Glucose

The alternative blood sugar pathway Aajonus consistently recommended over carbohydrate-derived glucose is pyruvate, a protein sugar the body manufactures from dietary protein, primarily meat and eggs. When the body forms pyruvate, it then uses glucagon to convert it into the functional equivalent of glycogen for use by the brain, nervous system, lymph, and blood. He described this as a clean-burning pathway because the advanced glycation end product byproduct is only 7 to 8 percent, with some individuals producing up to 12 percent at maximum. He stated the human body can handle 12 percent easily, meaning nothing accumulates or stores. He contrasted this directly with the 70 to 90 percent storage rate from carbohydrate-derived glycogen, which he described as the difference between a functional system and one progressively congested with sugary, pasty, gummy waste.

He spelled out the word: P-Y-R-U-V-A-T-E. He explained that pyruvate is also part of the citric acid cycle, where it helps vitamin C and citric acids fire and explode fats to burn as fuel. When fats are not present, more protein gets made into pyruvate because the actual ignitor of fat burning becomes the fuel itself. He noted that 15 percent of pyruvate is used to alter fats into energy, and that 5 percent of dietary carbohydrates in the form of alcohol or vitamin C allow the body to ferment fruit and utilize fat as energy in a time-released fashion when fat accompanies the fruit.

He summarized the distinction plainly: when the body uses pyruvate as blood sugar instead of carbohydrate-derived glycogen, only 7 to 8 percent advanced glycation end product forms, and the body can handle 12 percent, so no storage occurs. When carbohydrate is the source, 70 to 90 percent of the waste stores permanently in the body.

Aajonus described a specific daily timing pattern for how the body builds its glucose supply. He stated that the body builds all of its glucose in the first six hours of the waking day and then uses that glucose for the remainder of the day. Whatever is eaten during that six-to-seven-hour window determines whether the body will build its glycogen from carbohydrate or from protein. If high-carbohydrate food is eaten before that window closes, the body will make its main glycogen supply from carbohydrate and the neurological and blood systems will be loaded with sticky, advanced glycation end product all day. If protein is eaten instead, the body will build its glycogen from pyruvate via glucagon and the system will remain clear and fluid.

He gave a specific behavioral consequence: if a person eats sugar or fruit or fruit juice first thing in the morning, they will have a high carbohydrate-reactive glucose with heavy advanced glycation end product byproduct flooding the system at exactly the moment the nervous system is setting its baseline chemistry for the day. He recommended eating nothing high in carbohydrate in the first six to seven hours of waking, and instead eating meat, eggs, and fat to force pyruvate production.

He described children given milkshakes with lots of eggs in the morning as being focused all day long, in contrast to children given sugar or sugar products before noon. He said specifically: as long as they don't get sugar or a sugar product until about noon, the body builds its glucose properly in the first six hours of waking.

Advanced glycation end products, which Aajonus called AGEs, are the toxic waste byproduct of carbohydrate-derived glucose metabolism. He described them as a sugary, pasty, gummy substance that floats through the brain, blood, lymph, and glands, congesting everything. He said the acronym AGE is appropriate because these products age the body, causing dryness of skin, dehydration, brittle tissue, plaquing throughout the system, and progressive deterioration of glands and organs.

The storage rates he cited repeatedly: 70 percent in a healthy body, 90 percent in an unhealthy body, with people who have kidney conditions or diabetes storing at the 90 percent rate. These products, he emphasized, store for a lifetime. There is no natural mechanism the body uses to clear them once stored.

He described the physical consequences in detail. The AGEs get into the blood, neurological fluid, and lymphatic system, causing all of these fluids to become sticky and thick, like syrup, like molasses, or garbage molasses. When cells move past each other in sticky fluid, they adhere to one another. Nerve transmissions misfire. Synapse firing becomes erratic or misdirected. The axons and ganglia do not pulsate normally. He said the synapse can misfire and send charges in the wrong direction, which causes people to lose their train of thought, misfire into wrong areas of memory, or fail at analysis. A lot of people who lose their train of thought are either deficient in blood sugar, have too much sugar, or are firing in the wrong areas of the memory or analysis.

He identified cancer as thriving specifically in a high-sugar environment. The advanced glycation end products break down mineral balance in the tissue, the tissue becomes fragile, cells die, and mummified cells collect into tumors. He said this is why cancer loves to grow in a high carbohydrate environment and why wherever high sugars are concentrated in the body, certain problems concentrate there as well.

He noted that the AGEs love to store in skin and organs and glands rather than in bones, muscles, connective tissue, tendons, or ligaments, which explains the particular pattern of dehydration, drying, and skin deterioration he associated with high-carbohydrate diets.

