Energy Drinks

Aajonus was explicit that Gatorade and similar products contain what he called "chemical electricity," meaning synthetic mineral salts and laboratory-derived electrolytes that produce a short-lived electrical charge in the body without providing anything the cells can use for sustained metabolism. He said a person could drink Gatorade all day long and never achieve anything sustainable from it. The same criticism applied to colas, which he described as containing nothing but water, chemicals, corn sugar, and caffeine. These drinks produce a "false sport high" through stimulation, not nourishment.

He was equally dismissive of green powders and so-called superfood concentrates used for energy. He said they stimulate the adrenal glands in a manner similar to caffeine, producing a feeling of improved energy that is not a healthy stimulation. The vegetable juice he recommended worked differently because it supplied actual vitamins, enzymes, and minerals that support metabolism rather than exciting the adrenals artificially.

The naming distinction mattered to him. He explicitly renamed his own formula from "sport drink" to "sport formula" specifically to prevent people from associating it with Gatorade and Coca-Cola's category. "Sport drink is the garbage that Gatorade puts out and Coca-Cola and those guys. There's nothing but chemical. All chemical. Not food."

Aajonus developed his Sport Formula over a number of years and the recipe evolved across different recorded sessions. He was clear that the formula should be sipped slowly throughout activity and never gulped. He described athletes going through a quart over four to five hours of sustained exercise without weakening.

The May 2012 version, which he described as his most current at the time, called for three cups total made from at least two of the following: cucumber puree, tomato puree, watermelon puree, raw whole milk, and fresh raw liquid whey. Cucumber, tomato, and watermelon were to be pureed rather than juiced, preserving the pulp. Whey referred to the liquid byproduct of cheesemaking, not commercial whey powder. The remaining ingredients were one tablespoon raw apple cider vinegar, two tablespoons lime juice, two teaspoons lemon juice, two tablespoons coconut cream, two tablespoons dairy cream, two to three eggs, and one to two tablespoons of unheated honey as optional. Blended together, this made approximately one quart.

An earlier version recorded in December 2008 specified two cups cucumber puree (with some tennis players using three cups), one cup tomato puree, one tablespoon vinegar, one tablespoon lemon juice, one to four tablespoons honey, two to four tablespoons coconut cream, two to four tablespoons dairy cream, and two and a half ounces sparkling mineral water. For athletes actually competing through five or more hours of a tournament, he specified adding one egg per cup, whipped in just before drinking each cup.

A March 2012 appendix version called for three cups of any combination of cucumber, tomatoes, or watermelon, three tablespoons coconut cream, three tablespoons dairy cream, two tablespoons lime juice, one tablespoon lemon juice, one tablespoon raw apple cider vinegar, two to three tablespoons honey, and four eggs, making approximately one quart, with a small amount of water added if the blend did not reach that volume.

A version given to a specific woman in a September 2011 session used two cups watermelon (the pink and red portion from the seeds down toward the rind), one cup milk, one tablespoon apple cider vinegar, one and a half teaspoons moist Terramin clay, one tablespoon each of lime and lemon juice, and two tablespoons coconut cream, with two to three eggs.

Another variation described in workshop transcripts for overweight individuals or those needing weight management called for cutting up cucumber and tomato and blending them, then adding two tablespoons apple cider vinegar for a large or overweight person, one tablespoon for a smaller or moderately overweight person, a one-inch cube of pineapple, two tablespoons lemon juice, two tablespoons lime juice, two tablespoons coconut cream, two tablespoons dairy cream, and two eggs (three if small). This also yielded approximately one quart.

A formula described for use during a hot bath or after heavy exertion specified three ounces lime juice, two tablespoons lemon juice, three ounces honey, and four to five tablespoons coconut cream, blended and combined with a half cup to a full cup of naturally sparkling mineral water from sources such as Gerolsteiner, Ramusa, San Pellegrino, San Faustino, or Perrier, qualifying that these brands captured the naturally occurring carbon dioxide from the well alongside the water rather than injecting laboratory-produced carbon dioxide as commercial sodas do.

A simpler daytime hydration formula Aajonus described as what his athletes use called for cucumber juice, tomato puree combined with it, and up to three tablespoons honey, with a teaspoon of lime juice and one tablespoon of lemon juice, with optional grated ginger root, sipped no more than three sips at a time throughout the day. He described tennis champions using one quart of this while their competitors consumed a gallon of water and grew progressively weaker.

