Ketogenic Diet

Ketones are byproducts of the body utilizing protein heavily as a metabolic substrate. When the body enters cannibalistic chemistry, meaning it has no incoming protein and begins consuming its own tissues, ketone levels climb and those specific ketones are, in Aajonus's description, caustic and toxic because the protein they are derived from is degraded, denatured cellular material. This is the ketosis of starvation, illness, or carbohydrate-dependent people who go too long without food.

By contrast, when someone is eating raw meat consistently and abundantly, the body has a continuous supply of intact, enzyme-rich protein. The ketones produced under these conditions reflect active use of that protein for rebuilding and regenerating tissue. Aajonus described these ketones as not bad, not harmful, and in fact necessary for the regenerative process. He linked them directly to cholesterol in this respect: just as high cholesterol on a raw animal foods diet indicates that the body is manufacturing the fat-based material it needs to rebuild cell membranes, nerve sheaths, and hormones, high ketones indicate that the body is processing substantial protein for structural repair.

Aajonus relayed a specific encounter involving a person whose mother was a nurse at Kaiser. The son had gone in for a blood test and the mother reported that his ketone levels were among the highest she had ever seen, comparable to those of homeless people, and that this was alarming and dangerous. Aajonus's response was to call this reaction "bullshit" and to explain the distinction between the two contexts in which high ketones appear. In a malnourished person who is not eating, the body cannibalizes itself, red blood cells consume each other for protein, and the resulting ketones are toxic waste products of that self-destruction, creating lethargy and systemic contamination. On a raw meat diet, the ketones are not the result of self-consumption but of the active processing of incoming animal protein, making them an indicator of the body working well at a high rate of cellular production.

Aajonus stated explicitly that any person who is eating primarily meat will be in ketosis, and that this is true even during the day while actively eating, not only during fasting or sleeping states. He confirmed this directly in response to a question about whether ketosis persists during the eating day on a no-carbohydrate or low-carbohydrate diet. His answer was unambiguous: "As long as you're a meat eater, you're going to be in ketosis." This was not framed as a temporary phase of diet adaptation or a special therapeutic state but as the permanent operating condition of anyone following the Primal Diet properly.

The only circumstance in which ketones become problematic on any diet is when cooked meat is eaten, because cooked meat produces heterocyclic amines and lipid peroxides, the protein is denatured, and the ketones derived from it carry that toxicity. Raw meat produces ketones that the body can use constructively. The cooking process is what converts a beneficial high-ketone state into a damaging one, not the presence of ketones themselves.

Aajonus's position on ketosis cannot be separated from his broader position on carbohydrates, because the ketogenic or low-carbohydrate state of the body is the direct opposite of the glycogen-dependent state produced by high carbohydrate eating. He devoted substantial attention in workshops to the Columbia University research on advanced glycation end products, abbreviated as AGEs. The finding, which he returned to repeatedly, was that the human body stores advanced glycation end products, the toxic byproducts of converting carbohydrates into glycogen for fuel, at a rate of 70% in a healthy body and up to 90% in an unhealthy body such as one compromised by diabetes or kidney disease, and that this storage persists for the lifetime of the organism.

This meant, in Aajonus's framework, that every time a healthy person eats carbohydrates and the body converts them to glycogen, 70% of the resulting waste product from that conversion lodges permanently in the tissues. In a diabetic or person with kidney compromise, 90% of every advanced glycation end product ever produced stores for life. He described these as cancer-causing byproducts that make everything sticky in the system, contributing to the bloating, weight gain, and progressive cellular dysfunction seen in people eating high-carbohydrate diets.

High-carbohydrate athletic diets were a specific target. He referenced John McEnroe and the broader culture of carbohydrate loading in sport, noting that athletes who pursued high-carb fueling burned out and dried out in their thirties. A former champion tennis player who had been McEnroe's coach for ten years, Paul Cohen, had been on the Primal Diet for seven years at the time of one workshop and described it as the ultimate best thing for any athlete, saying he wished he had known about it during his playing career because he burned out on the high-carb approach.

The body, Aajonus explained, will use whatever fuel substrate is made available first. If carbohydrates are eaten, the body makes glycogen from them, generating advanced glycation end products in the process. If protein and fat are the primary inputs, the body operates on ketones and fat-derived energy, which does not produce the same accumulating toxic byproduct load. Raw fruits eaten in small quantities do still generate some advanced glycation end products, but in far smaller quantities than cooked carbohydrates, and Aajonus acknowledged this while still insisting fruit be kept to approximately 5% or less of total food intake.

