Enzymes

Aajonus returned to this point across many different contexts because he considered the confusion around "live enzymes" to be consequential, not merely semantic. He explained that enzymes are protein bodies, amino acid particles constructed into a particular form. They belong to biology but are not individual life forms. They operate through chemical reaction, not through biological processes like respiration, reproduction, or excretion. He used the example of salt dissolving a substance: salt produces a definite chemical action, but no one would say salt is alive. The same logic applies to enzymes. The action they produce does not indicate life.

He extended this same framework to viruses, which he described as the byproducts of enzymatic activity inside the body, protein waste products with RNA and DNA structure that form when the body produces solvents to break down damaged cellular material. Viruses, like enzymes, have no nucleus, no respiratory system, no circulatory system. They are not alive. In both cases, Aajonus was insisting on a structural reading of these protein bodies rather than a vitalistic one.

Aajonus described enzymes as performing two complementary operations: they disassemble food molecules, and they reassemble them into forms the body can use. He called this fractionating, meaning the breaking apart of molecules into their constituent particles so that cells can work with them. He summarized the function simply: "The enzymes are your workers, they do all of the work, they disassemble molecules, and they reassemble."

He placed enzymes in a hierarchy with other nutrients. Enzymes are the workers. Vitamins are the supervisors, the architects ensuring that fats, proteins, and carbohydrates are assembled and utilized correctly. DNA and RNA are the architects at the structural level. Minerals serve as activators when their ionic charge is correct. Proteins, carbohydrates, and fats are the raw supplies. All of these have to be present in active biological form for the system to function. Once any component is cooked or processed, the whole hierarchy breaks down.

Aajonus also explained that enzymes travel through the digestive system carrying signals. When food enters the mouth, enzymes from that food begin moving toward the pancreas, which registers and analyzes them. The pancreas uses this enzymatic information to determine what the food is, what nutrients it contains, and what enzymatic and hormonal responses are needed to process it. He described the pancreas as analyzing each food individually, even distinguishing between two tomatoes from the same vine grown in slightly different soil conditions, because every food's enzymatic signature is unique.

Aajonus gave specific temperature figures for when enzyme activity begins to degrade and when it is fully eliminated. He stated that enzymes begin to be destroyed at approximately 104 degrees Fahrenheit. By 116 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, all enzyme activity is completely neutralized. He used slightly varying figures across different passages, stating in one context that destruction begins at 104 degrees and in another that "by the time you reach 122 degrees, they are all dead and destroyed," and in another that "116 degrees, all the enzyme activity is completely neutralized." In the context of isolated fats such as butter, cream, coconut oil, or coconut cream, he put the beginning of enzyme destruction even lower, at 96 degrees Fahrenheit.

He used a vivid analogy to convey what cooking does to the enzyme content of food: "It's like going to a junkyard to get parts. How many parts are going to be destroyed? And the junkyard's been in a fire. How many parts are you going to be able to use?" The point was that cooking leaves behind a ruined collection of parts, some of which are now actively toxic rather than merely absent.

A point Aajonus made repeatedly was that heat is not the only mechanism of enzyme destruction. Dehydration also destroys enzyme bioactivity, and it does so regardless of temperature. He stated clearly: "Enzymes, whenever you dehydrate, enzymes get lost. They evaporate, they go. It doesn't have to do anything to a temperature. It has to do with dehydration." He used the logical extension: if you dehydrate a human being, all enzymatic activity stops. The same principle applies to any food.

This means that dehydrated foods, regardless of whether they were dried at low temperatures, are not equivalent to raw food in terms of enzyme content. Aajonus was direct: "A lot of people think dehydrated food is raw food. It is not. Enzymes are not bioactive. They become hardened and they're not stable." He distinguished between what dehydrated food can offer to an herbivore with a long digestive tract capable of reproducing minerals, versus what it can offer the human body, which he said does not do well with dried food. Herbivores like cows, sheep, and goats can feed on dried food as part of their natural diet because their anatomy supports it. Humans cannot extract meaningful enzymatic nutrition from dried food.

He applied this principle to every dried food category: dried fruit, raisins, figs, dried nuts, dehydrated products of all kinds. He stated: "There are no biologically active enzymes in any dehydrated product. None." Cheese he placed in this same category, describing it as a supplement rather than a whole active food precisely because it is dehydrated and enzyme-deficient.

Aajonus described a specific physiological sequence that occurs every time a person eats cooked food. Because cooked food contains no bioactive enzymes, the body has no external enzymatic workers to help process the meal. The pancreas responds by producing a variety of hormones that circulate through the body and instruct every cell to contribute a small portion of its own stored enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients to handle the incoming food. He described this process repeatedly using the same metaphor: the pancreas sends hormones out "like the mafia sending out a few thugs" to extract small payments from every cell in the body.