Aajonus was emphatic that eggs were essential for the sport formula to provide adequate fuel for exercise. He specified two to three eggs for anyone using the formula during physical activity. When asked whether the green drink or vegetable juice alone was sufficient for tennis, he stated that vegetable juice contains only vitamins and enzymes but no actual fuel, and that without two or three eggs mixed in, going out to exercise after a vegetable juice would leave a person without energy. He said directly, "there should be 2 or 3 eggs in your sport drink" for anyone playing sports. Athletes performing through five hours of competition were told to whip an egg into each cup of the formula as they drank it, rather than blending all eggs in at once.

The physiological reasoning he gave was that eggs supplied concentrated neurological and muscular fuel without stickiness in the blood or neurological fluid. Fat from the eggs and cream provided the actual combustion substrate for the citric acid cycle, producing two and a half times more energy per molecule than carbohydrates or protein.

A central premise underlying the sport formula was that fat, not carbohydrate, is the correct fuel for sustained physical performance. Aajonus explained that when the body burns carbohydrate, it must first convert it into an acetate or acetone, a fatty substance, through a complex metabolic process. The resulting fat-like substance is far weaker than actual fat used directly as fuel. Pure fat produces two and a half times more energy than carbohydrate or protein per molecule. He cited this ratio repeatedly as the justification for why hunter-gatherer peoples and traditional athletes consumed high-fat diets before heavy exertion. The Hunzas, he described, would drink a full cup of cream before intense athletic activity.

He noted that Columbia University had demonstrated that when humans utilize carbohydrate as fuel, a byproduct accumulates called advanced glycation end product, which stores in the body at a rate of 70 to 90 percent depending on metabolic health. This accumulation contributes to dehydration, cellular damage, and long-term deterioration. The high-carbohydrate approach promoted for runners and endurance athletes he described as quick fuel that irritates and excites the body but is not a healthy way to generate energy.

Aajonus specified that the formula should be sipped rather than gulped, and he further recommended sucking it slowly through the teeth rather than drinking it in the conventional sense. His reasoning was that saliva and oral bacteria initiate digestion, and the more contact the formula had with oral bacteria before swallowing, especially given the egg and cream content, the more efficiently it would be digested and absorbed. He said, "suck it through my teeth" every time he drank anything, and described this as the reason his athletes could sustain themselves on relatively small volumes of fluid.

For daily use outside of athletic performance, he suggested sipping the sport formula alternating with raw milk every 30 minutes throughout the day, with small amounts of unsalted raw cheese consumed every 30 to 45 minutes as well. He described this combination as providing electrolytes, hydration, and fat-based fuel simultaneously without overtaxing digestion. The formula could also be sipped during and after hot baths, with a half cup before entering the bath, sipping during the one to ninety minute bath session, and another half cup upon exiting.

He noted that thin people with insufficient stored body fat would need the formula to contain milk rather than whey in order to provide more energy, since their muscles had little stored fat and depleted quickly. For athletes not yet performing but wanting to maintain energy throughout the day, he said they could sip the formula and milk alternately while the formula replaced the chemical electrolyte function performed by Gatorade.

Aajonus described Walker Tieran and Valerie Bisick, whom he identified as his patients since age eight or nine, as the number one and number two high school tennis champions of 2009. He credited the sport formula with their performance, saying they were "just outdoing their opponents like crazy" by drinking the formula.

He described two other unnamed champion tennis players who sustained five hours of competitive play on one quart of the formula, while their competitors consumed a gallon to a gallon and a half of water and grew progressively weaker. He contrasted this with John McEnroe, whom he mentioned going through two and a half gallons of water during a match and then drinking more water off the court, becoming weaker the more he consumed.

He described his athletes going through a quart over five hours without weakening or tiring, and said this held even for six to seven hours of daily exercise across athletes he was working with who consumed only two quarts of fluid per day total.

He referenced a single Kalahari Bushman example to contextualize the principle, noting that indigenous people adapted to extreme conditions could walk 100 miles through 140-degree desert heat on two ounces of vegetable juice, and that camels could travel 400 miles over two days on one cup of vegetable juice. He used these examples to frame how far modern people had drifted from efficient hydration and energy production.

Aajonus described his own early history as an illustration of what stimulant dependence actually reflects at the physiological level. Weakened by illness and nutritional deficiency by age eight, he began drinking coffee because he observed the visible energy change it produced in his parents. By age sixteen he was consuming two packs of cigarettes daily and eleven cups of coffee daily. He added amphetamines and then began drinking alcohol nightly to counteract the stimulant-driven insomnia. By age nineteen to twenty he had a bleeding ulcer. He used this account to make the point that stimulant energy is borrowed energy that creates a progressively worsening deficiency cycle, with each stimulant requiring more to achieve the same effect while the underlying nutritional depletion deepens.