Aajonus was asked directly about the ketogenic diet in the context of autism and brain function. A parent of an eight-year-old child with autism wrote to him asking about the positive effects of ketone bodies on the brain and whether the conventional ketogenic diet approach was compatible with the Primal Diet, specifically whether unheated honey, of which the child consumed one to three tablespoons daily, would prevent ketosis. The source passages preserve the question but not the full written response beyond what is contained in the surrounding material; however, the question itself indicates that parents were drawing connections between neurological benefits attributed to ketone bodies and Aajonus's dietary framework.

Aajonus's general position implied in the broader passages is that the Primal Diet already produces a ketogenic state through its emphasis on raw animal protein and fat with minimal carbohydrate, making a separately constructed ketogenic protocol unnecessary. His concern with the conventional ketogenic diet as practiced medically would follow from his concerns about cooked food generally, since the conventional ketogenic diet is not a raw food diet. The small amount of unheated honey that the child in question enjoyed daily would not, given that Aajonus considered carbohydrates to be approximately 5% of the Primal Diet and that some carbohydrate exists even in meat and vegetable juice, necessarily disqualify the child from maintaining a predominantly ketone-producing metabolic state.

Aajonus bracketed ketones and cholesterol together as two substances that medical convention treats as dangerous markers but that the Primal Diet framework treats as indicators of active cellular repair and regeneration. His statement was: "You better have high ketones and you better have high cholesterol or you're not getting well. You're not regenerating cells. You're not sloughing off the old dead cells." He extended this to include the process of clearing old toxic cholesterol deposits, arguing that the body needs to produce and circulate cholesterol actively in order to remove the damaged lipid material and replace it with functional structural fat.

The same logic applied to ketones. A body that is producing high ketones on a raw animal food diet is a body engaged in intensive protein metabolism and cellular reconstruction. Suppressing this through medication or dietary carbohydrate loading would slow or halt the regenerative work.

One specific edge case Aajonus discussed involved what happens to the body during sleep or any period of more than five hours without food. He stated that after five hours without eating, the bloodstream becomes cannibalistic regardless of the person's weight or fat reserves. The red blood cells begin consuming each other for protein because there is no incoming supply, and this produces the toxic form of ketones, the kind that creates lethargy and systemic contamination rather than reconstruction. This was one reason he recommended waking during the night to eat something containing protein, even something as small as an egg or half a milkshake, to interrupt the cannibalistic cycle and supply the blood with incoming protein so the body does not resort to self-consumption.

This distinction is critical within his framework. The body in a ketogenic state from eating raw meat and fat is doing something fundamentally different from the body in ketosis from starvation, even though both states produce elevated ketone readings in the blood or urine. The inflammatory and lethargic ketones come from degraded self-derived protein. The productive ketones come from raw dietary protein that is enzymatically intact and fully bioavailable.

Aajonus also touched on ketone chemistry in the context of hormone production, noting that hormones are composed of 60 to 80% fat, 15 to 35% protein, and only 5% carbohydrate. He then stated: "Whether the body has made the fat from a carbohydrate or a protein or from another fat, it is still a ketone. I mean an acetone or an acetate that has been converted. It is still fat." This framing placed ketones and acetones at the heart of the body's hormone manufacturing process. A body that is running on fat and protein, and therefore producing ketones continuously, is also supplying the substrate from which hormones are built. A body that is running primarily on glycogen from carbohydrates is not supplying this substrate at the same rate.

Aajonus addressed the specific interaction between fruit consumption and ketosis in one passage, responding to a question about whether fruit stops ketosis. His answer was nuanced. Fruit in itself does not simply stop ketosis and leave the body in a clean glycogen-burning state. Instead, the sugars in fruit enter the body and break down cells to access the fat stored within them, which then drives ketone levels sharply upward at a particular point in the digestive cycle. He said: "The sugars go in to break down the cells to get the fat out of them. So the ketones will go sky high. You just have to catch it at the right hour."

This means that fruit does not produce a simple anti-ketogenic effect but rather a complex interaction where the sugar-driven cellular breakdown temporarily spikes ketone production before the body returns to its baseline. The concern with fruit was therefore not primarily about ketosis but about the advanced glycation end products generated when the body converts fruit sugar into glycogen, and about the overall proportion of carbohydrate in the diet being kept within the 5% range to avoid chronic accumulation of those byproducts.