Ketosis

Ketones are, in Aajonus's explanation, the byproducts that result when the body uses protein in significant quantities. He also placed them in a broader biochemical category alongside fats and related compounds. He stated that hormones are composed of roughly 60 to 80 percent fat, 15 to 35 percent protein, and only 5 percent carbohydrate, and that whether the body has made fat from a carbohydrate, a protein, or another fat, "it is still a ketone, I mean an acetone or an acetate that has been converted." This means ketones, acetones, and acetates are essentially the same class of fat-derived compound in his framework, and they are the building blocks of hormonal activity in the body.

When someone eats raw meat, the body generates ketones as part of actively processing protein to rebuild cells, regenerate tissue, and produce hormones. This is normal, healthy, and necessary. When ketones appear in this context, they should be high, just as cholesterol should be high during genuine healing and cellular repair.

The dangerous form of ketosis in Aajonus's framework is not the one produced by eating raw meat, but the one the body creates when it turns on itself. He explained this with precision and urgency. If a person goes approximately five hours without eating, the protein level in the blood bottoms out completely. When that happens, the red blood cells become what he called cannibalistic: they begin eating each other in order to obtain the protein they cannot find in the bloodstream. This self-consumption produces a massive surge of ketones, but these ketones are "waste products from having eaten themselves," meaning they come from the degradation of cells that were themselves built on cooked, processed, and toxic food. The resulting ketones are therefore not clean metabolic byproducts of healthy protein utilization, but acrid, caustic substances loaded with the accumulated toxicity of a lifetime of damaged cellular material.

He described this state as "ketosis in its worst form," producing extreme over-acidity, irritation of the bloodstream, and severe stress on the nervous system. People experiencing this wake up the following morning unable to move, depleted, and reach for caffeine, theobromine from chocolate, sodas, coffee, or cigarettes to stimulate themselves into activity, mistaking the drug effect for restored energy. The actual problem is that their blood has spent the night in a cannibalistic, highly acidic state producing toxic ketones from self-destruction rather than from nourishment.

He stated explicitly that this cannibalistic process begins after approximately three and a half hours without food, and by four and a half to five hours the body is actively consuming its own cells. The ketones produced from this process "are very acrid and caustic" and must be neutralized with alkaline fluids, which is the primary reason he emphasized drinking vegetable juice first thing in the morning: to alkalinize the blood after a night of heavy ketone accumulation from self-cannibalization.

Aajonus was asked directly whether a person remains in ketosis during the day while eating food, even when not eating carbohydrates, and he answered yes. "As long as you're a meat eater, you're going to be in the ketosis." He said this plainly and without qualification. Being in ketosis is simply the metabolic state of someone whose primary fuel source is protein and fat rather than carbohydrate. This is not something to correct or interrupt. It is the expected and healthy state for someone on the Primal Diet.

He added the important qualification: "It's only when it's highly acidic and caustic from eating cooked meat that you have a problem." The ketones produced from raw meat consumption are not inherently toxic in the way that ketones from cooked meat or self-cannibalism are. The cooking of meat produces heterocyclic amines, lipid peroxides, and other toxic compounds that contaminate the protein; when the body uses that damaged protein, the resulting ketones carry those contaminants and become damaging to the system.

Because the cannibalistic ketosis process begins at around three and a half to five hours without eating, Aajonus gave a strong protocol recommendation: wake during the night and eat something with protein in it. He specified that if someone is overweight and does not need additional weight gain, they should take only half of a milkshake if they had prepared one. He mentioned raw eggs as a good alternative: a half dozen raw eggs with a half cup of kefir and perhaps two tablespoons of honey.

The purpose of this nighttime eating is specifically to prevent the protein level in the blood from bottoming out, which triggers red blood cell cannibalism and the resultant cascade of caustic, toxic ketones. He framed this not as optional but as important for anyone serious about maintaining their health and avoiding the morning fatigue and depletion that drives people toward stimulants.

The vegetable juice taken first thing in the morning serves the specific function of neutralizing ketones that accumulated overnight. Aajonus explained that the body undergoes heavy toxic processing and self-consumption during sleep, and that by morning the blood is loaded with the caustic ketones generated from four to eight hours of cannibalizing its own cells. The vegetable juice, because it is predominantly absorbed in the stomach and duodenum and enters the blood quickly, alkalinizes the blood and neutralizes these acrid ketone byproducts. He called this "ultra-important" and described it as the primary justification for the morning juice protocol.

