Glycogen

When the body converts carbohydrate into glycogen and then uses that glycogen to fuel the nervous system and brain, it generates a metabolic waste product called Advanced Glycation End-products, abbreviated AGEs. Aajonus cited Columbia University's Department of Medicine as the source of research establishing that these compounds store in a healthy human body at a rate of 70% and in an unhealthy body at a rate of 90%. The storage is permanent, accumulating over a lifetime rather than being cleared through the urine, bowels, or mucous membranes. Aajonus described this as a waste product the body cannot reutilize, a toxin that persists and interferes with function regardless of whether the original carbohydrate was raw or cooked.

When the body makes glycogen from pyruvate, derived from animal proteins, the Advanced Glycation End-product byproduct is only 7% to 8%. Aajonus stated the human body can handle approximately 12% of these byproducts per day without accumulation. Because the pyruvate pathway produces only 7% to 8%, the body processes and discards the entire output without storing a single molecule of AGE. He stated repeatedly and explicitly that not one percent of Advanced Glycation End-product is retained in the body when glycogen is made from pyruvate. The contrast between 7% to 8% on the protein pathway and 70% to 90% on the carbohydrate pathway was, for Aajonus, the decisive argument that humans are not biologically suited to high-carbohydrate diets.

Glycogen runs the nervous system and brain. Aajonus described it as the blood sugar that gives the brain and nervous system their operational energy, the fuel that powers neurological function throughout the waking day. He also noted that many other functions in the body can use glycogen, and that glycogen is involved in blood sugar levels, lymphatic system function, and the general metabolic activity of multiple organ systems.

When glycogen is in proper supply and made cleanly from pyruvate, the neurological system functions with clarity and speed. Aajonus described his own ability to move fluidly through complex subjects during lectures as a direct result of eating in the way he prescribed, keeping the first hours of the day free of high-carbohydrate food so that his glycogen was made from protein. When glycogen is made from carbohydrate and the resulting Advanced Glycation End-products accumulate in the blood, neurological fluid, and lymph, the entire system becomes sticky. Synapse firing misfires, axons and ganglia pulse incorrectly, and thoughts fail to transmit properly.

Advanced Glycation End-products are physically sticky. Aajonus described them as having the consistency of syrup or molasses. When they enter the blood, neurological fluid, and lymphatic system, those fluids become thick and viscous. Cells begin sticking to each other rather than moving freely. The blood moves more slowly. White blood cells cannot transport oxygen and remove waste products efficiently. Nerve impulses traveling through sticky neurological fluid can adhere to the walls of axons or ganglia instead of firing cleanly across synapses, causing them to travel in wrong directions or fail to complete their path.

The practical consequences Aajonus described include slow thinking, loss of train of thought, inability to recall words or names, spaciness, reduced focus, depression, nausea, anorexia, irritability, and general mental sluggishness. He connected these cognitive and mood symptoms directly to the stickiness of carbohydrate-derived glycogen byproducts in the three fluid systems of blood, neurological fluid, and lymph. He described someone eating a high-carbohydrate breakfast as being damaged for the rest of the day because the blood gets thick and sticky, oxygen is not transported well, and everything slows down.

Aajonus placed enormous emphasis on a specific metabolic window. He stated that the body makes most or all of its glycogen for the day during the first six to seven hours after waking from a long sleep. Whatever raw material the body has available during that window determines what the glycogen is made from and therefore what quality of fuel the brain and nervous system will run on for the entire day. If the person eats high-carbohydrate foods during this window, whether fruit, fruit juice, carrot juice, milk, cereal, or any other high-sugar food, the body will use carbohydrate as its glycogen precursor. If the person avoids high-carbohydrate foods during this window and eats protein instead, the body will manufacture pyruvate and use that to make glycogen with the help of glucagon.

For someone waking at six in the morning, this window extends to approximately noon. Aajonus described this as the time within which the body sets its glycogen production for the day, and he structured his entire morning eating protocol around keeping carbohydrates out of this window. He said that if a person does not eat anything during this period, the brain will be "fried" and function will be severely impaired. But if they eat the wrong thing, specifically high-carbohydrate foods, the brain will be damaged by sticky Advanced Glycation End-products for the rest of the day.

He qualified that not all carbohydrates during this window are equally problematic. Celery has a negative carbohydrate value, meaning the body does not have enough carbohydrate in celery to even digest celery. Combining celery with a small amount of carrot juice in a vegetable juice blend therefore does not produce a high-carbohydrate concentration because the celery neutralizes the sugar from the carrot. He specified that carrot or beet content in a morning juice should not exceed 5% to 10% of the total volume, which is enough to obtain the carotene and B vitamins from the carrot without triggering carbohydrate-based glycogen production.

