Joints

The joint is composed of several distinct tissues, each with a specific role. Cartilage is at the interface of bone surfaces; it cushions impact and allows movement. When cartilage is healthy it is resilient and somewhat hard without being brittle, and it is not swollen with toxicity. Bone marrow is concentrated in the larger bones adjacent to joints, particularly the femur, tibia, knees, hips, elbows, and shoulders. These sites produce the majority of red and white blood cells in the body, with the knees first, femurs next, then the rest of the body. When a joint area is dry or inflamed, it contaminates the environment in which new red blood cells are being produced, meaning that infection in a dry joint does not only damage cartilage but also weakens the quality of the blood cells being generated there.

Ligaments hold bone to bone, and Aajonus gave the knee and ankle as examples where ligaments are especially critical for keeping bones in their correct positional relationship. Tendons attach muscle to bone at the joint ends, and because tendons are at the ends near joints rather than in the belly of the muscle, they are directly involved in joint mechanics. When tendons shrink, dry out, or develop scar tissue, they pull joint surfaces toward each other and cause bones to grind together, which is a separate cause of arthritis and rheumatism from the leaky gut process. He described this shrinkage as related to extreme fat deficiency and diabetic-type dryness, where the connective tissue literally contracts, the joints are forced to rub, and this mechanical irritation eventually leads to infection and deterioration.

Bursas produce the lubricating fluid for joints. When fat nutrition is poor, bursas may fail to produce adequate fluid. More problematically, they may produce a toxic, acidic fluid that irritates rather than lubricates, which then creates conditions in the joint favorable to viral and yeast activity that further eats away at cartilage.

Aajonus returned to this relationship repeatedly and across many presentations, and he stated his estimate at various points as 75 to 80 percent, 80 to 85 percent, 85 to 90 percent, and consistently 90 percent of all arthritis and rheumatism being caused by leaky gut. Across the sources the figure ranges from 75 to 90 percent, and he used 90 percent most frequently. He also called this Crohn's disease in multiple presentations, explaining that Crohn's disease is a condition where the mucus lining of the stomach and intestinal walls becomes very thin.

The mechanism works as follows. The intestinal mucous lining normally consists of 8 to 14 layers of woven, fabric-like material, visible under a microscope as crisscrossing mesh resembling woven cloth. When a person does not produce enough mucus, or produces poor-quality mucus, the digestive acids, particularly hydrochloric acid and bile, eat through this thin lining. The wall itself becomes thin, and when a large amount of food is consumed, the gut rips. Undigested food particles then pass through the damaged intestinal wall into the body cavity.

He identified penicillin administered at young ages as a major cause of this thinning. He stated that 90 percent of IBS, inflammatory bowel syndrome, and Crohn's disease originated from penicillin given in infancy or early childhood. The mold form of penicillin, he said, survives almost anything and changes its structure when exposed to fire or other extremes, persisting in the body and destroying the mucosal integrity of the gut.

Once undigested food particles are loose in the body, the body must route them somewhere safe for continued digestion. It chooses one of two locations: fat deposits, where particles can be stored for decades with little acute damage beyond weight gain, or joints, particularly cartilage, because cartilage is resilient tissue that can withstand highly acidic environments. The body sends these particles to the joints and creates a local digestive environment, assembling acids and bacteria to process food that should have been digested in the intestines.

The order in which joints are affected follows a consistent pattern. Aajonus stated that in approximately 80 percent of cases, food particles go to the knees first, then the hips, then the shoulders, then the elbows. He acknowledged this order is not universal but applies the majority of the time. This is why knee swelling and knee replacements are so common: the knee is almost always the first joint recruited as a secondary digestive site.

Darkening of the knees and other joints is a visible sign of this process. The body sends bile to those areas to handle and break down the food particles, and it is the bile that produces the darker coloration at the joints.

