Ice Water

One of Aajonus's most detailed warnings about cold concerned what happens when cold fluids enter the stomach. When cold milk or any cold fluid enters the stomach, the stomach contracts. Once contracted, the stomach does not secrete hydrochloric acid. Without hydrochloric acid, proteins cannot be properly broken down. Casein and milk sugars, including lactose, pass undigested into the duodenum, and from there into the bloodstream. He described this as a direct cause of allergies, lactose intolerance symptoms, gas, cramping, dry mouth, headaches, and yeast infections in women, because the body would push undigested lactate to the tissues, where yeast would be required to break it down, resulting in vaginal yeast infections.

He extended this principle beyond milk. Any cold fluid, drunk in quantity, passes rapidly through the stomach wall into the bloodstream before digestion can act on it. He referenced what he described as recent research showing that cold fluids move through the stomach wall directly, bypassing the normal digestive sequence. The result is undigested material circulating in the blood, which he said taxes energy, causes complications, and ultimately dehydrates and damages the system.

He specified that no more than two ounces of cold fluid should be consumed at one time. The body can warm two ounces relatively quickly, and at that volume the stomach does not contract for more than about two minutes. Anything beyond two ounces causes sustained contraction and the full sequence of digestive failure he described. He made a limited exception for athletes who had been running hard and generating significant body heat, saying they could sometimes tolerate up to half a cup of cold milk at a time without the same consequences, because their bodies were already hot enough to compensate. For children, he was unequivocal: milk should always be room temperature or warmer, because cold milk would put babies and young children into cramps.

He said cold juice was somewhat less problematic than cold milk or cold water because juice contains no protein requiring hydrochloric acid, and any fats in the juice would be handled by bile lower in the digestive tract by the time the juice reached that point. Even so, he did not enthusiastically endorse drinking cold juice, simply noting it caused fewer immediate digestive problems than cold milk or cold water.

Because Aajonus was so opposed to drinking cold fluids to cool the body, he developed detailed alternative methods. His central principle was that the brain is the organ that most needs cooling when the body is overheated, and the brain can be cooled efficiently through external application to specific areas without introducing cold into the digestive tract.

His preferred method was holding the fists in ice water. He described taking a bowl of cold water with ice cubes floating in it, placing the hands into the bowl up to the wrist with fists open rather than clenched tightly, so the water could reach the skin fully, and holding them there for exactly two minutes. He said the bones of the hands are close to the surface and get cold very quickly, and this cold travels up through the bones directly toward the brain, chilling the brain efficiently. He said two minutes was all it took for the whole body to begin tingling and the brain to cool. He described this as more effective than ice on the wrists alone, though ice on the wrists would also work, just more slowly.

He also described placing a cold, damp rag on top of the head, which could be used alongside the hand immersion or independently. Cold water or ice water on the scalp and hair would be held by the hair and cool quickly. He said nothing cools the body faster than cold water on the head, and similarly, cold on the neck was also effective. He cautioned against applying cold to the neck if circulation was already poor there, noting that cooling the neck in such cases could cause problems, and recommended the wrists or forehead and cheeks instead.

For people in hot baths specifically, he described a system using an ice pack placed on top of the head for 45 seconds, to be repeated every 15 to 20 minutes. He said the brain hates to be overheated and as soon as it chills even briefly, the body becomes willing to remain in hot water. Without this, people find the heat intolerable and exit the bath too early to receive its full benefits. He noted that the ice pack method, while functional, was slightly less effective than the bowl of ice water with the hands submerged, but was simpler for many people and worked well enough.

He also described using a small fan to blow air across a bowl of ice water toward the face and nose while in a hot bath, so that the cool air vapor enters the lungs. This addressed the sensation of panic that hot, moist air in the lungs produces, which he identified as a major reason people want to exit hot baths prematurely. He specified not blowing this across the neck, only into the face.

If someone wanted to cool themselves through consumption, the correct method was to hold cold milk in the mouth without swallowing it. He said holding cold milk in the mouth until it warmed, then swallowing it, repeated five times, would cool the brain because the mouth is close to the brain and cold transferred in that way reaches it without chilling the digestive tract. He emphasized: hold it in the mouth until the milk warms, then swallow. Do not gulp cold milk. Do not let cold milk reach the stomach cold.