This leaching is not a neutral metabolic event. Every time it happens, the cellular reserves of every tissue in the body are slightly diminished. Over years and decades of cooked food consumption, this gradual extraction causes a marked decrease in the strength and function of every cell, an accumulation of toxicity from the unprocessed waste products of cooked food, and the progressive deterioration that most people experience as normal aging. Aajonus rejected the conventional reassurance that "your body produces enzymes" as equivalent to saying money grows on trees: "It doesn't make them, it leaches them from your body. That's why people go from vital and healthy as a child to" progressive decline.

He named the specific toxins that cooked food introduces alongside this enzyme deficit: heterocyclic amines, lipid peroxides, and advanced glycation end products. These are not merely the absence of good things but actively damaging substances that the body must also process, compounding the burden placed on the cellular enzyme reserves. He described this combination as particularly destructive: the body must simultaneously handle toxins produced by cooking and compensate for the absence of the enzymatic tools needed to process food normally.

He also noted that even when a person eats raw food alongside cooked food, the raw food's enzymes can prevent leukocytosis (the immune mobilization triggered by cooked food entering the gut), but it cannot fully neutralize the toxins already formed by cooking. The leaching process still occurs in response to the toxins, even if its severity is reduced.

Aajonus described the pancreas as far more than an insulin-producing gland, and much of that expanded role involves enzymes. The pancreas, in his framework, is the primary architect of digestion. It analyzes the enzymatic signals that arrive with food from the mouth, registers the specific nutritional composition of each food individually, and then determines what enzymatic and hormonal responses are needed. It restructures raw enzymatic materials so the body can utilize them for specific purposes.

He described the pancreas as being responsible for what he called the "recombining" of enzyme fragments from raw foods into forms suitable for human cellular use. In a raw food diet, the pancreas receives a rich supply of enzymatic raw material from the food itself and uses it to construct what is needed. In a cooked food diet, the pancreas receives no enzymatic raw material and is forced instead to produce hormones that extract those materials from the body's own cellular stores.

He also noted that the pancreas analyzes even the same food differently each time it is consumed, because every piece of food, even from the same plant or tree, has a slightly different enzymatic and nutritional profile due to differences in soil, growth conditions, and maturation stage. This means the pancreas is performing a highly individualized analysis with each meal, not a generalized response.

Aajonus was skeptical of commercial enzyme supplements and gave several reasons for rejecting them. First, he noted that most commercial enzyme supplements, including bromelain and papain extracted from pineapple and papaya, are processed using kerosene as a solvent. The extraction process involves dissolving the enzyme material in kerosene for two to four days, which means the resulting supplement contains kerosene residue. He described this as poisonous to the body, stating that kerosene contracts the adrenal glands, provides a stimulatory effect, and dissolves tissue.

Second, and more fundamentally, he argued that an enzyme not embedded in food is not bioactive in the same way. When a person takes an isolated enzyme supplement, the body must send that enzyme to the pancreas to be realigned and supplemented with whatever other elements are missing from the isolated supplement. That process of realignment requires the pancreas to leach those missing elements from the body's own cellular stores, exactly the same mechanism as eating cooked food. He stated: "Every time you eat a cooked food, the pancreas sends out hormones that address every cell in your body" and the same happens with supplemental enzymes not embedded in food.

He did allow one qualified exception: if a person is eating a predominantly cooked food diet with very little raw food, commercial enzyme supplements offer some benefit because the person has essentially no enzymatic support otherwise. But for someone on even a 60 percent raw diet, he said isolated enzyme supplements become destructive rather than helpful, because they trigger the same leaching mechanism they are supposedly meant to prevent.

Aajonus gave honey a specific and detailed role in the enzyme framework. He described honey as the product of bees converting flower nectars and other substances, and the enzymatic profile of honey as uniquely versatile. He said honey can be converted into any kind of enzyme the body needs, describing it as "a shapeshifter." The pancreas produces an insulin-like substance in response to honey that converts approximately 90 percent of honey's carbohydrate content into enzymes for digesting fats and proteins. Only about 10 percent remains as sugar, and even that is not a radical sugar.

The insulin-like substance in honey that enables this enzymatic conversion begins to be destroyed at 93 degrees Fahrenheit. Below that temperature, honey acts as a full enzymatic supplement. Above it, that function is progressively lost.

