Ligaments

Ligaments hold bone to bone. Aajonus was explicit about this structural distinction: "You have ligaments that hold bone together. You have ligaments like in the knee and your ankles that hold the bone together. And the tendons usually just hold the muscles to the bone." This distinction mattered practically because the treatment and healing timeline for a crushed or torn ligament differs from a tendon injury, and because ligaments are not simply soft connective tissue but are load-bearing structural elements at every joint in the body.

The knee joint has ligaments on both the inner and outer sides that prevent the femur and tibia from separating or buckling. The ankle has ligaments connecting the ankle bones to the heel cap. In Aajonus's account of his own motorcycle accident, he described the two tendons on either side of his knee being ripped from the bone at opposite ends, while also discussing the broader connective architecture that keeps the knee in place. In the case of the young woman who crushed her ankle, he identified at least eight ligaments crushed and approximately six tendons damaged right at the points where they connect to bone, describing the attachment points at the ankle and heel cap as the critical structural junctions.

Aajonus distinguished between torn and crushed ligaments as meaningfully different categories of injury, with crushing being the more severe. When describing the young woman's ankle injury, he explained: "She didn't tear the ligaments or the tendons. She actually crushed them, which is worse than a break. A break is, you know, a break is all you're going to do is mend the bone back together. But she actually crushed the tendons and the ligaments, fastening her ankle to her heel cap." He estimated this as "five times worse, ten times worse" than a simple fracture and warned that she might not be able to walk for six weeks, even on the proper diet.

In his own case, the ligaments and tendons on both sides of his knee were torn rather than crushed. He described the tendons ripping off at opposite ends and creating visible knots under the skin, large bulges at the sites where the tissue had retracted. He noted that the pain from the torn tendons was greater than the pain from the broken bone itself: "I had more pain from those tendons being ripped than the bone being broken. I had the most pain right here and right here from where it was ripped."

Aajonus was consistently critical of how conventional medicine and sports medicine handle ligament and tendon injuries. The primary objections were to the use of ice, pressure bandages, cortisone injections, and surgery.

He described the standard sports medicine protocol for a knee injury as: applying ice packs to reduce swelling, wrapping the joint with an ACE bandage, injecting cortisone, and sending the athlete back into play. His analysis of the long-term consequences was detailed and consistent across multiple discussions. The ice stops the blood and lymph flow into the area, which prevents the body from cleaning out damaged tissue and rebuilding new cells. Without that circulation, damaged cells mummify into scar tissue rather than being dissolved and replaced. The scar tissue reduces flexibility and blocks new cell reproduction in the tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and bone. This creates a cycle requiring repeated surgeries to scrape out accumulated scar tissue. The end result is that athletes who follow this protocol are typically spent by their mid-to-late thirties, with joints so laden with scar tissue that they can no longer play. "There are no cells to reproduce in those tendons and ligaments and even bone and cartilage and then they can no longer play their sport in their mid-thirties."

He contrasted this with populations in the Andes where men ninety years old and older continue to play football because they have not subjected their injuries to ice and pharmaceutical suppression.

In the case of the young woman with the crushed ankle ligaments, the doctor prescribed foam pressure bandages. Aajonus rejected this immediately, explaining that pressure bandages restrict circulation to the injured leg, cause scarring, reduce long-term mobility, and deteriorate the condition. He stated that using pressure bandages on ligament injuries creates a situation where the patient must keep returning for physical therapy to address the scarring that the bandages caused in the first place.

For his own knee, the surgeons in Thailand proposed cutting from the hip all the way down the leg, pinning the tibia together with eight to twelve pins, scraping out the knee joint, and reconnecting the torn tendons surgically. He had seen other patients who underwent that surgery and observed that they lost two to three inches of leg length, lost a third of the muscle mass in the calf and thigh, and walked with a permanent gait impairment for the rest of their lives. He refused surgery entirely.

The single most repeated principle Aajonus applied to ligament and joint injuries was the use of heat and the complete rejection of ice, except as a temporary pain-numbing measure lasting no more than a minute or two. He framed this as a foundational rule without exceptions for healing purposes.

Swelling at the site of a ligament injury represents the body sending blood, lymph, and nutrients to the area to clean out damaged cells and build new ones. Ice stops that flow. "You always want swelling. You never want to stop swelling." Applying ice clots the area, prevents proper healing, and produces scarring. "Scarring is dead mummified cells that are useless for creating energy and activity. Dead cells are dead bricks in the walls. Scar tissue reduces flexibility, agility and stamina."