Aajonus was strongly opposed to using ice on injuries, and he positioned this as one of the clearest examples of conventional medicine producing the opposite of what it claimed. His reasoning was mechanistic: when the body sustains an injury, it immediately increases circulation to that area to bring nutrients for healing and cleansing. Swelling represents a large volume of nutrients being delivered rapidly to address damaged tissue, bruised cells, and serums that need to be cleared. When ice is applied to an injury, the veins constrict, circulation decreases, and the delivery of those healing nutrients is blocked. The area clots rather than heals cleanly.

He gave the specific example of athletes with knee injuries who received ice packs, cortisone injections, and compression bandages so they could continue playing. He said those athletes end up with four to six operations over the following years, and by what would be considered early middle age for a non-athlete, around 45 to 47 years old, they require knee transplants, with a plastic piece replacing the joint. He called this the predictable outcome of suppressing the body's healing response with ice and cortisone rather than allowing or supporting it.

He also applied this to headaches and brain conditions. Headaches, in his framework, occur because the brain has expanded and has no room in the skull. The correct response is hot water bottles placed at the sides of the head to warm the fissures and allow the skull to expand. Applying cold compresses, ice packs, or cold water to the head when there is injury or inflammation prevents circulation from delivering nutrients needed to clear damaged tissue and serums floating in the area, and causes the brain to shrink in ways that damage rather than help. He said "once you apply cold water, cold compresses, ice packs, you prevent circulation into that area."

His rule for injuries was absolute: always apply heat, never cold, except for a minute or two at most if the sole purpose is temporary pain reduction with full understanding that this slows healing. Even in that limited use, he made clear it was a compromise, not a recommendation. He specified hot water bottles placed next to swollen areas rather than heating pads, because heating pads produce electromagnetic fields that damage the molecular structure of cells.

Aajonus referenced the Swedish tradition of alternating hot and cold immersion and established specific time limits that he said reflected real knowledge about what the body could tolerate. In his description, the Swedes enter ice-cold water for a maximum of one minute, and they time this precisely, typically staying in for 45 to 58 seconds before exiting. They remain in hot water at 108 to 110 degrees for up to 45 minutes. He cited this as an example of people who understood through practice where the dangerous thresholds were.

His parallel warning was that staying in 120-degree water for more than seven to eight minutes causes brain damage, and that staying in cold water for more than one minute causes serious damage. He said staying in cold water for longer than three minutes at a time in a natural setting such as a mineral spring was acceptable but cautioned to keep cold immersion brief in all contexts.

Aajonus did not object to ice itself as a substance, provided the water used to make the ice cubes was high quality. He described making his own ice cubes from good spring water, specifically mentioning Black Mountain spring water, for use in cooling applications during hot weather. He was comfortable with this and described carrying ice in a jar to use during hot baths.

He was specifically opposed to using tap water ice cubes in any application where they would contact the scalp or be held in the mouth. His concern was fluoride and the other chemicals and toxins present in municipal water, which he said would be absorbed through the scalp or oral tissues. He said, "I just don't like the ice water being on the scalp unless it's good water."

For making ice cubes at home, he recommended using Pyrex glass containers rather than plastic, because freezing in plastic releases BPAs into the water. He described the process of removing ice from Pyrex by running lukewarm water on the outside to release it. He cited the Mayo Clinic's own website as having stated that food and water should not be heated or frozen in plastic because of BPA release, which he used to support his position on this point specifically.

Aajonus explained the body's temperature regulation in detail to show why cold fluids, including drinking water, actively work against warmth and health. The spleen stores red blood cells produced in the bone marrow. When the body is cold, the spleen dumps large numbers of red blood cells into the bloodstream, thickening the blood, which increases heat production because red blood cells generate oxygen and energy. When the body is hot, the spleen removes red blood cells, thinning the blood and reducing heat.

