Ionizing Radiation

Aajonus described the mechanical action of radiation therapy on his own spine using one consistent analogy across dozens of workshop accounts: malleable clay fired in a kiln. Before firing, clay is flexible, permeable, and workable. Once fired even at cone one, it becomes brittle, hard, and completely impermeable to biological processes. He stated that his ten-week course of radiation therapy, in which the beam swept back and forth across his body for approximately twenty to twenty-two seconds per pass, ten passes per session, once per week for ten weeks, was the equivalent of well over one hundred thousand standard X-ray doses per pass. The cumulative effect cauterized his spine completely. His range of spinal movement after the treatment was described repeatedly as nearly zero, and every attempt to move produced excruciating pain radiating throughout his back. Three months after the treatments ended, he was completely immobilized by pain. Even turning his head produced a wave of pain running the length of his spine.

The radiation did not affect only the tumor it was aimed at. Because the beam was broad and traveled through the body, it irradiated everything in its path, including the spine, the ribs, the bone marrow, and all metallic minerals contained in those tissues. He described the spine's condition as having become like granite, gritty and granular, grinding on nerves with any movement.

Radiation stops cells from regenerating and from dividing. He stated this directly and repeatedly as the mechanism underlying all radiation-associated disease. Because cells cannot reproduce properly, the body cannot heal injured areas. Scar tissue cannot repair, wounds cannot close cleanly, and the normal maintenance turnover of tissue ceases. The result over time is progressive weakness, aging, and disease.

One of the most specific and consequential claims Aajonus made about ionizing radiation concerns what it does to the metallic minerals already present in the body. He stated that radiation therapy "radioactively charges the iodine, any kind of metal in your body," and that once charged, those minerals "become radioactive for 55,000 years minimum." If uranium or similar heavy elements are present, he stated the half-life extends to 550,000 years.

The practical implication he drew from this was that even people who underwent radiation therapy decades earlier still carry radioactively charged iodine, cobalt, barium, and other metallic minerals in their bones and tissues. He used his own experience as direct evidence: 43 years after his radiation treatments, he still experienced intense radiation nausea and an iodine taste averaging once per year, and he concluded from this that "the radioactively charged iodine has a much longer life than physics books explain."

He described what happens to cells surrounding a deposit of radioactively charged mineral: those cells become "very irritated and damaged and diseased," and if enough cells are affected in a concentrated area, the body registers this as pain. The body then sends nutrients to try to neutralize or contain the damage. When it cannot dissolve and eliminate the charged mineral, it begins mummifying the cells around it, creating barriers of dead tissue the same way concrete walls twelve to fifteen feet thick are required to contain radioactive material in industrial settings. He used that specific comparison to describe the body's attempt at containment.

This is also the mechanism he gave for why conventional iodine supplementation is dangerous in the context of radiation exposure. Any iodine that is not a natural part of fresh food is, in his framing, an oxide derived from rock, not a bioactive substance. He described how his own body, in attempting to eliminate radioactively charged iodine following radiation therapy, consumed its own bones to obtain calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus to neutralize the radioactive iodine and other charged minerals such as barium. This bone consumption was total around his teeth: all the bone dissolved, leaving his teeth dangling in his gums held only by soft tissue. Biting down on his own teeth produced profuse bleeding. He required up to two blood transfusions per week at that time.

He also noted that iodine from iodized table salt, which he had been forced to consume as a child, was present in his bones when the radiation therapy was administered. The radiation converted that stored iodine into radioactive iodine, adding to the total radioactive burden his body then had to manage.

Aajonus stated categorically that radiation therapy is a known cause of blood and bone cancers. In his own case, the ten weeks of radiation treatment produced multiple myeloma, which he described as cancer of the blood and bone, caused by radiation damaging the bone marrow. He described this as a predictable, not incidental, consequence of the treatment. His oncologists then proposed chemotherapy for the multiple myeloma, offering him a one percent chance of survival, which he declined.

Beyond bone and blood cancer, he described the following as direct consequences of his radiation treatments: complete spinal immobilization with excruciating constant pain, dissolution of all bone around his teeth with resultant dangling teeth and profuse gum bleeding requiring multiple transfusions per week, constant nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea for years following the treatments, radiation burns over large areas of his body, receding and purple gums that bled during tooth brushing for decades afterward, and progressive deterioration of overall health to the point that he was consuming all food in liquid form through large straws.

He also observed that radiation "prevents cells from regenerating," which means the body cannot replace damaged cells and is therefore perpetually losing ground in every tissue that was irradiated.