Heat, by contrast, relaxes the fibers, allows expansion, and increases circulation to the damaged area. Aajonus's specific instruction for knee and joint problems was to use hot water bottles, specifically never a heating pad, because heating pads produce an EMF field. He specified that EMF fields of 75 to 200 milligauss are sufficient to alter the molecular structure of cells, noting that it takes only 3 milligauss to cause cellular damage. The remedy was always a hot water bottle, optionally wrapped inside a pillowcase and then secured with a towel, kept at no more than 140 degrees Fahrenheit. For knee problems, he recommended placing hot water bottles on both sides of the joint, wrapping them in a towel to hold them in place through the night, where they would stay warm for six to seven hours.

He described heat as the element that allows nutrients to move into the injured area, clean the site, and facilitate rapid cell reproduction. "If you apply heat, everything relaxes and it can allow for expansion, all that nutrients coming into that area to clean out the area and heal it."

Aajonus gave specific dietary guidance for rebuilding ligaments and tendons. The most direct protocol he outlined for someone with apparent ligament weakness or deterioration at the wrist and knee included the following elements.

Red meat at approximately 70 to 75 percent of total meat intake, with the remaining 25 to 30 percent as white meat. He specified that white meat is necessary for tendon and ligament rebuilding, and that chicken is somewhat better for this purpose than other white meats. Some fish was also recommended for its high mineral content, because tendons, ligaments, bone, and cartilage have a higher mineral content than other tissues and therefore require mineral-rich foods for reconstruction. He set the baseline quantity at at least one pound of meat per day for a person standing around 5 feet 5 inches tall.

He also mentioned the option of grinding actual tendon tissue through a meat grinder approximately three times to reduce it to its smallest possible fragments, making it more accessible to the hydrochloric acid of digestion. He presented this as a way of directly supplying the body with the raw materials it needs to rebuild that type of tissue.

For removing scarring in tendons specifically, he recommended pineapple with either whipped cream or coconut cream, approximately four ounces of pineapple (roughly a half-inch thick circular slice), consumed every seven days as part of a three-day cycle. He explained that this pineapple protocol helps break down existing scar tissue in the tendons so that new cells can be built in its place. Without removing that scarring, he said, the body cannot build new cells in the damaged area.

He also referenced fat consumption as essential to keeping joints and connective tissues lubricated and elastic, and noted that the connective tissue combines with all the fluid systems of the body to keep different structural layers connected.

Aajonus documented rapid ligament and tendon healing on the Primal Diet across multiple cases, with his own injuries serving as the most detailed example.

In his knee injury in Thailand, the tendons had been completely torn from the bone at opposite ends. He described watching the tissue heal from day to day: "I watched them, they were bubbled up here and here and in one week I saw them grow back." The newsletter account states that within ten days the tendons had completely regrown and reconnected, though the pain at the torn attachment points continued for longer. He walked on the injured leg with crutches without extreme pain by the tenth day, and walked without crutches at six and a half weeks.

He also described a tendon tear that healed within three days in a different incident involving his hand or wrist area, noting that "the tendons will grow fast on this diet, very quickly replace themselves. The pain is not going to go right away, but the pain was gone in two weeks."

For the young woman with eight crushed ligaments and six crushed tendons at the ankle, he estimated that recovery might take six weeks of not walking on the limb even with the proper diet, because crushing is substantially more damaging than tearing. He told her and her family that the diet gave her "the better chance."

He observed that an injured area, when properly nourished and not interfered with, can actually heal stronger than it was before, because the body has the opportunity to rebuild the tissue with better nutritional support: "If they ate right, it would become stronger because it was injured."

Aajonus interpreted swelling at a ligament or joint injury as the body's active healing mechanism, not a symptom to be suppressed. The swelling represents a concentration of blood, lymph, and neurological fluids being directed to the site to perform three functions: dissolving and removing damaged cells, feeding the area with nutrients, and providing the raw materials for new cell reproduction.

He repeated this principle consistently: suppressing swelling with ice, cortisone, or pressure bandages does not help the tissue heal. It prevents healing. The tissue that cannot be properly cleaned becomes scar tissue, and scar tissue does not regenerate. It occupies space that living functional cells would otherwise fill. Athletes who ice injuries repeatedly accumulate more and more scar tissue at the damaged sites until the tissue can no longer support their sport.

He stated: "Why the hell would you put ice on it? Because it numbs it and they can put the guy back out on the field. They don't care. So his knee's blown out when he's 38 and can never work again as an athlete."