He observed that 150 years prior, farm workers with no access to refined sugar, coffee, or processed food could throw 30 to 60 pound bales of hay into a 12-foot loft all day without stimulants, because they ate the animals they raised and consumed raw fats and proteins that actually supplied cellular fuel. The modern dependence on caffeine in coffee, tea, chocolate, soda, and candy bars was, in his framing, a direct reflection of the nutritional depletion created by processed and cooked diets.

Aajonus identified caffeine as the active mechanism in most commercial energy products, including sodas, energy bars, teas, and drinks. He said that industry knows consumers are fatigued and the only solution they offer is chemical stimulation through caffeine and nicotine. He described both as stimulants that push the adrenals into an emergency response mode, producing adrenaline, which elevates energy but is not a resource meant for daily use. Adrenaline is designed for fight-or-flight emergencies, not ongoing daily energy production.

He also addressed theobromine in cocoa beans, describing it as similar to caffeine and a nerve irritant. When consumed in commercial form, cooked and processed, it produces stimulant effects in the same category as caffeine-based energy drinks. He noted that he made his own chocolate from whole raw cocoa beans blenderized with raw egg, raw fat including unsalted raw butter and a little raw cream, and unheated honey, and that in this uncooked form he did not experience addiction to it.

He stated that vegetable juice was the correct substitute for people using coffee or stimulants to get their metabolism moving in the morning. Vegetable juice supplies enzymes for digestion and metabolism without causing toxicity, adrenal stimulation, or the borrowing of future energy. He recommended adding an egg to the vegetable juice, and cream for anyone hyperactive or prone to heart palpitations, making it a functional alternative to a morning stimulant.

For formulas that called for sparkling mineral water, Aajonus specified that only naturally carbonated water was acceptable. He described the difference between naturally sparkling water, where the carbon dioxide from the upper gas layer of the well is captured alongside the water and pumped into the bottle simultaneously, versus commercial soda water and Gatorade-type products where laboratory-produced carbon dioxide is injected artificially. He recommended brands including Gerolsteiner, Ramusa, San Pellegrino, San Faustino, and Perrier, though he expressed concern that San Pellegrino and Perrier had changed their labeling to "sparkling natural water" in recent years and had not answered his inquiries about whether they had switched to synthetic carbonation.

He noted that naturally sparkling mineral water provides natural hydrogen peroxide, increases nitrogen in the intestines to aid digestibility, helps neutralize excess alkalinity and other interfering toxins, and increases oxygen in the blood. He distinguished this from the unnatural carbon dioxide in all commercial sodas and soda waters used in alcoholic beverages. However, he also cautioned that naturally sparkling water can calm the adrenals and that for people with low energy it should probably be consumed only when needed in a remedy rather than routinely, since calming the adrenals in an already low-energy person could reduce their available drive further.

Aajonus described a specific pattern in people with adrenal exhaustion where energy drops within 15 minutes of the same time every day. He recommended eating the Nut Formula or, less preferably, a cooked starch like sourdough or French bread with raw fat, 15 minutes before the expected daily energy drop to maintain normal energy levels. He also noted that soft drinks with caffeine, salt, alcohol, smoke, coffee, teas, and aspirin are all poisonous in this context because they overstimulate the adrenals and pancreas, generating excess adrenaline and insulin that depletes fat reserves and disturbs blood sugar levels. Commercial energy drinks, in this framework, make adrenal exhaustion progressively worse rather than addressing the underlying insufficiency.

Because commercial energy drinks were most heavily used in the morning, Aajonus addressed morning fatigue at length as a problem with a dietary rather than a stimulant solution. He explained that during deep sleep, free radicals and heavy metals leave the brain and nervous system and dump into the lymph, blood, and intestines, causing acidosis. This acidosis causes red blood cells to consume other red blood cells, creating anemia that worsens through the night. Additionally, after five hours without food, the bloodstream becomes protein deficient and red blood cells begin eating one another for protein regardless of a person's body weight. The combined result is that people wake each morning in a state of mild anemia and acidosis, which drives them immediately toward caffeine.

His solution was to set an alarm during sleep so that a person ate something within every five hours. He recommended waking after three to five hours and consuming milk, eggs, meat, or any combination with adequate protein, then returning to sleep. For people who could not return to sleep after eating, he recommended setting the alarm at three hours into sleep and then sleeping a full five additional hours. He cited the example of John Fox, a long-term vegetarian on the Primal Diet for two years who had no energy until 10 a.m. or noon each day. After Aajonus pointed out the five-hour rule at the third workshop he attended, Fox set an alarm, ate during the night, and woke the next morning charged with energy. "That was all it took."