Aajonus described the detoxification of radiation, whether from prior therapy or accumulated environmental exposure, as having a recognizable symptom profile: nausea, nervousness, and a feeling of extreme sensitivity throughout the body. He also listed irritability and hating everyone as characteristic features of acute radiation poisoning.

He told one woman who had undergone radiation therapy that when her body began actively eliminating stored radioactive material, she would experience mass vomiting, nausea, and intense irritability, and that she would "find yourself vomiting radioactive matter. It just dumps into your stomach and you vomit it." He acknowledged that this purging process is "pretty difficult" and occurs simultaneously with the body eliminating dead cells through the same pathways.

He noted that the body continues to deal with radiation poisoning that is actively present before it will address older accumulated toxins. As long as radiation treatments are ongoing, the body uses its resources to manage the current toxic load in the blood and does not initiate deep detoxification of older stored damage.

In his own detoxification decades later, he described finding, on a scraping of a rash covering his body, chemotherapy particles, radiation particles, and irradiated iodine, demonstrating that the body continues to push these materials out through the skin long after the original exposure.

Aajonus enumerated a broad range of ionizing radiation sources beyond medical treatment. He listed radiation-poisoning sources in We Want to Live as including medication, medical testing, X-rays, fluorescent lighting, television, computer monitors, laser printers, cellular phones, Bluetooth technology, irradiated food, microwaves, scanners, industrial pollution, jewelry, building materials, and electromagnetic fields from improperly grounded electrical connections and operating machinery.

He gave particular emphasis to depleted uranium in building materials, stating that governments allow 22 percent depleted uranium in steel used in construction. For anyone drilling, cutting, or sanding that steel, the resulting dust contains radioactive material that is inhaled and becomes incorporated into the body, most commonly in the stomach and intestines. He described construction workers eating small sugar-cube-sized pieces of raw no-salt cheese every fifteen minutes, carried in a two-cup jar in their tool pouch with a watch buzzer set to remind them, as a protocol for absorbing and neutralizing the continuous exposure from working with potentially contaminated building materials.

He also described a personal incident with radioactive steel: while building a carport, he scratched his hand on a steel frame, barely penetrating one layer of skin, and within one hour the scratch had blistered as though burned. He identified this immediately as a radioactive material reaction and contacted the manufacturer to confirm radioactive material in the steel.

Airport security scanners were another source he took seriously enough to carry a medical letter stating that his food should not be exposed to irradiation from any mechanical source including airport security scanning devices, because he had developed multiple chemical sensitivity and a hyperallergic reaction to irradiation as a result of his prior radiation treatments. He stated that if he ate food that had been scanned through airport security, he could not tolerate it.

Dental X-rays were cited as a source of radioactive charging of minerals: "You go to the dentist. Hey, guess what? You're going to glow in the dark. Some of those minerals are now radioactive, and they will be from 25,000 to 50,000 years." He framed even low-level diagnostic X-rays as adding to a chronic cumulative buildup of radioactively charged minerals.

He also mentioned contrast agents used in diagnostic imaging, specifically iodine contrast for X-rays. He described having been given iodine contrast before X-rays, which then became radioactive iodine upon exposure to the radiation, and he stated this irradiated iodine was still purging from his body decades later.

Concerning the Fukushima nuclear disaster and its fallout reaching North America, he addressed specific isotopes: iodine-131, believed to accumulate in the thyroid; cesium-137, which lingers for decades, dissolves in water, mixes with rain, enters soil and groundwater, and is taken up by plants and animals; strontium-90, which acts like calcium in the body and accumulates in bones and teeth; and plutonium. He cautioned that electromagnetic fields in industrialized living environments attract radon decay products and cause them to vibrate and adhere more readily to human tissue, citing University of Bristol research, and suggested similar effects would apply to radioactive particles from nuclear events.

Aajonus was firmly opposed to food irradiation and described it in detail as a nutrient-destroying, toxin-creating process. He stated that exposing food to high-intensity gamma radiation destroys the activity of key enzymes, depletes essential amino acids including l-cysteine, l-histidine, and l-tryptophan, destroys vitamins C, E, K, B1, B2, B3, B6, and B12, depletes folic acid and omega-3, 6, and 9 essential fatty acids. Some irradiated minerals in food become toxically radioactive. Irradiated food increases the risk of developing cancer.

He specifically named 2-dodecylcyclobutanone as a unique radiolytic product found only in irradiated food, citing a 1998 study from the Federal Nutrition Research Institute in Karlsruhe, Germany, finding it caused genetic mutations in colon cells of rats. He noted that the Institute had a pro-irradiation slant, making the finding more significant.

