Gallbladder

The gallbladder has one job: it stores bile and dumps it into the duodenum when fat moves into the stomach. Aajonus was emphatic and repetitive on this point across all his recorded seminars. The gallbladder does not produce bile, does not manufacture any hormone, does not create any secretion of its own, and does not perform any metabolic function. It is purely a storage and delivery organ.

The liver creates the bile, sends it through a duct to the gallbladder, and the gallbladder holds it until fat arrives in the digestive system, at which point it releases the bile into the duodenum, the second compartment of the stomach, where fat digestion begins in earnest. Bile then continues to work through the small intestine, and Aajonus noted from his study of cadavers that bile is distributed not only from the gallbladder but also through a network of tissue throughout the intestinal walls, though he was uncertain of the exact delivery mechanism and theorized it might involve the lacteal system.

Bile prepares fat for bacterial digestion by breaking down fat molecules into a substance that bacteria can infiltrate. Aajonus described bile as an extremely caustic material, capable of burning a hole in skin like battery acid, and he noted that when bile behaves properly in the digestive tract it essentially rots the fat in a controlled way, putting it into a state similar to naturally rotten fat, which is why aged or rotten fat can be eaten without digestive difficulty. The bacteria then complete the breakdown, and the resulting material is absorbed through the intestinal villi. Fat that has not been processed by bile cannot be broken down by bacteria and will simply pass through the body undigested.

Bile also digests fat primarily from animal sources. When Aajonus examined what human bile actually broke down under experimental conditions, it was animal fats specifically, not vegetable oils, not pressed oils like olive oil, and not avocado fat to any significant degree. This was one of the pieces of evidence he used to support the conclusion that the human digestive system evolved for animal fat consumption.

Once fat is broken down and absorbed, the liver reassembles the components into sixty varieties of cholesterol. These cholesterols serve three broad functions in equal thirds: one third provides energy, one third protects and stabilizes the body and its tissues, and one third cleanses the body by forming solvents. Aajonus pointed out that fat provides two and a half times more energy per unit than carbohydrates, and that the heaviest and strongest athletes, including sumo wrestlers with a minimum of fifty percent fat in their tissue, demonstrate this principle in practice.

Aajonus specified that fat must be eaten with protein, and protein with fat, because the body will only assimilate approximately twenty percent of the bile available if no protein is consumed alongside the fat. In his words, "you've got to make sure that you eat protein with your fat, and fat with your protein." This relationship is bidirectional. Without adequate protein accompanying the fat, the digestive process becomes significantly less efficient regardless of how much bile the gallbladder has in reserve.

Aajonus discussed the consequences of gallbladder removal at length across multiple seminars, and his position was consistent: a person without a gallbladder cannot eat large amounts of fat at one time without experiencing diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting, because the liver's ongoing production rate of roughly one teaspoon to one tablespoon of bile per hour is simply insufficient to handle any significant fat load. The liver in a well-functioning person produces enough bile per hour to digest approximately one ounce of fat, or in a person with compromised liver function, perhaps only one teaspoon worth.

The practical dietary implications he described were specific. A person without a gallbladder cannot eat a quart of ice cream without diarrhea. They cannot eat a full avocado without problems unless they eat only a third of it at a time. They cannot eat a pint of cream without digestive crisis. They cannot have whipping cream in any significant quantity without risk. They must spread their fat intake across the day in small pieces, never more than approximately one ounce per hour, eating small amounts of fat continuously rather than in concentrated sittings. Four tablespoons of butter in a day consumed all at once would likely cause diarrhea in someone without a gallbladder.

Aajonus did offer one qualification: in a rare number of cases he observed, the liver itself had developed a way to store some bile internally after gallbladder removal, which partially compensated for the loss of the storage organ, but he described this as uncommon.

He also noted that for people living in modern society who eat small amounts of fat continuously throughout the day and never sit down to large fat-heavy meals, the gallbladder is not as critical as it would have been for a primitive hunter. The organ becomes important again when someone eats large quantities of fat at once, such as a quart of ice cream, a pint of cream, or wants to gain weight rapidly by consuming large fat loads.

Aajonus was direct and sharply critical about how the medical profession handles gallbladder complaints. His analysis was that stomach aches of various origins get attributed to gallbladder problems because the gallbladder region is anatomically near the stomach. Doctors know, in his view, that the gallbladder does not perform any significant function in someone who is not eating the large fat loads associated with primitive living, so removing it stops the detoxification process that was causing the stomach pain, and the patient feels better temporarily. The credit goes to the gallbladder removal. Then two or three years later the same problem returns, now without the gallbladder to blame, and the patient is confused because they were told it was a gallbladder problem the first time.

He described this as a situation where the underlying detoxification process, not a gallbladder malfunction, was the actual cause of the symptoms, and that removing the gallbladder simply interrupted that process without resolving it.

Aajonus observed across multiple individual consultations that the gallbladder can fill with heavy metals and other toxins when the liver becomes overloaded and begins sending contaminated bile to the gallbladder rather than clean bile. In this scenario, the gallbladder serves as a secondary dumping ground for poisons the liver cannot fully process, which is a function it was never designed for. He noted this in several iridology readings, describing individuals whose tube between the liver and gallbladder was full of heavy metals, and whose gallbladder itself had become laden with metals from supplement use, vaccines, or other toxic exposures.