Once the digestive process is operating in the joint, the cartilage begins to deteriorate because food was not meant to be digested there. The first symptom is joint pain. Then swelling follows. As cartilage continues to dissolve along with the food, bacteria are recruited to eat the decayed and damaged cartilage cells. This is what medical diagnosis identifies as the causative bacterial infection, but in Aajonus's framework the bacteria arrived after the cartilage damage, not before, and they are performing the janitor function of clearing debris. It takes approximately six to seven or eight months, depending on the volume of undigested food, for the body to digest a load of food particles stored in joint cartilage.

When the cartilage is entirely gone, typically by the fifties for people who have had severe long-term leaky gut, the body begins eating at the bone itself. At this stage, hip and knee replacements are the conventional response, and Aajonus acknowledged that when deterioration has reached that point, regeneration would require as much time as the deterioration took. He regarded correction of the leaky gut as the only genuine solution.

The remaining 10 percent of arthritis that Aajonus attributed to causes other than leaky gut comes from caustic toxins stored in joints directly. He named vaccines, industrial agricultural chemicals, food-processing chemicals, antibiotics, and industrial chemicals as the primary sources. These toxins enter joint tissue and cause deterioration from within rather than through the leaky gut process.

He gave one specific case of a person whose one hand had sustained an injury and developed spurs and arthritis, while the other hand did not, as an example of localized toxicity concentrated in a joint due to prior physical insult. Physical injury creates a site where the body deposits toxins, and if enough toxicity accumulates in a specific joint, that joint will develop arthritic changes even without systemic leaky gut.

Electromagnetic fields were another source he identified as causing joint damage. He stated that electromagnetic fields from computers cause carpal tunnel syndrome and contribute to arthritis and rheumatism. A computer tower emitting 125 to 200 gals needs to be kept more than three feet away from the body. When a laptop is in use on the lap, electromagnetic field exposure at the knee and hip joint level damages those joints and the bone marrow within them. He gave his own experience of developing carpal tunnel when he first used a laptop in 1993, even though he had not developed it from years of typing on a manual typewriter, which required much more force per keystroke.

Cold weather, he noted, makes joints uncomfortable, but he rejected the idea that cold weather causes arthritis. That is correlation without causation, and the bacteria are still doing their janitor work in cold climates just as in warm ones.

Aajonus explicitly and categorically rejected the concept of autoimmune disease as it applies to joints and connective tissue. He stated that the body never attacks itself and that autoimmune disease is a fiction of the medical profession, calling it "an awful fiction." What is diagnosed as the immune system attacking joints is, in his framework, the activity of janitorial bacteria eating decayed and damaged cartilage cells and undigested food particles. The bacteria are not attacking healthy tissue; they are performing a necessary cleanup. Suppressing them with antibiotics removes the cleanup crew without addressing the accumulation that made the cleanup necessary.

Tendons can be torn completely from bone at the joint end. Aajonus described this in detail from his own experience with a motorcycle accident in Thailand, where two tendons on opposite sides of his knee were ripped completely from the bone, leaving lumps the size of golf balls on each side. He refused surgical reattachment and instead applied raw meat and other topical treatments, and he watched the tendons grow back together over the course of one week, though the pain did not stop immediately at the sites of tearing.

Tendons also deteriorate gradually through shrinkage caused by fat deficiency. When there is extreme dryness in the system, what Aajonus called a diabetic-type internal dryness, the tendons contract and buckle. This contraction pulls joint surfaces together, causing the bones to rub and grind, which creates a different form of arthritis and rheumatism from the leaky gut variety. He distinguished this explicitly: in most arthritis the problem is toxicity entering the joint from outside and causing inflammation; in tendon-shrinkage arthritis the problem is mechanical, caused by the tendons forcing joint surfaces into contact. He described a patient in whom this was happening in the fingers and both the right wrist and right knee, and whose tendons had been shrinking for a long time, even predating their vegetarian period.

Scar tissue in tendons is another obstruction to joint healing. Scar tissue prevents new cells from being built in the tendon, so any attempt to regenerate the joint must address tendon scarring first. He used pineapple applied every seven days in three-day cycles, approximately four ounces per serving combined with whipped cream or coconut cream, to help dissolve tendon scarring so that cell regeneration could begin.