Aajonus introduced an additional mechanism specific to cooked carbohydrates. When carbohydrate is cooked, the body sometimes reads it as already having been burned as glycogen. In this case, instead of following the normal conversion sequence from carbohydrate to glycogen to Advanced Glycation End-product, the body skips the glycogen step entirely and converts the carbohydrate directly into an Advanced Glycation End-product, which is also called a glycotoxin. This means that cooked starches, rather than producing AGEs only as a byproduct of utilization, produce AGEs immediately, directly, with no intermediate stage.

He stated that the body treats most cooked starches this way. The result is that the storage rate of 70% to 90% applies to glycotoxins that are produced all at once at the moment of ingestion rather than gradually through metabolic processing. This is in addition to other toxins produced by cooking, including acrylamides from cooking starches and heterocyclic amines from cooking meat, which Aajonus discussed in related contexts. The AGE accumulation from cooked carbohydrates compounds with acrylamide accumulation to create what he described as a particularly damaging combination.

Aajonus made a qualified distinction regarding dairy. He stated that dairy does not cause AGE accumulation to the same degree as fruit or grain carbohydrates, estimating the rate at approximately 20% rather than 70% to 90%. He attributed this to the presence of lactose and lactate, describing dairy as having a sugar fractionating molecule that other carbohydrate sources lack, making it behave differently in terms of AGE production. He noted that dairy does not cause the same accumulation of Advanced Glycation End-products and listed it separately from fruits and grains when discussing carbohydrate sources to avoid.

Honey was given a further exception. He stated that honey is approximately 90% enzymes used for digestion, and that the body uses those enzymes rather than treating honey primarily as a carbohydrate fuel. He said honey "doesn't count" in the same way other carbohydrates count during the critical morning window, and that a small amount of honey was acceptable as long as it was not eaten in abundance or in a proportion that outstripped the protein in the diet. He specified that if honey is heated above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the insulin-like substances it contains are destroyed, making it behave more like a pure carbohydrate and raising its AGE-producing potential.

Pyruvate is the sugar the body synthesizes from protein, specifically from animal proteins such as meat and eggs. Aajonus described egg whites as particularly productive sources of pyruvate, noting that the protein from egg white that does not enter the liver goes into the digestive tract and forms glycogen to feed the brain and nervous system. He said that when he began losing words during a lecture or consultation, he recognized it as a sign of insufficient blood sugar and would suck a raw egg to quickly supply pyruvate.

The pyruvate pathway uses glucagon, not insulin, to complete the glycogen synthesis. Aajonus treated this as a fundamentally cleaner process because it does not require the massive insulin production that high-carbohydrate eating demands from the pancreas, and because its byproduct rate is only 7% to 8%, well below the 12% the body can handle without accumulation. He described glucagon as producing a "very clean burning, clean utilized substance" compared to glycogen from carbohydrate.

He was specific that the body prefers the carbohydrate pathway when carbohydrates are available, because it is quicker and easier. The body will only seek out pyruvate from protein if it does not have excess carbohydrate competing for the job. This is why the early-morning eating protocol is so important in his framework: eliminating carbohydrates from the first six to seven hours creates the conditions under which the body is compelled to use the clean pathway.

When a person eats very large quantities of carbohydrate, the body does not limit glycogen production to the morning window but continues making glycogen throughout the day. Aajonus described this as a continuous state of sticky glycogen production that makes the neurological fluid, blood serum, and lymphatic system persistently viscous. He described the lymph as the slowest-moving of the three fluid systems and noted that all three become even slower when contaminated with AGE compounds.

He also described a secondary problem: excessive carbohydrate causes the intestinal tract and blood to become over-alkalinized. This alkalinization makes meat repulsive to the person because the chemistry of the body shifts away from the conditions that make animal protein appealing. The practical consequence is that a person who starts the day with fruit or carbohydrate may find that they cannot bring themselves to eat meat for the rest of the day, which perpetuates the carbohydrate dependency. He described this as a cycle that has to be broken by starting the day with protein rather than carbohydrates.

When high-carbohydrate foods are eaten in excess and the body has more sugar than it can immediately use, Aajonus said the body stores it as storable glycogen. He described this stored glycogen as creating a pool of old, toxic, acidic sugars in the body that can begin dissolving cells and causing additional problems over time.

Aajonus connected Advanced Glycation End-products directly to cancer risk. He noted that cancer thrives in a high-carbohydrate environment and that wherever high sugar concentrations are stored in the body, the conditions favor cancer development. He described how AGEs break down the mineral balance in the tissue, make the tissue fragile, cause cell death, and produce what he called mummified cells. He stated that accumulated mummified cells form tumors.