He stated that irradiated food destroys the health-giving properties of food, poses public and environmental hazards, dramatically increases benzene and other toxic chemicals in food, changes flavor to make food less palatable, and would not even accomplish the bioterrorism prevention goals proposed by its political advocates because radiation doses required to kill anthrax spores would be far higher than currently allowed by the FDA and would cause correspondingly more chemical and nutritional damage. He specifically stated irradiation does not kill smallpox.

Regarding commercially available irradiated food in markets at the time of his workshops, he described specialty meats and pork from regular markets as the primary categories being irradiated, with the large commodity cuts brought in on big carts being mostly not irradiated yet, though he said the industry was "gearing up to do more" and within ten years would do more. He stated he personally could not eat food from regular markets if it had been irradiated because of his prior radiation therapy history, and that even food passing through airport radiation scanners was intolerable to him.

He also warned that some honey was irradiated, noting that organic honey was not, and that for those on the Primal Diet the honey must be organic for this reason among others.

Aajonus was strongly opposed to the conventional advice to take iodine supplements to protect the thyroid from radioactive iodine fallout. He made this argument in detail during the Fukushima fallout period. His position was that any iodine that is not a natural component of fresh food is an oxide derived from rock and is not bioactive. He stated that during the Chernobyl crisis, consumption of iodine did not prevent thyroid cancer, leukemia, or bone cancers but promoted them, because blocking radioactive iodine from the thyroid sends it to bones and bone marrow, increasing the risk of leukemia and bone cancers.

He described his own experience of being instructed by alternative doctors years after his radiation treatments to consume a colloidal iodine supplement. He did so and experienced nausea, impotence, and anxiety, which he identified as the same symptoms as radiation poisoning. He stopped after ten days.

His argument was that the pharmaceutical, nuclear, and chemical industries promoted iodine supplementation as a false sense of security, and that the only tests supporting this practice were done or paid for by the nuclear industry.

Aajonus connected electromagnetic fields to radiation damage through several mechanisms. He cited research from the University of Bristol finding that strong EMFs attract radon decay products and cause them to vibrate, making them more likely to adhere to human tissue, and suggested this same mechanism would apply to radioactive particles from nuclear events affecting people living in industrialized electromagnetic environments.

He described EMFs from heating pads as a reason to avoid them: they alter the cellular and molecular structure of cells, those cells do not reproduce well afterward, and they remain weak. He recommended hot water bottles instead. He also addressed MRI machines specifically, describing each image as requiring approximately 260 bombardments of EMFs and radio waves, with each bombardment slightly altering cells, "most often negatively," and noting that a standard MRI session subjects patients to at least twenty minutes of this repeated bombardment.

He described ionizing radiation from machines in the following terms: any radiation created by a nuclear or nuclearized mineral, even infrared, is an isolated ray and has not been found to be beneficial long-term even in the least magnitude. He cited his father's experiment with an infrared lamp for his brothers' acne: mild use over two weeks damaged their skin, and his father concluded "that obviously the human skin was not adapted to use isolated infrared properly." He contrasted this with sunlight, which he described as always delivering complete, complex radiation rather than isolated rays.

Aajonus developed a detailed protocol for reducing radioactive toxins and symptoms, drawing on what he described as working for him personally following his 1968 radiation treatments and on working with at least a hundred other people who had undergone radiation treatments.

**No-salt raw cheeses**, eaten frequently, absorb and neutralize free-radical radioactive minerals. He described this as the primary tool for construction workers exposed to radioactive building materials, instructing them to eat sugar-cube-sized pieces every fifteen minutes throughout the workday, ten minutes before eating anything else so the cheese could absorb incoming toxins before they mixed into the rest of the body. He also described grating a small amount of cheese directly into meals so toxins from the food would be absorbed by the cheese before reaching the body.

**Oranges and avocados eaten together** help neutralize radiation. He stated this combination was especially effective for lessening nausea and radiation burn, and that eating them together regularly produced dramatic easing of radiation symptoms. He maintained this was true even when challenged by chemists who argued that food chemistry cannot affect nuclear reactions, responding that his personal experience surviving high-dose radiation and working with at least a hundred radiation-treated patients provided living evidence that the combination was effective.

**Pineapple and no-salt raw cheeses eaten together** help dissolve cellular radiation damage and harness byproducts.

**Papaya eaten with no-salt raw cheeses** helps prevent scarring from radiation.

**No-salt raw butter eaten with no-salt raw cheeses** helps prevent radioactive minerals from entering cells and buffers nuclear exchanges within the body.