In cases where the gallbladder becomes hardened from toxic accumulation, he described the likely detoxification process as intense: diarrhea, vomiting, and a prolonged purging period. He mentioned one individual who had diarrhea for a year and three months during a gallbladder detoxification and felt well throughout because the process was eliminating accumulated poisons. He noted that a hardened gallbladder was burning approximately fifty percent of the dietary fat a person consumed each day, simply absorbing and drying it out rather than allowing normal utilization.

For a person in this condition, he recommended two lubrication formulas per day, vegetable juice composed of ninety percent celery and ten percent parsley, and pranayama breathing to ensure enough oxygen reached the gallbladder area to reduce nausea during the detoxification process.

In individual consultations, Aajonus identified poor circulation into the gallbladder as a separate condition from toxin accumulation. In one reading, he observed a patient with severely congested lymphatic tissue around the gallbladder region and recommended that person put on approximately ten pounds of protective fat before beginning hot baths, because the hot baths would begin melting out the congested material and without sufficient protective fat the process would disintegrate connective tissue.

In his written work, Aajonus described gallstones as deposits of crystallized resins and minerals combined with bile in the gallbladder, using the same framework he applied to kidney stones. The deposits form the same way as kidney stones, with the distinguishing element being that bile is present in gallbladder stones. He noted that tribes living entirely on raw dairy and raw meats had no history of developing any kind of stones, whether kidney, bladder, liver, or gallbladder, which he took as evidence that the concentration of minerals in raw dairy and raw meats is not the cause of stone formation, contrary to some claims. For people dealing with gallstones, his suggestions included eating foods high in minerals such as fresh raw vegetable juices, raw eggs, raw milk preferably full-fat, raw plain kefir, tomatoes, melons, no-salt-added raw cheeses, fresh raw fish particularly raw oysters and clams with raw fat, and drinking two ounces of fresh raw beet juice mixed into other vegetable juices.

Aajonus acknowledged directly that in the context of modern eating patterns, the gallbladder is less critical than it was for primitive humans. When fat is eaten in small amounts spread across the entire day, the liver's ongoing production rate can keep pace with demand and the reserve stored in the gallbladder rarely needs to be fully mobilized. He sometimes made the point humorously, noting that the gallbladder becomes important again for people like himself who would sit down to a quart or even a gallon of ice cream at a time.

He also described the gallbladder as important for someone who is very underweight and wants to gain weight rapidly, because rapid weight gain on a fat-heavy diet requires the ability to consume and absorb large fat loads at once, which demands the bile reserve the gallbladder provides. The Maasai, he noted in passing, had laws against eating fruit because they were so fat-deficient that any sugar intake would divert fat toward fuel rather than tissue building.

Based on his study of cadavers, Aajonus noted that bile is distributed not only through the gallbladder duct into the duodenum but also throughout the small and large intestinal walls. He found bile in the tissue of the small intestine during autopsies, and concluded that the body delivers bile through a separate network, which he theorized may be the lacteal system, though he acknowledged he was unable to confirm the delivery mechanism from the specimens available to him. This meant that the gallbladder dump into the duodenum is the primary but not the only route by which bile reaches digesting food.

Aajonus made a specific observation connecting honey to the bile production process. Honey, he said, is composed primarily of enzymes, and these enzymes assist the liver in manufacturing bile, making the liver's job easier. This in turn supports the overall fat digestion system, including the supply of quality bile that the gallbladder holds and distributes. He recommended honey in various formulas not only for its sweetness or energy but specifically for this enzymatic support to the liver and by extension to bile quality and production.

In several individual consultations Aajonus conducted using iridology, the gallbladder appeared in readings as a region of congestion, hardening, metal accumulation, or poor circulation. One individual had a completely hardened gallbladder filled with toxins from supplement use. Another had a gallbladder described as empty and dark, in a person who had the organ removed, with the surrounding area showing dead tissue and mercury contamination from surgical swabbing. Another individual had a gallbladder full of metals with compromised circulation in the surrounding liver tissue including broken veins suggesting vitamin K and vitamin U deficiency. In the case of the person with the removed gallbladder, Aajonus recommended a formula of eight ounces of cabbage juice with two tablespoons of coconut cream, one tablespoon of dairy cream, one tablespoon of butter, and a tablespoon of cheese, intended to address the circulation deficiencies and the nutritional deficits he observed in the surrounding tissue.

Aajonus noted that having a gallbladder does not automatically guarantee proper fat digestion, because the bile itself may be of poor quality if the liver is not functioning well. He said directly that if someone with an intact gallbladder still cannot eat ice cream without problems, the issue is that the liver is not forming proper bile, not that the gallbladder is failing. In this case the liver must be addressed and improved before fat digestion will normalize. He described a liver at twenty percent functionality as able to produce only enough bile to handle the most minimal fat demands, barely keeping up with deficiency rather than supporting robust fat assimilation.