When tendons heal, fat is essential both to regenerate the cells and to lubricate the entire joint area. He stated that white meat, particularly chicken, is better than red meat for rebuilding tendons quickly, and he recommended a dietary composition of approximately 70 to 75 percent red meat and 30 percent white meat for someone with active tendon deterioration, with the fish component useful because of the higher mineral content in tendons, bones, and cartilage.

Ligaments in joints can also be strained or compromised. He addressed a patient whose right knee and right wrist felt as though a ligament had gone, and explained that every movement was eating away at the joint because the ligament was no longer providing proper stability.

Arthritis and joint problems are, at their foundation, a lack of fat reaching the joints. The bursas require fat to produce proper lubricating fluid. The cartilage requires fat to remain resilient rather than brittle. The tendons require fat to remain supple and elastic. The entire joint environment depends on continuous fat supply.

He recommended chicken fat specifically for joint lubrication, describing the fat pockets found near the back end of a chicken as his personal favorite fat. Chicken is loaded with fat and lubricates joints well. Oysters, shellfish, and deep-sea fish provide the minerals that cartilage and bone require in high concentrations, since these tissues are mineral-dense. He stated that cartilage and bone are very mineral-concentrated because they are solid structures, and that mineral intake must be carefully maintained for anyone with arthritic tendencies.

Raw milk blended with cold-pressed flaxseed oil, peanut oil, or fermented coconut oil, in a quantity of 6 to 8 ounces of milk with 1 tablespoon of oil, helps lubricate and strengthen joints. He also pointed to the Drink for Moisturizing and Lubrication as the best overall recipe for joint lubrication and strengthening.

Cheese and honey together provide a high concentration of minerals with fats in a form the body can use to maintain bone and joint solidity. The combination of fat with minerals is what gives bones their structural integrity, not hormones, and cheese and butter together or cheese and honey together is the dietary approach he favored for mineral delivery.

For people with arthritic tendencies, he specifically warned against cooked beef. He stated that people prone to arthritis should stay away from cooked beef entirely. Cooked chicken once or twice a week is acceptable if any cooked meat is to be eaten, but otherwise cooked meats should be avoided because of the uric acid and other byproducts that cooked meat produces in the joints.

Raw meat was the most important single food for people with joint replacements who continued to suffer pain after surgery. He stated that most people with replacement joints experienced unending pain until they ate raw meat, and that completely eliminating replacement joint pain typically occurred within 2 weeks of eating raw meat twice daily, with some requiring 4 to 5 weeks. Whether red or white meat was used did not matter for the pain elimination; what mattered was whether red meat was causing anxiety, in which case white meat was preferred. He specified that after joint replacement surgery, raw meat and the Lubrication Formula are most often imperative.

Raw celery or raw celery juice helps prevent uric acid deposits in joints, and eating raw cherries serves the same function. A blend of 2 raw tomatoes with 4 tablespoons of fresh raw lemon juice most often relieves joint pain within several hours. A poultice made of 1 raw celery stalk blended with 2 tablespoons of grated raw horseradish root applied to a painful joint most often reduces pain within 20 minutes.

Snake oil, he mentioned in the context of a personal story, was effective for rheumatic and arthritic symptoms, producing relief within approximately two hours. He described stepping on a rattlesnake, picking it up, and experiencing immediate realization of why Native American snake oil remedies worked, noting that what was sold as snake oil commercially was often mineral oil with a small amount of real snake oil added, which produced the debunked reputation for ineffectiveness.

He also described eating marrow bones daily when in Los Angeles, going through a package of approximately seven bones per day. The marrow, he said, is not available near the knuckle end where it is all cartilage and hard bone, but the femur and tibia sections contain rich marrow and help regenerate tissue fast. He ate this with his meat meal daily.