**No-salt raw butter eaten with unheated honey** helps digestion and healing.

**One ounce of raw milk consumed once hourly** helps protect the intestines and nerves.

**Aloe vera gel eaten directly from the plant** (not the green skin, and not from a store product) soothes and heals radiation burn. He specified this must come directly from the plant.

**Animal fat generally**, particularly cream, is described as the fastest means of cleaning radiation therapy and chemotherapy residue from the body. He stated: "If you've had radiation therapy or chemo, quickest way to clean that out is to eat lots of animal fat." He explained that cream is the only fat he knows of that soothes the nervous system. He connected summer sun cravings for ice cream to the body seeking animal fat to absorb solar radiation and transform it into vitamin D and complex fats and cholesterols when the skin's fat stores are depleted.

**Clay baths**, keeping the clay moist over the body, help draw radiation out through the skin and neutralize radioactive particles.

**One tablespoon of moist Terramin clay blended in three ounces of raw milk**, taken two to four times daily, helps draw out and neutralize radiation and radioactive particles through the intestinal walls. He specified moist clay preparation, directing readers to pages 181 and 182 of We Want to Live for instructions.

**For contaminated raw milk specifically**, he recommended adding four tablespoons of moist Terramin clay per gallon of milk, allowing it to settle, then drinking the milk above the settled clay while discarding the milk settled with the clay. He stated an additional tablespoon of moist clay could be added to the milk being consumed for further peace of mind, but that it should be consumed with the milk rather than alone to avoid losing beneficial minerals.

He also described avocado eaten with orange, or with melons, as facilitating the body's ability to discard stored radiation. In We Want to Live he noted this specifically for those who had received barium or iodine contrast agents and then been irradiated.

Aajonus's most striking personal account of radiation recovery concerned his teeth. After his radiation therapy dissolved all the bone around his teeth, leaving them dangling and bleeding profusely with every bite, requiring two transfusions per week, he refused to have the teeth pulled and dentures made at nineteen or twenty years old. He began consuming large amounts of raw milk. Within approximately one year, the bone around all his teeth had restored. He described this as "pretty quick" for such total bone loss.

His gums, however, remained purple for decades, which he identified as a persisting indication of radiation poisoning, and minor bleeding during tooth brushing continued for forty-three years after the treatments.

He maintained that the body would continue to slowly eliminate radioactively charged minerals and radiation residue over years and decades, but that this process was never fully complete for someone who had received high-dose medical radiation. The detoxification symptoms during elimination, particularly vomiting of radioactive matter, could be intense. He described patients going through this process as experiencing the same profile of mass vomiting, nausea, and irritability they had originally experienced during the radiation treatments themselves.

Aajonus conducted research in 1973 and 1974 with ion machines and described the results in detail. Ions carry a negative charge; protons carry a positive charge. In environments with high pollution, the ions are destroyed, leaving excessive positive charges that behave like split atoms, bouncing everywhere and causing mass destruction within the body. Air ionization, in concept, addresses this by mechanically generating negative ions that neutralize protons.

However, he identified a problem with the process as he observed it in his laboratory experiments. When the mechanical ions first encountered pollution-laden protons, the initial splitting caused the protons to bombard everything surrounding them. He placed pictures on the walls and furniture in the room to simulate a home environment, then ran diesel exhaust and gas into the ionized space. After a week, every surface was black with deposited toxic proteins except where the furniture had blocked deposition. The ionizer was driving the pollution into every surface in the room.

He concluded that air ionizers penetrate tissue and drive toxins into walls and everything else they contact. He stated he could not clean the contamination out of the walls afterward. He noted that manufacturers have since modified machines so the same visible blackening reaction no longer occurs, but stated that even without the visible deposit, "the poison is still being driven into the tissue, into the walls and everything."

He also stated specifically that ionized water should not be consumed: it carries an electrical and magnetic charge, is not bound by tissue or mucus, and "will go right through" intestinal walls, shooting everything through the body. He stated that ions from food, not from machines, are the appropriate source. Proper food provides the correct ion combination the body needs.

If someone insists on using an air ionizer, he advised keeping it out of the bedroom while sleeping, running it instead in other rooms at night, and if desired, running it in the bedroom during the day when the person is not present.

Aajonus included a direct call to action against food irradiation policy, specifically addressing Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's promotion of "electronic pasteurization" of all imported food. He framed this as a dangerous mislabeling of a process that increases benzene and other toxins in food, destroys critical nutrients, and creates unique radiolytic byproducts not found in non-irradiated food. He argued that food irradiation would not accomplish the bioterrorism prevention goals cited by its political advocates, would make food less palatable, and would cause widespread disease in a population whose nutritional intake was already inadequate.

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