The kidneys participate in a secondary regulation mechanism he described as having developed over hundreds of thousands of years of increased toxicity. When cold, the body dumps excess water into the kidneys to thicken the blood, because water freezes at very low temperatures but blood does not, and removing water from the blood raises its cold tolerance. This is why people urinate frequently when cold. When warm, the body retains water in the blood to thin it and reduce heat.

Drinking water, in his framework, constantly fills the blood with fluid that has no nutritive value, thins the blood unnecessarily, causes the body to cool, and forces the kidneys to work on temperature regulation rather than their primary detoxification functions. He said fluids of all kinds thin the blood and cool the body, and water does this most severely because it carries no nutrients. He described this as one reason he drank no water in fall and winter, limiting himself to milk and vegetable juice, which both contain water but in a bound form that the body can utilize as nutrients rather than as a raw solvent.

Aajonus described a period of severe illness during which he was in excruciating pain and could only sleep by immersing himself in a hot bath. He described waking repeatedly in what had become cold bathwater, freezing, but noting that even cold bathwater provided enough buoyancy to remain free of joint pain, whereas being out of water entirely and on the floor meant immediate return of severe pain. He said the cold would only last a few minutes because he would let a few inches of water out and run hot water back in.

He described funneling the incoming cold water directly down the drain by cupping his hands just above the water level, routing the cold stream away so it did not mix into the tub and require longer to reheat. He would wait until the incoming water ran hot before releasing it into the tub. He repeated this cycle through the night to maintain therapeutic warmth, sleeping in intervals of an hour and a half to two hours between reheating cycles. He described the cold intervals as five minutes at most, which he considered acceptable in comparison to constant pain outside the tub.

He also described an incident where he attempted to lecture from inside a cold swimming pool as a way to manage severe physical distress. He lasted about 30 minutes in the pool and another 15 minutes outside wet and cold before becoming unable to continue. He vomited repeatedly for six hours afterward. His recovery involved immersing himself in a hot bath with milk, vinegar, Epsom salt, and coconut cream. He cited this personal experience as evidence that extended cold water exposure, even as a temporary measure, produces severe physiological consequences.

Aajonus conducted experiments with animals to determine whether freezing affects raw dairy and raw meat. He divided groups of animals with skin disorders and fed one group frozen raw butter and another group fresh unfrozen raw butter. The group receiving unfrozen butter healed significantly faster. He said the frozen group took five times longer to heal their skin. He ran similar experiments with raw meat, finding that animals fed raw unfrozen meat had no skin disorders, slept well, were calm, and showed no behavioral problems, while animals fed frozen raw meat developed skin disorders, scratched and bit at their skin, and in at least one case bled from self-inflicted wounds.

He cited a scientist who found that when cream is frozen, it loses its healing properties. He used these experiments to argue that freezing damages food in ways that parallel what cold does inside the body: disrupting molecular structures, destroying biological activity, and reducing the capacity of the food to nourish and heal. He positioned Sally Fallon's disagreement with this view as uninformed, because in his account she had not conducted the experiments herself.

He returned repeatedly to cold milk as a particular danger, because milk contains casein and lactose that are highly dependent on hydrochloric acid and bile for proper digestion, and the consequences of them passing undigested into the blood are substantial. He specified that milk left in the refrigerator should be taken out at least 12 hours before drinking to allow it to reach room temperature. When traveling without this option, he said he limited himself to two ounces of cold milk at a time at most.

He said if someone drank cold milk quickly and the milk reached the stomach cold, the sequence was predictable: no hydrochloric acid, casein and lactate pass into the duodenum, bile does not release well if the temperature there is still too cold, undigested lactate enters the blood, the person becomes thirsty, develops dry mouth, may develop headaches, allergies, or yeast infections. The minimum consequence was that nutrients from the milk would simply be lost. He said, "always suck your milk," meaning keep it in the mouth, warm it there, and swallow it slowly.

He also noted that bacteria naturally present in raw milk are neutralized by cold from the mouth all the way to the stomach, removing one of the benefits of raw milk consumption, unless the milk was held in the mouth long enough to warm before swallowing.