Joint Replacement

Aajonus traced the origin of joint degeneration primarily to what he called leaky gut, which he identified as the root cause of approximately 90 percent of arthritis and rheumatism. When the intestinal mucous lining is thin and deteriorating, the intestinal wall tears when large amounts of food are eaten, allowing undigested foods and digestive acids to pass into the bloodstream. The body routes these undigested materials and acids to the joints, particularly the knees first, then the hips, then the shoulders and elbows in that order about 80 percent of the time. Once these acids reach the joints, they begin deteriorating the cartilage. The body then produces bacteria to consume the dead and damaged cartilage cells, which is the process that medicine identifies as the bacterial cause of arthritis, though Aajonus rejected that interpretation and called those bacteria "the freaking janitors" rather than the cause of the problem.

Simultaneously, the bursae stop producing adequate clean lubricating fluid and instead manufacture a toxic, acidic fluid that further irritates the joint tissues. This creates conditions within the joint for viral and bacterial activity, infection, and yeast proliferation, all of which accelerate cartilage consumption. Once cartilage is gone, typically by the fifties in people following conventional diets, the acids and microorganisms begin consuming the bone itself. At that point, the structural tissue is so thoroughly compromised that surgery becomes the most immediate practical option for restoring mobility.

This Crohn's disease connection, as Aajonus called it, was the underlying condition he pointed to when discussing knee and hip replacements. He said that 90 percent of the time when a person is heading toward joint replacement, the leaky gut is the problem that must be corrected, and that correcting it could allow the knee to improve. The implication was that people who received replacements without addressing the gut would continue generating the same acidic, inflammatory conditions internally, which would then damage other joints and cause pain at the replacement site.

Aajonus was specific about the consequence of receiving a replacement joint without dietary correction. The person would develop problems elsewhere in the body as the same degenerative process continued to operate through the same mechanisms. Additionally, the replaced joint itself would remain painful because the toxic internal environment had not changed. The replacement addressed the mechanical failure but did nothing to stop the ongoing production of toxic acidic bursal fluid or to heal the intestinal lining responsible for routing undigested materials to the joints.

He did not elaborate on which other joints or tissues would be affected in these cases, but the logic of his framework implied that wherever the acids and undigested materials were routed next, degeneration would follow. People who had undergone replacement surgery and were still experiencing pain were, in his account, candidates for the raw meat protocol described above.

The specific protocol Aajonus described for people suffering from pain in and around replacement joints was raw meat consumed twice daily. He did not distinguish between types of joint replacement in this protocol. He noted that red meat and white meat both worked for healing and that the choice between them in these cases was a matter of temperament, specifically whether red meat was causing the person to feel more anxious, in which case white meat was the appropriate choice.

He described the timeline as two weeks for complete elimination of crippling pain in most cases, and four to five weeks in cases that took longer. He framed both of these as observed outcomes across multiple patients rather than theoretical projections.

After surgery specifically, he identified raw meat and what he called the Lubrication Formula as "most often imperative." He did not specify the Lubrication Formula's composition in the relevant passage, but elsewhere in his framework he described a drink for moisturizing and lubrication that included raw milk blended with cold-pressed flaxseed oil, peanut oil, or unheated fermented coconut oil, approximately six to eight ounces of milk with one tablespoon of the oil. He also cited a recipe involving raw milk, and separately mentioned that six to eight ounces of raw milk blended with one tablespoon of cold-pressed flaxseed oil, peanut oil, or unheated fermented coconut oil helped to lubricate and strengthen joints generally.

Aajonus described in concrete terms what joint replacement surgery looked like from the outside, drawing on his observations of people who had undergone similar orthopedic procedures. In the context of his own motorcycle accident in Thailand, where surgeons wanted to pin and clean a shattered tibia and femur joint, he described having seen other people who went through that kind of leg surgery and came out with one leg two to three inches shorter than the other, with calf and thigh muscles reduced to roughly one third of their original size, and with a permanent gait alteration that left them walking in a compromised way for the rest of their lives. While this was specifically about trauma surgery rather than elective joint replacement, he used it to illustrate what surgical intervention in joints costs the surrounding tissue.

For knee replacement specifically, he described it in one passage as a piece of plastic being put into the knee, typically reached after four, five, or six prior operations and surgeries following an original injury that was managed through ice packs, cortisone injections, and bandaging rather than through proper circulation-promoting care. The athlete example he used was instructive: an athlete who receives cortisone injections and ice packs to stay in a game loses the knee within five years through this management approach, goes through multiple surgeries, and by the age of 45 or 47 ends up with a knee transplant, described as a piece of plastic put into the knee.