He also connected AGE accumulation to yeast and fungal conditions. He described candida and other yeasts as organisms that feed on the sugars left in the body from AGE accumulation. He mentioned athlete's foot, yeast infections, fungus, herpes, skin problems, and gangrene as conditions associated with the sugar accumulation caused by chronic high-carbohydrate glycogen production. He described the body as producing yeasts specifically to help address the sugar-based waste it cannot otherwise eliminate.

Aajonus specified different AGE storage rates depending on health status. A healthy person, including athletes, stores 70% of Advanced Glycation End-products in the body for a lifetime. A person with kidney problems, diabetes, hypoglycemia, or any kind of malfunctioning kidney stores 90% for a lifetime. He stated that by the time most people are over 20 years old, they are storing somewhere between 70% and 90%, often toward the higher end.

He noted that the 70% figure applies even to people who are "incredibly healthy" and described as athletes, meaning there is no way to be sufficiently healthy to escape the storage problem while continuing to eat high-carbohydrate foods. The only way to avoid AGE accumulation entirely is to shift the body's glycogen production to the pyruvate pathway.

Aajonus organized a specific eating sequence around these principles. Upon waking, the blood tends toward over-acidity from the neurological cleansing that occurs during sleep when there is no light. He recommended beginning with vegetable juice that is low in carbohydrate, primarily celery and cucumber with only a small fraction of high-carbohydrate vegetables such as carrot, to alkalize the blood without triggering carbohydrate-based glycogen production. After the juice, he recommended waiting approximately 45 minutes to an hour before eating the first meat meal.

The first meat meal is what he described as the critical glycogen-setting meal. The body takes the protein from the meat, converts a portion of it into pyruvate, and uses glucagon to make glycogen from the pyruvate. He recommended eating butter or another fat with the meat meal to prevent the body from converting the meat protein primarily into fuel and burning it, and to ensure that fat accompanied the protein so the meat's glycogen-building function was preserved.

He recommended that this meat meal, accompanied by fat, be completed within the first six to seven hours of the waking day, and that no high-carbohydrate food be eaten during this same window. After approximately six to seven hours, once the glycogen for the day has been set from pyruvate, he permitted a fruit meal, always eaten with fat such as coconut cream or butter to slow the sugar absorption and prevent a rapid spike that would shift glycogen production back to carbohydrates.

He described the 14-and-a-half-year-old ballet dancer whose mother placed her on this eating protocol. The girl had been a mid-B student and an average dancer. After adopting this schedule and keeping the morning hours free of carbohydrates, her academic and physical performance improved. He used this as an illustration of how glycogen quality affects cognitive and physical output.

Aajonus stated that the human body can only properly handle about 5% of the diet as carbohydrate. Once carbohydrate consumption exceeds this threshold, too many Advanced Glycation End-products are formed and the body cannot process them. He said that one carbohydrate food per day was about the appropriate amount for most people, and for diabetics he recommended one carbohydrate food every two to three days.

He framed this as an absolute ratio across cooked and raw carbohydrates alike, noting that even raw fruits produce significant AGE accumulation, just at a slightly lower rate than cooked. He described a fruit serving as consisting of perhaps one cup to one and a half cups of fruit per day for someone first starting the diet, always eaten with fat. Fruits eaten with fat are converted more toward fuel in the muscles rather than flooding the nervous system and brain with high-carbohydrate glycogen.

For the first part of the dietary transition, he allowed up to 10% carbohydrate if the person was coming from a heavily carbohydrate-based diet, with the intention of reducing toward 5% over time. He did not allow fruit or high-carbohydrate foods in the morning hours regardless of where the person was in the dietary transition.

Aajonus listed specific symptoms that he attributed to excessive carbohydrate-derived glycogen and AGE accumulation in the blood, neurological fluid, and lymph. These included: hyperactivity, ADHD, manic-depressive states, mood swings, slow mentality, slow focus, depression, nausea, anorexia, irritability, and loss of train of thought. He described violent behavior in some cases as arising when the nervous system becomes overloaded with excess carbohydrate sugar that strips fats out of the nervous system, creating lesions, and triggers a panic response.

He described the physical experience of sticky neurological fluid as analogous to trying to move through a tar pit: the synapse fires but instead of traveling cleanly, it skids and sticks to the ganglia walls. Thoughts cannot complete their transmission path. Words and names fail to surface. The mind goes through "gyrations" trying to retrieve information that the sticky medium has rerouted or trapped.

He also described long-term consequences including deterioration of bones and tissues, osteoporosis, wrinkling and drying of the skin, sagging muscles, and aging acceleration. He noted that AGEs particularly love to store in the skin, organs, and glands rather than in bones, muscles, connective tissue, or tendons, and that their presence causes dehydration, drying, and structural breakdown of those tissues.