Pyruvate

Pyruvate is a sugar made from protein. Aajonus spelled it out explicitly in workshops, letter by letter, P-Y-R-U-V-A-T-E. He also used the form "pyruvic acid" when referring to the acid version in the citric acid cycle, but treated them as functionally equivalent in his dietary teaching. The primary dietary sources he identified were raw meat, raw eggs, and to a lesser extent raw milk, with egg white being specifically mentioned as a particularly rich source of pyruvate precursors. He noted that the body makes a large amount of pyruvate specifically from egg white.

The body does not use the protein directly as fuel. Instead, it first converts a portion of the protein into pyruvate, and the pyruvate is then transformed by glucagon into a form of glycogen that the brain and nervous system can use. Aajonus distinguished this glucagon-assisted pathway from the standard carbohydrate-to-insulin-to-glycogen pathway, and he regarded the glucagon-pyruvate pathway as producing a glycogen that is physiologically equivalent in function but radically different in its waste output.

He noted that the body requires only about fifteen percent of dietary protein to be converted into pyruvate under ideal conditions. When fat is present in the meal alongside the protein, the body uses the fat as the primary energy source and converts only that necessary fifteen percent of the protein into pyruvate, leaving the remaining eighty-five percent available for cellular regeneration and repair. When fat is absent, the body is forced to convert a much larger proportion of protein into fuel, wasting the structural and regenerative potential of that protein.

Aajonus described the citric acid cycle as the body's mechanism for converting fat into usable energy, with pyruvate and a small amount of carbohydrate or vitamin C serving as catalysts or ignitors. The precise formulation he returned to repeatedly was eighty percent fat, fifteen percent pyruvate (protein sugar), and five percent carbohydrate or vitamin C. He said that citric acid from certain fruits, when consumed in small amounts with fat, combined with pyruvate to allow fat to be utilized as energy, and that this was the most efficient fuel arrangement the human body could achieve.

The five percent carbohydrate or vitamin C component serves as the ignitor in the cycle. It combines with the pyruvate, and together they allow the fat to be utilized as energy. Without this small carbohydrate or vitamin C fraction, the fat-utilization process cannot proceed as efficiently. He recommended one fruit per day as sufficient to provide this five percent, and noted that in tropical climates or during high athletic output, slightly more fruit may be warranted because the body needs to replace more water and utilize more fat as energy.

He was emphatic that fat provides the dominant energy at eighty percent, and that the body generates two and a half times more energy from natural animal fats than from carbohydrate-derived acetates. Fats made from carbohydrates burn quickly and are short-lived, producing a burst like a firecracker. Animal fats, by contrast, provide sustained, long-term energy. The pyruvate fraction at fifteen percent is the bridge that allows the fat to be accessed, and the small carbohydrate fraction at five percent is the ignitor for that bridge.

He used the young coconut as an illustration of the naturally occurring ratio. He pointed out that the coconut contains approximately five percent carbohydrate, fifteen percent protein, and the rest predominantly fat, mirroring the citric acid cycle's ideal proportions and explaining why the coconut is a well-suited food. He described an experiment in which he placed people on young coconut gel mixed with coconut water as the entire diet, and found that they did not get hungry, did not get tired, and lost weight consistently, though he cautioned that the weight loss was sometimes too rapid. He contrasted the coconut profile with high-carbohydrate foods, which flood the body with sugar and force an entirely different metabolic pathway with far more damaging waste products.

He was careful to say that fifteen percent of the protein in the diet goes toward pyruvate, but that this does not mean fifteen percent of food by volume should be protein eaten without fat. Rather, fat must always accompany meat so that only the necessary fifteen percent is diverted into pyruvate and the remaining eighty-five percent of that protein is preserved for structural and regenerative functions.

The central argument Aajonus made for pyruvate-based glycogen over carbohydrate-based glycogen rested on the dramatic difference in advanced glycation end product production. He cited Columbia University research, which he variously identified as coming from a laboratory at Millhouse associated with Columbia University in New York or from a laboratory in New York State or New York City, which found that when the body builds glycogen from carbohydrates, it stores between seventy and ninety percent of the resulting advanced glycation end products in the body for a lifetime. In a healthy individual this rate was seventy percent. In someone with kidney problems or diabetes it rose to ninety percent.