One of the more detailed mechanistic explanations Aajonus gave for why ice destroys ligament healing was the sequence from clotting to mummification. When ice is applied and circulation is stopped, the blood and lymph that had been moving into the area to dissolve damaged cells instead clots in place. The damaged cells are not removed. They dry out and become fixed as scar tissue. This scar tissue has no metabolic activity and cannot be used to reproduce new cells. Over time, the joint becomes increasingly stiff and non-functional. Surgeons then must cut into the area and physically scrape out the scar tissue, which creates further trauma and further opportunity for additional scar tissue formation in the healing cuts.

He pointed out that conventional medicine essentially creates the ongoing need for its own procedures by the methods it uses to manage the original injury. The cycle is: ice the injury, produce scarring, scrape the scarring surgically, produce new scarring from the surgery, repeat.

Aajonus described a case where a person noticed increasing ligament weakness in the wrist and knee without a specific trauma having occurred. His explanation was that without adequate fat and appropriate meat ratios in the diet, the joints begin to deteriorate through normal daily movement. Without proper lubrication and nutritional support, each movement accelerates the degradation. He described the process as "every time you move, you're starting to just eat away at your joints."

He also noted that the wrist joint is the most continuously lubricated joint in the body, and dryness in the skin over the wrist is a signal of generalized dryness throughout the joint system. Dry, ridged, or thickened skin at the elbows and knees indicates that the person lacks sufficient fat circulation throughout the body, which has implications for every joint including those bearing the ligaments that hold them together.

Aajonus made a broader point about why professional athletes across sports tend to break down in their mid-to-late thirties. The application of ice to injuries throughout a career produces cumulative scarring in the tendons and ligaments of whichever joints are most stressed by the sport. The joints become increasingly restricted, the range of motion decreases, pain increases, and eventually the athlete can no longer perform at the level required. He contrasted this with populations not exposed to pharmaceutical sports medicine who continue physically demanding activities into advanced age.

He also noted briefly that the spray coolants used in sports settings (nitrogen sprays to freeze an area) carry the same problem as ice packs and are equally harmful for the same reason: they stop circulation and produce scarring.

The most extensively documented case in the source material is Aajonus's own second motorcycle accident in Jomtien, Pattaya, Thailand. A large Harley-Davidson motorcycle, approximately 600 pounds, was laid down on his leg when children ran into the street in front of him. The tibia was split from the knee down toward the ankle, open in the back approximately a sixteenth to a quarter of an inch. The top of the tibia was broken off and fragmented pieces were lodged in the femur joint. The two tendons on either side of the knee were torn off the bone at opposite ends, creating large lumps the size of golf balls from the retracted tissue. He had open wounds on his palm, wrist, forearm, elbow, upper arm, back, outside knee, lower leg, ankle, and foot where skin, muscle, and bone had been scraped away by the asphalt.

He refused surgery. He returned to the hotel, applied lime juice, honey, and coconut cream to the open wounds, and put raw meat over the injuries. He entered the hotel swimming pool daily even with his bandages on, walking in the deep end where minimal weight was placed on the leg. He had arranged for additional chlorine in the pool.

Within approximately one week, he could observe the torn tendons regrowing and reconnecting. By ten days, the newsletter account states the tendons had completely regrown. He walked with crutches without extreme pain at ten days and without crutches at six and a half weeks. He described watching the pain migrate from one injury site to another as each area progressed through its healing sequence.

An interesting secondary phenomenon occurred: the large thigh muscle diminished dramatically within four to five days of the accident, and from the ankle to mid-thigh the leg hardened like bone. He described this as the body using the nutrient content of the muscle mass to create a natural cast protecting the fractured and tom structures while rebuilding took place. The body had reorganized its resources without any external cast being applied.

A young girl crushed the ligaments and tendons in her ankle, with Aajonus estimating at least eight ligaments crushed and approximately six tendons damaged at the points where they connect to bone. He described this as far more serious than a simple fracture.

The injury became visible externally through a heavy rash that emerged on both the injured leg and, remarkably, on the opposite leg, as the body expelled the crushed and liquefied tissue through the skin. He described the progression through stages visible in photographs: blue bruising transitioning to black as bacteria broke down dead cells, then yellow as dead red blood cells dissolved into liquid and passed through the skin. He used these photographs to explain to his audience how the body's normal healing sequence appears and why each color stage is a sign of active repair rather than worsening.

Her family became alarmed enough at the swelling and pain to take her to a conventional doctor, who prescribed foam pressure bandages. Aajonus rejected this as counterproductive, stating that it would prevent circulation, cause scarring, and reduce long-term mobility. He advised against using the pressure bandages and instructed the family to follow the dietary protocol instead, telling them the diet gave her the best chance of recovery.

He estimated recovery at approximately six weeks of not bearing weight on the leg, given the severity of crushing versus simple tearing.