He used this property of honey to explain how dried foods, particularly cheese, can be made digestible. Cheese is dehydrated and therefore enzyme-deficient. On its own, it functions as a mineral-absorbing buffer in the gut rather than as a digestible food. But when honey is added to cheese, whether by mashing them together, layering them as in a cheesecake preparation, or mixing them in the mouth, the honey's enzymes activate the digestion of the cheese's concentrated minerals. He described this as creating a highly efficient mineral supplement: a one-inch-by-one-inch square of cheese eaten with a small amount of honey provides the mineral equivalent of what the body could absorb from a full bottle of mineral supplements, because the honey supplies the enzymatic activity needed to process the cheese's mineral concentration.

He specified that the key is direct contact: the honey must be in physical contact with the cheese, either mashed together or mixed simultaneously in the mouth. He had tried adding honey to nuts and reported that it does not produce the same result. He also tried adding honey to other dried foods and concluded that none of them provide the same enzymatic benefit as honey with raw unsalted cheese.

Aajonus discussed fruit as an enzyme source in some detail, distinguishing between different fruits and their enzymatic specializations. He noted that pineapple contains bromelain, which he described as primarily a fat-digesting enzyme, and papaya contains papain, which he described as primarily a protein-digesting enzyme. Both are strong enough that "the enzymes are so strong that they can dissolve tissue." He recommended eating fat with fruit as beneficial, because the enzymatic activity of fruit helps break down fat.

He also made a broader statement: all fruit has more enzymes than are necessary to digest that fruit itself, meaning the enzymes are in excess relative to the fruit's own digestive needs. This excess creates an enzymatic surplus that goes looking for other substrates to work on, particularly fats and proteins stored in the body. In someone who eats a high-fruit or fruitarian diet, this surplus enzymatic activity directed at stored body fat and protein can produce hyperactivity, scatter-brained thinking, and a kind of cleansing reaction that depletes the body's own reserves.

He placed vegetable juice alongside fruit as a concentrated enzyme source, though he emphasized juicing rather than eating the pulp, because the enzymes are in the liquid fraction. He recommended vegetable juice specifically with protein foods, stating that the enzymes, vitamins, and minerals in vegetable juice help digest the protein in meats.

Aajonus discussed a specific class of enzyme-blocking compounds found in nuts and seeds, which he referred to as enzyme inhibitors or anti-enzymes. The main one he named was phytic acid. He described phytic acid as a combination of enzyme-like structures, specifically protein substances grouped together, not a living entity. He explained that phytic acid prevents certain minerals from being utilized by the body, and those minerals are necessary for protein digestion, which in turn is necessary for fat digestion, creating a cascade of downstream deficiencies.

He addressed the common raw food practice of soaking or sprouting nuts and seeds to remove phytic acid. He rejected this approach emphatically, arguing that sprouting does not remove phytic acid but instead produces three additional enzyme inhibitors that mimic phytic acid structurally. Rather than solving the problem, sprouting triples it. He used the illustration of feeding a bird only sprouts: the bird would be dead within five days. He extended this to argue that birds, which have digestive systems more suited to seeds than humans do, cannot survive on sprouts alone, and humans are less equipped to handle them.

The practical solution he offered for nuts was not soaking or sprouting but blending with a specific combination of ingredients: egg, fat (butter), and honey. He explained that pulverizing nuts in a blender does not neutralize the enzyme inhibitors by itself; it merely exposes them by increasing surface area. The combination of egg, fat, and honey is what actually neutralizes the exposed inhibitors. He was explicit that chewing does not accomplish what blending does, not because of mechanical action but because blending creates a surface area exposure that allows the neutralizing ingredients to reach and inactivate the inhibitors throughout the mass.

His standard nut preparation involved blending nuts into a powder in an 8-ounce or 12-ounce jelly jar, then adding 3 ounces of butter and 2 tablespoons of honey, along with egg, and blending the combination. He noted that this formula inhibits the enzyme inhibitors, which was the stated goal of the preparation.

Aajonus discussed ptyalin, which he also spelled "pylon," as the one carbohydrate-digesting enzyme present in human saliva. He described it as something humans have developed over approximately the last 20,000 years of grain and carbohydrate consumption, and noted that it is present in much larger amounts in horses, which are adapted to eat sugar-containing plants like sugar cane. He said horses love sweets because they have a predominant amount of ptyalin enzyme, while humans have only about 2 percent of that capacity.

He used this 2 percent figure to calculate a practical limit: humans can process approximately one tablespoon of carbohydrate every three hours using ptyalin. Beyond that, the enzymatic capacity for carbohydrate digestion is exceeded. He also noted that ptyalin does not work on animal tissue or fats at all, and that the stomach's primary enzyme is hydrochloric acid, which is specifically suited to meat and dairy rather than grains, fruits, or vegetables. He described the presence of ptyalin as a recent evolutionary adaptation to an agricultural diet, not a sign that carbohydrates are a natural primary food for humans.

