. Delivering fats directly to the colon allows the bacterial colony to rebuild and resume feeding the brain and nervous system.

He also mentioned that raw eggs could be used in this way, and described putting raw fats or raw egg directly into the colon. The result he observed was that brain and nervous system function improved very quickly and depression disappeared. The frequency of suppository use varied by individual: some people needed it every other day, some once a week, some once a month, depending on how much fat was reaching their colon through normal digestion.

He also described lying down and rolling the stomach like a belly dancer after the suppository to help move the material through, first lying on the back for three to four minutes, then on the right side with the left leg raised for another three to four minutes. With this approach, he said a person suffering depression would be out of it within six to ten hours.

Aajonus acknowledged that approximately 5 percent of depression does not respond to high meat or bacterial interventions because it originates not from low bacteria but from accumulated psychotropic trauma hormone byproducts stored in the nervous system. He described personally experiencing this: after eating high meat he still had depression, and the following morning he gave himself the nut formula, after which the depression instantly disappeared.

In this 5 percent category, the depression arises when the body detoxifies stored neurological compounds from earlier trauma. Elnora Van Winkle, a neurological scientist at Milhauser Laboratories (also described as Milhouse Laboratories) at Columbia University or New York University who spent 47 to 52 years cataloging every chemical in the human brain and nervous system, documented this mechanism in a paper called The Biology of Emotions. She identified that the chemical byproducts of trauma and stress hormones, when they are stored and later detoxify, produce the same emotional experience as the original trauma, even without any present-day emotional, physical, or circumstantial trigger for feeling badly.

The nut formula, described in Aajonus's recipe book, binds with these psychotropic byproduct compounds and helps remove them. He recommended it once a week as a maintenance practice to prevent accumulation. The starchy quality of the nuts is what performs this binding function; he placed this intervention in the carbohydrate category, not the bacterial category, distinguishing it clearly from high meat.

Aajonus also recommended that during periods of emotional detox, rather than following primal therapy approaches of screaming, kicking, or beating things (which he argued would reinforce and perpetuate the associated emotional pattern), a person should redirect the energy into singing, dancing, or any pleasurable physical activity. He specifically recommended that even someone who feels too depressed to sing should put on music with a beat they associate with a happier time and simply allow it to start moving them. He argued that changing the physical expression changes the chemical state and can interrupt the cycle. He was emphatic that singing happy songs, even when not happy, can begin to shift the hormonal environment because the mind cannot simultaneously think happy thoughts and remain in the same depressive chemical state.

Aajonus identified several specific causes of the low-bacteria state that leads to depression. Antibiotic use was prominent: he stated that every person he had ever known who took antibiotics, either during the course of a course of treatment or for long periods afterward, became depressed. Destroying the bacterial colony destroys, in his framing, a part of the life of the person.

Enemas and colonics were described as capable of flushing out the entire E. coli colony rapidly, leading quickly to depression and paranoia. He observed that people who become dependent on colonics or enemas over a long period develop severe chemical sensitivity and a range of other problems, and that the dependency itself takes on an addictive quality because the intestine that has lost its bacterial population can no longer function without the artificial stimulation.

Toxic and processed foods were also described as creating a hostile environment for E. coli, suppressing or mutating the bacterial population. Psychotropic drugs were identified as capable of accounting for 10 to 12 percent of depression in the general population, and up to 90 percent of depression in individuals taking those medications daily, precisely because the medications damage the systems on which bacterial life depends.

Surgery followed by antibiotic prophylaxis, as in the case of cardiac bypass surgery, was described as reliably producing depression by destroying both bacteria and virus simultaneously. Polio treatments and asthmatic treatments from the mid-twentieth century were mentioned as specific historical causes of severe bacterial depletion leading to chronic psychological problems in patients who had undergone them in childhood.

Aajonus described his own experience as a raw fruitarian as one of intense over-emotionality including frequent sadness, which he attributed specifically to the constant fluctuations in blood sugar caused by heavy fruit consumption. When blood sugar rose, he experienced manic energy he mistook for health; when it dropped, he experienced sadness and emotional intensity. He described crying all the time and feeling things with extreme intensity throughout the period recorded in his book, which he directly connected to the fruit intake.

When he reduced fruit to once every two to three days, or three to four days, the emotionality resolved substantially. He distinguished this from the nutritional depression caused by low bacteria; the blood-sugar-driven sadness was a function of over-stimulation and instability rather than deficiency in nervous system feeding. He described tomatoes as a replacement for sweeter fruits that did not produce the same blood sugar instability.

He also noted in a workshop context that being diabetic or having sugar problems creates mood swings and emotional dysregulation, describing diabetics as "crazy" from the physiological perspective, and connecting sugar-related intestinal damage (deterioration of the villi) to impaired absorption and consequent emotional instability.

Aajonus connected depression not only to E. coli deficiency but to a broader disruption of the bacterial and viral communities within the body. He described the body's bacterial and viral life as providing a sense of connection at the cellular level, and proposed that the fundamental subjective experience of depression, the feeling of disconnection, has a literal microbial correlate. People feel disconnected when their internal bacterial and viral populations are depleted, because those populations are part of the living system that creates the sense of being integrated with the larger biological world.

He described a scenario where someone whose bacterial and viral populations have been destroyed by antibiotics or other interventions goes through a period of appearing calm (no colds, no flus) but becomes clinically depressed, and then recovers the depression when the bacteria and viruses are reintroduced, even though the colds and flus also return. This was presented as evidence that the bacteria and viruses are not enemies to be eliminated but constituents of health and psychological wellbeing.

Beyond high meat specifically, Aajonus described eating at least one pound of raw meat and half a cup of raw cream daily as helping ease chronic depression. He stated that most depression, somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of it, will resolve for most people simply by eating meat, because the animal protein and fat provide the substrate that the colonic bacteria need to produce nervous system food. Eating raw eggs alongside raw meat was also described as supportive. He noted that eating high eggs and high meat together produces the giddy and happy response within 10 to 20 minutes because the bacteria in those foods have already done what the E. coli colony would do.

He also made the observation, drawn from his own history, that before finding raw animal foods he lived in depression and suicidal ideation 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, and that the first thing that gave him a sense of joy, groundedness, and vitality was eating raw meat in the wild after observing a bear eat it.

For cases where depression was extreme and bacteria levels were severely depleted, Aajonus described recommending consumption of fecal matter in exceptional circumstances. He described reading 27 years prior to that discussion that a female physician at the University of Toronto was using the byproduct of E. coli in cancer research. He had used fecal matter in patients with cancers that would not reverse. The rationale was the same: reintroducing the bacterial material that the body could not produce on its own. He also referenced historical practices, including indigenous peoples eating buffalo feces when they were unhappy or unwell, as evidence of an instinctive understanding of bacterial medicine that modern conditioning has suppressed.

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