Hot baths were consistently prescribed for any joint problem. The specific protocol was 90 minutes in water at approximately 105 degrees Fahrenheit. He described one woman with severe rheumatoid arthritis, crippled in a wheelchair with knees swollen to large sizes, buckled hands, and wrists enlarged, who improved steadily over several years. He credited hot baths taken twice a week at 90 minutes each, combined with the dietary changes, as central to her recovery. After the first year she could work a recording device with her hands and her knees had reduced by approximately 50 percent. After the second year she could stand and use a walker. Eventually, after more consistent application, she walked without a cane, all her joints returned to normal, and only a small amount of swelling remained in one knee. She resumed ship cruises with her husband and went fishing, activities she had been unable to do for ten years.

He emphasized hot water bottles as important for any joint problem, particularly when joint work is underway. For knee problems specifically, cheese and honey, good diet, lots of milk sipped warm, and gaining weight if underweight were the surrounding supports, along with hot water bottles applied directly to the affected joint.

Cartilage at the joints is a transitional tissue, harder than other soft tissue but not as hard as the dense bone structure, which allows cells to regenerate in that area faster than in harder bone. This resilience is what makes the joint a viable secondary digestive site and also what allows the joint to absorb impacts without shattering. The lymphatic system feeds the cartilage because the lymph travels through connective tissue everywhere, feeding skin and cartilage as part of its function.

When cartilage is being digested by bacteria eating undigested food particles in the joint, the bacteria are not supposed to be consuming healthy cartilage cells, only the decayed or damaged ones. However, as the process continues, healthy cartilage is also lost, and once all the cartilage is gone, the bones themselves begin to erode against each other.

Fungus also has a tendency to accumulate in joints, similarly to how it accumulates in the bone marrow, under the nails, and in the brain, because these are cooler areas and fungus prefers cooler environments. Yeast infections and viral activity also occur in joints where bursas have failed to provide adequate lubrication and where the acidic, toxic fluid from a compromised bursa has created a favorable environment.

Viruses may also be produced to clean connective tissue in and around joints when damage is caused by chemical or industrial poisoning. Because bacteria and parasites cannot survive in the presence of certain poisons, the body manufactures viruses specific to those conditions. He noted that in the arm alone, 2,000 varieties of viruses might be produced for connective tissue in and around joint areas depending on the specific tissues and specific toxins involved.

Dryness at the wrist joint, which is the most lubricated joint in the body, indicates dryness throughout the body. When the skin at the wrist is dry, this is a signal that the person is heading toward osteoporosis. Flaky, ridged, thick skin at the knees and elbows indicates cirrhosed tissue in the arms, legs, and surrounding structures. Elbows being worse than knees signals that the upper body holds more toxins than the lower body.

This buildup of dead tissue at the knees and elbows is specifically connected to the fact that these are the primary sites of red blood cell production. Because these joints are so metabolically important, any dryness or toxicity there affects blood quality systemically. When fat is insufficient and the area is dry, the dead skin accumulates because there are not enough lubricating fats to keep the cells cycling normally. The body keeps adding dead cells to the skin at these sites, building up thick, dry, flaky layers.

If elbows and knees are not dry, the person will not go through as much trauma during the body's cleaning processes. The degree of dryness tells Aajonus how much cirrhosed tissue is present internally and how severe the cleansing process will be when it begins.

He described a motorcycle accident in Thailand in which a car pulled out in front of him, and he chose to lay the motorcycle on his leg rather than hit the car and risk killing someone. This split the tibia all the way down to the ankle, broke the top off the tibia and jammed bone splinters up into the femur joint, broke and shattered the kneecap, and tore both tendons on either side of the knee, one downward and one upward, each producing a golf ball-sized lump where it had separated from the bone.

Hospital physicians said he would never walk again without surgery. The chief orthopedic surgeon planned to cut the outside of the leg from hip to ankle, insert 8 to 10 pins to reunite the tibia segments, remove the bone splinters from the femur joint, and reattach both tendons. Aajonus had seen others who underwent similar surgeries and ended up with legs one to two inches shorter and calf muscles reduced to two-thirds of their original size, leaving them permanently walking with a gait impairment.