He also noted that ptyalin can over-alkalize the system when it acts on carbohydrates in the mouth, and that a salivary enzyme mixing with meat too much neutralizes the acids needed to digest meat, which is why he recommended swallowing meat without excessive chewing.

Aajonus made a specific claim about the origin of bioactive enzymes in food: they would not exist without bacteria. He stated directly that "myriads are directly responsible for arrays of enzymes. Bioactive enzymes would not exist without bacteria." In his framework, bacteria eat the food substances in raw food and produce byproducts, including their secretions, urine, feces, and perspiration, which are the actual nutrients and enzymatic substances that the human body absorbs and recombines.

He described intestinal bacteria as performing enzymatic work throughout the digestive tract. He said that bacteria colonies constitute 80 to 90 percent of the digestive tract in a healthy person, and that digestive enzymes produced in the small intestines work alongside bacteria to break large food molecules into smaller particles that bacteria can infiltrate and process. The hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes in the gut are not doing the final work of digestion so much as breaking food into pieces small enough for the bacterial colonies to act upon.

He also noted that rejuvelac, a grain-based fermented liquid popular in some raw food communities as a digestive aid, provides enzymes oriented toward decomposition rather than toward the disassembly and reconstruction of food molecules. He distinguished between decomposition, which he associated with breaking matter down to fertilizer-grade components, and the enzymatic disassembly-and-reconstruction process that raw food supports in the human body.

Aajonus discussed a specific concept he called enzyme-mutations, which referred to the body's capacity to process cooked or processed foods in particular color categories. He stated that people who lack enzyme-mutations for eating cooked or processed green, red, orange, or yellow foods have a predisposition toward HIV positive status. He described these enzyme-mutations as the body's adaptive mechanisms for handling cooked versions of specific food categories, and their absence as a vulnerability.

He recommended that people lacking enzyme-mutations for a particular color category avoid cooked or processed foods in that category. For green foods, this included ordinary olive oils, cooked leafy vegetables including steamed ones, artichoke, celery, green beans, green peppers, broccoli, pastas made from green foods, cooked vegetable juices, and herbal teas that are not sun-steeped. The underlying principle was that without the appropriate enzyme-mutation, the body cannot handle the specific toxins produced when those foods are processed, creating accumulation and damage.

Aajonus addressed freezing as distinct from heat in its effect on enzymes. For fruit, he said freezing "barely" destroys enzymes, making it acceptable to freeze fruit and run it through a Champion juicer to make a kind of ice cream. He said it was fine to keep frozen fruit for a week or two. For meat, however, he said freezing destroys enzymes in a more significant way, attributing this to "the properties of protein and the properties of fat" behaving differently from fruit under freezing conditions. He noted that in his experiments with animals eating frozen meat, all of the animals developed mange within six to ten months on the diet, while animals eating the same meat unfrozen developed no mange.

He specified that ice cream made with cream and dairy should be eaten within twenty-four hours, connecting this to the same principle of enzyme and fat degradation over time once frozen.

Responding to the claim by Edward Howell that vegetables and fruits are not concentrated sources of enzymes, Aajonus offered a nuanced response. He explained that vegetables are not mature until they begin to seed, and that celery, parsley, and most commercial vegetables are harvested before seeding because produce companies know that once a plant goes to seed it loses the enzymes necessary to sustain it. The enzymatic concentration in vegetables is therefore already reduced by the time most people consume them, because commercial harvesting practices remove them before their natural enzymatic peak.

He agreed that vegetable juice is a high source of enzymes relative to the pulp, and recommended juicing as the primary way to extract enzymatic value from vegetables. He recommended vegetable juice specifically with protein foods such as meat, to supply the enzymes, vitamins, and minerals needed to digest animal protein.

Aajonus described laboratory experiments in which he exposed human enzymes to different foods at different points in the digestive sequence. He stated that the only foods consistently and completely digested by human enzymes in these experiments were animal-origin foods: milk, meat, and eggs. When meat was ground and blended with milk into a fully liquid, hermetically sealed form with no oxygen, it digested completely. When meat was in larger chunks, the experiment ran out of time before complete digestion occurred because he could not simultaneously maintain the environment and observe it.

He contrasted this with plant foods, which human enzymes did not fully process in the same experimental conditions. This finding supported his view that the human digestive system, including its enzymatic profile and hydrochloric acid content, is oriented toward animal foods rather than plant foods.

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