He was consistent in viewing this outcome as a consequence of suppressing inflammation rather than supporting it. Ice packs on a swollen joint, in his framework, prevent the blood flow and healing agents that should be moving into the area to clean and repair it. Clotting is induced instead of healing. The correct approach was always heat, specifically a hot water bottle placed next to the swollen joint to increase circulation, because EMF fields from heating pads destroy the molecular structure of cells and should be avoided.

In his discussion of alternative arthritis treatments, including a lidocaine and dextrose injection therapy being promoted on the internet, Aajonus described what he believed was actually happening when pain was removed by such interventions. He characterized the therapy not as a cure but as a destruction of the nerves in the joints, with the only benefit being a loss of pain sensation. He saw this as dangerous because pain, in his framework, is the body's signal that something is wrong, that toxicity has accumulated from malnutrition, accident, or contamination. Ignoring the cause by eliminating the signal allows toxins to remain and disease to develop.

He described several cases in which people who had received the lidocaine and sugar-water treatment experienced subsequent worsening, with the joint tissues responding to the anesthetic and sugar with mineral deposits that hardened and damaged the tissue further. Some of those cases ended in joint replacement because the pain signal that would have prompted dietary and lifestyle correction had been removed, allowing deterioration to proceed unnoticed until mobility was lost. In some cases, deterioration was so advanced that new nerves in the surrounding area were eventually affected, bringing back excruciating pain at a later stage. He noted that the therapy was young as of his writing and that many of the results would not be apparent for years.

He cited two cases as a counterpoint: two people who had the lidocaine and sugar-water treatment, which removed their constant arthritic pain, and then immediately adopted his Primal Diet. These two did not experience the deteriorative outcomes he described in others, suggesting in his view that the dietary correction prevented the expected downstream damage.

Aajonus gave specific timelines for cellular regeneration in the various connective tissues of the joint, and these timelines are directly relevant to understanding why he considered joint replacement a practical necessity once deterioration reached a certain point. He stated that cartilage cells take approximately four years to be replaced entirely, tendons take approximately three years, and the hard bone itself takes seven to seven and a half years to replace every cell. Based on the work of Pottinger and Howell with animals, he extrapolated that five generations of complete cellular replacement were necessary to reach optimal health from a diseased state, which put the full correction timeline at approximately 37.5 to 40 years on a completely raw food diet.

He also noted that a person whose hip bones were surgically corrected at birth for being out of the socket might need up to 40 years on the diet to fully remedy the structural consequence, even while walking normally. His own femur joints had been almost completely destroyed by bone cancer and he was only 20 years into his recovery, still experiencing only rare pain.

The practical implication for joint replacement is that even if a person begins the Primal Diet after receiving a replacement, the timeline for healing the surrounding structures, the remaining cartilage, the tendons, the ligaments, and the bone, is measured in years rather than months. The replacement addresses the immediate mechanical failure. The diet addresses everything else over the long term.

For people with a tendency toward arthritis and joint degeneration who had not yet reached the point of requiring replacement, Aajonus was specific about dietary management. He said these people needed to stay away from cooked beef. Cooked chicken was acceptable once or twice a week. All other cooked meats should be avoided because of the uric acid and similar compounds that accumulate in the joints from cooked animal proteins.

He emphasized the right kinds of fats as essential for joint health, including for lubricating the bursae. The wrist joint, he noted, was the most lubricated joint in the body, and dryness of the skin over the wrist was a signal that the person was heading toward osteoporosis and that joint lubrication throughout the body was likely compromised.

For joints generally, he recommended cheese and honey eaten together, raw meat, and hot water bottles applied to affected areas. He described cheese and honey taken at intervals of every 15, 20, or 30 minutes as producing significant changes in coloration, digestion, and skin health, and noted one woman with rheumatoid arthritis whose knees and elbows were severely swollen and who was completely crippled in a wheelchair at 50 years old who began to improve on this protocol. He gave pineapple taken with whipped cream or coconut cream, about four ounces every seven days in a three-day cycle, as a means of breaking down scarring in tendons so that new cells could be built there.

For dissolving uric acid deposits in joints, he cited raw celery or raw celery juice as effective. Applying a poultice of one raw celery stalk blended with two tablespoons of grated raw horseradish root to a painful joint was described as most often reducing pain within 20 minutes.

He was consistent that heat, not cold, was the correct response to joint swelling, and that anyone following the conventional practice of icing inflamed joints was creating conditions for the area to clot rather than heal.