He agreed only to two x-rays, taken at the lowest possible radiation setting, one from the front and one from the side, confirming the split tibia and the displaced bone fragments in the knee joint. He then refused surgery, returned to his hotel, and began his own treatment, which included applying raw meat topically to the knee and surrounding structures with lime juice, honey, and coconut cream underneath the meat. He also walked daily in a swimming pool at the hotel, getting into the deep end where little weight was placed on the leg, even while wearing bandages with the raw meat applied.

He was walking gingerly on the leg in five and a half weeks, threw away the crutches at six and a half weeks, and by nine weeks considered the healing to be going very well. The tendons that had been ripped and were bubbled up on either side of the knee grew back within one week, a process he watched directly, though the pain at the torn sites continued even after visual regrowth.

He also noted having broken seven bones in his foot in a bicycle accident at another time, which he recovered from sufficiently to bicycle 12 miles that same day and attend a movie. In each case he declined conventional surgical intervention and relied on the diet and topical applications.

A 50-year-old woman in Chicago came to him in a wheelchair. Her knees were severely swollen, her wrists were large, her knuckles were enlarged throughout, her elbows were swollen, and her hands were buckled so severely that she could not feed herself, dress herself, or play cards with her friends. Her husband managed all her daily needs. She was diagnosed with severe advanced rheumatoid arthritis and told she would probably die within a year. After beginning the diet with hot baths twice a week at 105 degrees for 90 minutes, her progress over several years was as follows. After the first year she could use her hands to operate a recording device, the knot at one elbow remained, but her knees had shrunk by approximately 50 percent. After the second year she could stand and move with a walker. After subsequent years of continuing the hot baths and diet, all joints normalized. The last time Aajonus described her, she walked in without assistance, could climb stairs, went on ship cruises with her husband, went fishing, and had resumed playing cards with her friends for the first time in over three years. Only a small amount of swelling remained in one knee.

A 13-year-old granddaughter of a senator developed Crohn's disease that was traced to penicillin given at a young age. Her knees were very swollen, her hips were affected, and the process was beginning to affect her elbows. The senator initially did not believe the dietary approach, having seen his other daughter on the diet for three years without dramatic changes, which Aajonus attributed to the fact that her body was primarily cleaning out waste products from blown-out joints rather than building new tissue. When the senator saw his granddaughter continuing to worsen, he brought her to Aajonus. Six months on the diet reduced her knee swelling to nearly normal, and she was functioning well. After a year and a half she was asymptomatic.

A patient described as having rheumatoid arthritis with knees literally the size of a large ball, crippled in a wheelchair with elbows enlarged and hands all buckled, unable to feed herself, came to him. After following the protocol, which included cheese every 20 minutes and hot baths every day at 90 minutes and 105 degrees, her knees reduced to about one-third of their former excessive size. Eventually every joint was described as perfect, and she walked into his office, then went fishing on a cruise ship with her husband.

A subscriber asked about an arthritis therapy involving injection of Lidocaine and dextrose into the joint. Aajonus rejected this as a remedy, stating that it destroys the nerves in the joint rather than curing anything. The loss of pain is all that is beneficially experienced. He noted that pain is the body's signal that something is wrong, that toxicity has accumulated, and that ignoring the cause by deadening the signal leaves the toxins in place while disease continues to develop.

Lidocaine, which is also used by dentists, causes numbness and nerve damage. When the body cannot remove Lidocaine, it attempts to neutralize it by surrounding the molecules with concentrations of other substances, creating additional problems at the joint.

One questioner asked whether hyperbaric pressure chambers might help remove toxins from bone marrow and joints since those toxins are so difficult to eliminate. Aajonus stated he had not found that this works at all.

When cartilage has been entirely consumed and bones have been grinding against each other for years, joint replacement surgery may be the only practical option. Aajonus acknowledged this directly, stating that regenerating tissue that has deteriorated to that degree would take as long as the deterioration took, making it a very large problem to approach biologically. However, he also noted that joint replacement does not resolve the underlying cause, meaning that the problem that caused the original joint deterioration will produce problems elsewhere and pain in the replaced joint. Raw meat consumed twice daily was the most reliable way to eliminate pain in replacement joints, working within 2 weeks for most sufferers, with some requiring 4 to 5 weeks.

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