Aajonus identified cooked starches as a particular problem because the body sometimes reads already-cooked carbohydrate as having already been burned as glycogen. When that happens, instead of converting the cooked carbohydrate into glycogen first and then forming an advanced glycation end product as a byproduct, the body skips the intermediate step and converts the cooked carbohydrate directly into an advanced glycation end product, which is a glycotoxin. This means the body stores the toxic byproduct immediately and directly without ever extracting useful energy from it. The storage rate remains the same: 70 percent in a healthy body, 90 percent in an unhealthy body.

He also identified acrylamides as a related problem with cooked starches, mentioning them in connection with glycotoxin accumulation from high-carbohydrate cooked foods.

He noted that even raw carbohydrates, including raw fruit and raw vegetables, still produce the 70 to 90 percent AGE storage rate, making the issue not cooking per se but the presence of high carbohydrate regardless of preparation. However, cooked starch adds the additional direct glycotoxin conversion pathway on top of the standard carbohydrate problem.

Aajonus distinguished dairy sugar from fruit sugar and grain sugar. He stated that dairy contains lactose, which has what he called a sugar fractionating molecule. Fruits, he said, do not have a sugar fractionating molecule. Milk does. This makes dairy sugar behave very differently in the body. He said dairy does not cause the same accumulation of advanced glycation end products as other carbohydrate sources, estimating the rate at approximately 20 percent rather than the 70 to 90 percent seen with other carbohydrates.

He did not explain the full mechanism of the fractionating molecule but stated it makes dairy-derived sugar "very different" and does not cause the same lifetime accumulation.

Aajonus gave honey a special classification among sugars because of what happens when a bee collects nectar. The bee swallows the nectar and infuses an insulin-like substance into it that converts approximately 90 percent of the carbohydrates into what he called a protein catalyst. These altered carbohydrates no longer react like sugar in the body; instead they react on proteins. Because of this, only about 10 percent of honey remains as actual sugar after the bee's processing, and the advanced glycation end products produced from that 10 percent are very minimal.

However, this insulin-like substance is temperature-sensitive. He stated that it begins its destruction at 93 degrees Fahrenheit and is fully destroyed by 99 degrees. The sugar molecule itself is not damaged until approximately 105 to 106 degrees. This means honey heated to 100 degrees has lost its insulin-like substance and the full carbohydrate is now available as sugar, making it problematic for diabetics. At 100 degrees, he said, it is all sugar again because it no longer has the insulin-like substance in it. However, the sugar molecule is not yet altered or radicalized until 105 to 106 degrees.

He gave a ratio for safe honey consumption relative to protein intake. He said if a person eats a pound of honey a day, they can have approximately six tablespoons of honey a day, calibrated by their protein consumption. He stated that if honey consumption exceeds this proportion relative to meat intake, problems will arise. He recommended keeping honey consumption bounded within that ratio.

He also noted that he found the advanced glycation end products from honey to be very minimal for some other reason beyond just the insulin-like substance, acknowledging there are factors in honey he could not yet fully identify or decipher.

Insulin is the pancreatic hormone that converts excess carbohydrate sugar in the blood into storable glycogen. Aajonus described insulin production as having been a minute, remote function of the pancreas when humans ate their appropriate diet of almost entirely animal products, but that carbohydrate consumption has forced the pancreas to massively upregulate insulin production beyond its intended capacity.

When too much carbohydrate sugar enters the blood, the pancreas produces insulin to bind with those sugars and convert them into storable glycogen. When mutant or refined sugars enter the blood, the pancreas overproduces insulin even when blood sugar is low. He described refined sugars as mutations that enter the blood too fast, overstimulate the liver and pancreas, cause bile and hormones including insulin to bind with the sugars and strip the blood low in sugar, producing hypoglycemia. Over time this exhausts the pancreas and leads to diabetes.

He stated that insulin produced by the person's own pancreas from their own body converts sugar into proper glycogen. When processed insulin from a pig source or from synthetic production is used instead, that insulin is a chemical that cannot convert sugar into a proper, workable glycogen. The sugars stored using processed or chemical insulin are very acrid, very acidic, and eat away at connective tissue and then surrounding tissue, producing gangrene that begins with toes and proceeds upward. He said this is why diabetics on insulin for 27 to 30 years begin having amputations.

He described 90 percent of the diabetics he had seen as not actually diabetic at all, with fully functional pancreases that were simply misread on a single high blood sugar test. He said he put many of them on a good diet, took them off insulin, and they functioned normally and easily, many of them after 25 to 30 years on the drug.

For true cases where insulin production is insufficient, he recommended unheated honey at approximately three-quarters of a cup throughout each day, stating that this replaces the functions of insulin missing in the blood while healing the pancreas and encouraging pancreatic function.

Aajonus addressed the situation where a person on the Primal Diet shows elevated blood sugar on laboratory tests despite eating very few or no carbohydrates. He described a client who had high blood sugar on a blood test, eliminated all fruit and honey, ate only four ounces of nuts in the nut formula once a week with no nut butter within two days of any blood test, and five weeks later still had equally high blood sugar. He used this to demonstrate that the high reading was from toxic sugars stored in the system from prior carbohydrate consumption being released and circulating in the blood before elimination, not from current dietary carbohydrate intake.

