Dialysis

The most direct reference to dialysis in the source material involves a young man whose kidneys had been damaged by chemotherapy. Aajonus was told of a neighbor's son who had bone cancer, underwent chemotherapy, and as a consequence developed bad kidneys and was placed on dialysis. Aajonus's assessment was blunt: "It sounds like he experienced anaphylaxis to the chemo. That means he is in terrible condition." He did not offer a protocol for reversing dialysis dependence in that case, but his framing makes clear that he viewed the chemotherapy itself as the agent of kidney destruction, with dialysis being the management of a iatrogenic injury, meaning an injury caused by the medical treatment itself.

The second case involves a fifty-nine-year-old man with two failed kidneys, crystallized with kidney stones he continued to pass, who still urinated but whose kidneys apparently filtered nothing and who had been on dialysis three times a week for more than two years. He also had Crohn's disease with sections of intestine removed and hepatitis B, and was taking numerous medications. The question put to Aajonus was whether his kidneys should be considered truly failed and whether the Primal Diet could help. Aajonus's response was careful but not dismissive: "Yes. The diet has always improved health, but it is not a magic bullet. I have seen kidneys that have malfunctioned begin to work again." He did not claim dialysis could be eliminated through diet in this case, but he declined to categorically rule out improvement, even with long-term dialysis dependence and extensive systemic disease.

Aajonus identified specific substances as the primary agents of kidney damage. The lipid peroxides and heavy acetic amines produced by cooking protein irritate and damage kidney cells. These compounds do not form from raw protein. He stated this explicitly: "those things that damage the kidney are the lipid peroxides and the heavy acetic amines that irritate and damage the kidneys. Those are only formed from cooking not from raw." He followed this by saying the easiest way to stabilize the kidneys is to eat meat, especially red meat and chicken.

Drugs were also cited directly as causes of kidney damage. The antibiotic Cipro was identified by Aajonus as causing what he called hemolytic-uremic syndrome, described as "dissolving kidney disease." He noted in the book "The Recipe for Living Without Disease" that the antibiotic Cipro has been linked to kidney degeneration, that drugs damage kidney cells, and that the medical treatments for conditions like bloody diarrhea are "probably the major cause of HUS and kidney failure." Mercury, through thimerosal in drugs, was identified as causing HUS-like symptoms and kidney and neurological damage. Aajonus's position was that kidney failure attributed to bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7 has not been proven to be caused by those bacteria, and that the real cause is the drug treatment applied in response.

Drinking large amounts of water was also identified as harmful to the kidneys. When a person gulps water rather than sipping it, the body cannot distribute that water with nutrients to the cells, so the water rushes directly to the kidneys, which then work hard to discard the excess. Aajonus described this as damaging the kidney and the intestinal tract. He was explicit that urinating toxins out through the kidneys is not a good route because "the kidney is too sensitive."

In a response about someone who had donated a kidney, Aajonus explained that having one kidney is "a tremendous sacrifice" because one kidney must filter without rest, whereas normally one kidney functions while the other rests and re-balances. He also noted that ammonia production is impaired when only one kidney functions or only one exists, which he called "a tremendous loss to people who want to be physically active," with challenging sports being "most often very difficult" and both lifespan and quality of life being sacrificed. This framing helps contextualize how seriously he viewed any compromise of kidney function, including conditions that lead to dialysis dependence.

Aajonus identified kidney stones as crystallized cooked vegetable-fat resins, crystallized hydrogenated fats and oils, and mineral salts that collect in the kidneys. He stated that raw fooders who do not take supplements do not get kidney stones, and that no traditional tribes ever experienced kidney or bladder stones. Kidney stones, in his framework, are a product of cooked and processed food, supplements, and industrial toxins. Because kidney stones can block the filtering mechanism and, as in the case of the fifty-nine-year-old man above, crystallize throughout the kidney tissue, they represent a pathway from dietary damage to the kind of functional failure that results in dialysis dependence.

One of Aajonus's consistent points was that the kidney is not designed to be an exit route for toxins. The primary exits for toxins are the bowels, the skin through perspiration, and the mucous membranes. "Toxins don't normally exit that way," he said of the urinary route. "The urine is usually never tampered with. The bloodstream usually doesn't have many toxins in it at all." When the kidneys are forced to handle toxins, as happens with high-toxicity conditions from cooked food, drugs, and industrial chemicals, they are doing a job they were not designed to do, working much harder than normal and sustaining damage in the process. Dialysis in this context represents the endpoint of a long process of overloading an organ with work it was never meant to perform.

Aajonus's position was that the Primal Diet has always improved health even in cases of kidney malfunction, and that he had seen malfunctioned kidneys begin to work again. The specific dietary support he mentioned for the kidneys includes eating meat, particularly red meat and chicken, to stabilize kidney tissue. He also mentioned celery juice as relevant to kidney support, though the passage is fragmentary. For a person preparing for surgery that might involve the kidneys, he recommended consuming at least nine eggs a day prior to and following surgery, with a lot of meat to help regenerate cells for proper healing. For kidney infection specifically, he described a mixture of mineral water with three tablespoons of fresh raw lime juice and beet juice or half a cup of raw vegetable juice including one ounce of beet juice, taken with three ounces of mineral water half an hour before eating, as nurturing and soothing to the kidneys. He stated that raw lime juice, beet juice, and fresh raw corn on the cob regulate bacteria levels so that infection does not become excessive, and that if blood is present in the urine, staying off the feet and remaining sedentary is best.