A workshop participant raised the question of whether eating fruit stops ketosis, and Aajonus gave a nuanced answer that pushes against the simple interpretation. He said that no, fruit does not straightforwardly stop ketosis, and that in the long run, high carbohydrate intake will actually create a worse condition because "the sugars go in to break down the cells to get the fat out of them, so the ketones will go sky high." He added: "you just have to catch it at the right hour."

His broader position was that carbohydrates create their own category of metabolic toxicity entirely separate from ketosis, specifically the advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that result from the body processing glycogen. These AGEs store in the body at a rate of 70 to 90 percent for a lifetime, meaning every piece of high-carbohydrate food consumed leaves a lasting accumulation of sugar waste in the tissues. This is a worse outcome than ketosis, not a better one. He contrasted the "acid forms of toxicity" from carbohydrate metabolism, including acrylamide and advanced glycation end products, against the ketosis of a meat-eating diet, clearly placing carbohydrate toxicity as the more damaging long-term scenario.

Aajonus connected elevated ketones directly to elevated cholesterol as parallel phenomena, both misunderstood and pathologized by conventional medicine, and both actually necessary for healing. 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. You're not sloughing off the old toxic cholesterols."

This pairing is important within the framework because it positions high ketones not as a metabolic error but as a sign that the body is actively doing the work of cellular regeneration. A person who is genuinely healing, rebuilding tissue with raw meat, and eliminating damaged cells will necessarily show elevated ketones on a blood test. The nurse in the workshop anecdote was alarmed by ketone levels she associated with homeless people or severe medical crisis; Aajonus's response was that the comparison was meaningless because the source of the ketones in each case is completely different. A homeless person's high ketones come from starvation and self-cannibalism. A raw meat eater's high ketones come from active cellular rebuilding.

Aajonus addressed ketosis in the context of vegetarian bodies as well, and the analysis here is different from the healthy raw meat eater. He stated that vegetarians whose bodies lack sufficient fat will still go into ketosis because their cells are not stabilized, and without adequate protein from animal sources, the body is forced to consume its own cells to maintain function. The fat is described as the stabilizer: "if a cell has a lot of fat and has stability, it's not so weak." A vegetarian who eats all raw is doing less cellular self-consumption than a cooked-food vegetarian, but is still going into ketosis because the fat deficit leaves cells vulnerable to being broken down and reused.

He extended this to people eating cooked starch-based diets: when cooked food is the primary fuel, the pancreas responds by sending hormones throughout the body that extract nutrients from every cell, essentially taxing the entire cellular population with each cooked meal. The body starts ketosis because the intestines are the primary site of degradation and the amino acids available from naturally raw-state foods are absent. The cooked food forces the body to synthesize its own enzymes and amino acids from its own tissue, pulling cells apart from the outside in, with the intestines becoming "where most of the rotting is going on."

In one of his more detailed biochemical descriptions, Aajonus explained what happens when a person has gone without adequate protein and the red blood cells start eating each other. The red blood cells need protein; they cannot find it in the blood because it is not there. They begin consuming each other to extract the protein, and the result is a high ketone rate. He described these specific ketones as "almost waste products from having eaten themselves." He was careful to note that for a healthy person, even this form of ketosis is not necessarily catastrophic, but for someone who is unwell, "those particular ketones are very acrid and create a lot of lethargy in the system."

The practical implication was the directive to wake during the night and eat protein, described as essential for preventing this cannibalistic red blood cell cascade.

Aajonus warned against the body converting meat protein into acetone, pyruvate, or fat when no dietary fat is eaten alongside the meat. He stated clearly: "You do not want the body to turn your meat into an acetone or all pyruvate. You don't want to make a fat of it." The solution he gave was to eat butter with meat, one to two tablespoons with or right after the meat, so that the body can use the meat protein directly to rebuild cells and regenerate tissue, rather than converting it into a fat or ketone compound for fuel. The presence of dietary fat alongside meat protein allows the body to use the protein constructively for cellular reproduction rather than as an energy substrate.

This is an important protocol detail because it reveals that even on a raw meat diet, if fat intake is insufficient, the body will metabolize protein into ketone compounds rather than building with it, and the cellular regenerative benefit is lost.

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