He also described his own testing at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, where he participated in a glucose tolerance test. He had not consumed intentional sugar since approximately 1972 and had not consumed it since 1974 except by mistake. When he drank the glucose solution, he shook and nearly went into what he described as real diabetic shock from the experience. His blood sugar was taken every 30 minutes. His own pancreas produced so much insulin, in all four known varieties plus at least one variety the researchers had not previously encountered, that it drove his blood sugar down to 54, well below the standard stopping point of 104, and well below the previous record low the researchers had observed of around 96. He described calming himself over the two and a half hours without eating anything else and then drinking milk to heal the body.

Separately, he described seeing blood sugar spikes appear in his own labs without experiencing symptoms, and having a technician test the quality and availability of those sugars, finding that 90 percent of those sugars were attached to fat molecules and had never been released or available for utilization. He described this as old toxic sugars stored in the system coming out, not active metabolic glucose.

The brain and nervous system run on glycogen as their primary fuel. When that glycogen is derived from carbohydrate, the sticky advanced glycation end product waste contaminates the neurological fluid, making it thick and resistant to proper conductance. He described synapse firing in sticky neurological fluid as impaired, misdirected, or failing to propagate correctly through ganglia and axons. He said the ganglia and axons do not pulsate properly when neurological fluid is sticky.

When blood sugar is high from carbohydrate-derived glycogen, the blood itself thickens and becomes sticky. Cells stick to each other. Oxygen transport and waste removal slow down. The overall effect is lethargy, unclear thinking, poor focus, and a lack of directness and solidity in thought. He contrasted this directly with the mental clarity he described in people whose bodies are running on pyruvate-derived glycogen, calling them direct, solid, and clear.

He described two outcomes from being a high-carbohydrate eater: either the nervous system is highly overactive and produces ADHD, manic depression, and mood swings if insulin production is insufficient to convert the excess sugar into storable glycogen, or the person becomes very fat if insulin production is robust enough to properly convert and store all the excess glycogen. He said there is no in-between for a high-carbohydrate eater.

He addressed the situation where a person has low blood sugar caused by eating a lot of candy or sweet food, which produces a large insulin surge that drives blood sugar down. He described a specific combination protocol for this condition: cooked starch, raw fat, and fresh fruit, all taken together at the same time. The cooked starch enters and seeks out the excess insulin, binding with it. The raw fat then binds with that complex and carries it to the bowels for elimination so it does not store as glycogen again. The raw fruit sugar is time-released because it is mixed in with the cooked starch and fat, and the sugar attaches to the fats so it does not all enter the blood at once. The result is that blood sugar is maintained at a consistent level. He mentioned licorice tea and chromium as things people commonly attempt for blood sugar balance but did not endorse these specifically within the same context.

He identified raw fruit, carrot juice, fruit juices with cream or fat, and honey as appropriate for someone with low blood sugar, noting that honey by itself does not go strongly into the blood because of its insulin-like substance, so a more direct sugar source like fresh fruit or carrot juice is needed alongside it when blood sugar is very low.

Aajonus recommended that carbohydrates comprise only 5 to 10 percent of the diet, with 10 percent being the upper limit for someone newly starting the diet who needs more carbohydrate adjustment. He translated this into approximately one cup to one and a half cups of fruit per day, always eaten with fat to time-release the sugar entry into the blood. He said fat must accompany any carbohydrate consumption to prevent it from entering the blood all at once.

He said he personally kept carbohydrates very low and ate a fruit meal only once every other day, typically in the afternoon, allowing himself that allowance by keeping all other carbohydrate sources minimal throughout the rest of the day. He recommended most people eat a fruit meal once daily because they need more carbohydrates than he does, noting he has been on the diet long enough that he no longer requires as much.

He stated that if too much carbohydrate is eaten relative to protein, the chemistry of the body shifts alkaline in a way that makes meat repulsive, potentially causing a person to go the entire day without eating any meat. He described this as a self-reinforcing cycle where sugar consumption drives the body away from the protein it needs to produce proper pyruvate-based glucose.

He gave a specific daily meal sequence as well: wake up and eat cheese to absorb stomach acids; then have vegetable juice to provide vitamins, enzymes, and minerals; then wait about 45 minutes to an hour and have a meat meal, always with fat; then optionally have cheese and honey about 30 minutes after the meat meal for minerals. He emphasized that this sequence sets the brain for the day by forcing pyruvate-based glycogen production during the critical first six-hour window.

He recommended that if carrot juice is used, it should be accompanied by sufficient celery, zucchini, parsley, or cucumber to keep the net carbohydrate concentration low enough that the body does not build glycogen from that juice. He said his carrot juice always contains more celery and cucumber than carrot so the body builds glycogen from pyruvate rather than from the carbohydrate in the juice.