When the body builds glycogen from pyruvate instead, using glucagon as the intermediary, the advanced glycation end product yield is only seven to eight percent, with twelve percent being the upper range seen in some individuals. Aajonus pointed out that the human body can handle up to twelve percent of these byproducts per day without storing any of them. This means that when glycogen is made from pyruvate, not a single molecule of advanced glycation end product accumulates in the body, whereas carbohydrate consumption results in massive lifelong accumulation.

He described what these accumulated advanced glycation end products do. They are sticky, thick, pasty, and gummy, like syrup or molasses, and they infiltrate the blood, the neurological fluid, and the lymphatic system. When cells pass each other in sticky fluid, they adhere. Nerve synapses fire improperly or fail to fire at all. Ganglia and axons cannot pulsate normally and bulge instead. The blood thickens and moves more slowly, reducing oxygen transport. He said these effects explain why people feel sluggish, mentally foggy, and emotionally unstable when their diet is carbohydrate-heavy, and why the same problems resolve when the body shifts to pyruvate-based glycogen production.

He also described the tissue-level consequences of long-term advanced glycation end product accumulation. These byproducts tend to store in the skin, organs, and glands, causing drying and dehydration of the skin, wrinkling, and deterioration of organ function. Some cancers were also associated in his account with this accumulation. He contrasted this with pyruvate-derived glycogen, which produces no storable byproduct whatsoever, saying "not one percent do you hold in the body." He observed that the acronym AGE is apt because these byproducts do cause aging.

He noted that dairy, when used as a glycogen source, produces advanced glycation end products at roughly twenty percent, which is substantially better than the seventy to ninety percent from other carbohydrates but still worse than the seven to eight percent from pyruvate. This placed dairy in an intermediate category and explained why he did not recommend morning smoothies with milk and fruit as a substitute for meat-based pyruvate production.

He performed a direct comparison test with children, feeding some of them fruit in the morning along with fat and cheese, and feeding others meat and fat in the morning. The children who had the meat and fat showed twenty percent greater clarity, precision, directness, and thoroughness in their responses compared to the children who had the fruit. He said children should not eat vegetable juices at all and presented this as empirical evidence of the mental effects of carbohydrate-derived glycogen versus pyruvate-derived glycogen.

Aajonus consistently described glucagon as the enzymatic or hormonal agent that converts pyruvate into usable glycogen. He contrasted this with insulin, which converts dietary carbohydrate into glycogen. He described the glucagon pathway as producing a glycogen that is "a little different" from carbohydrate-derived glycogen but functionally equivalent for running the brain and nervous system, with the crucial distinction being the near-zero advanced glycation end product output.

He described insulin's role as handling the excess carbohydrate load that the body was never designed to process in large quantities. Lucy, the 3.8-million-year-old hominid fossil, had a pancreas two and a half times smaller than the modern human pancreas, and other ancient hominid remains spanning from one million to nearly five million years in age all show similarly small pancreases. Aajonus used this as evidence that the pancreas was originally a minor gland that handled a small carbohydrate intake, not a constantly overworked insulin factory. The modern enlarged pancreas, in his view, was a pathological adaptation to grain- and starch-based diets, the carbohydrate mania of grain-based civilization forcing the pancreas to produce massive amounts of insulin to handle the constant carbohydrate load.

He described glucagon as a clean-burning, cleanly utilized substance that, unlike insulin, does not produce the massive toxic residue of advanced glycation end products. The entire glucagon-pyruvate pathway, in his account, was the original human glycogen-production system, operating efficiently on a diet of raw animal protein and fat with minimal carbohydrate. Returning to a pyruvate-based diet allows the pancreas to return toward its natural low-demand function and, over time, to heal.

One of the most detailed and specific applications of pyruvate in Aajonus's teaching concerned the first seven hours after waking. He stated that the body determines how it will build its glycogen for the entire day within the first six to seven hours after waking from a long sleep period, which for the average person waking around six in the morning means by approximately noon. Whatever substrate the body uses to build glycogen during that window becomes the established pattern for the day's neurological and blood fuel.

If the person eats high-carbohydrate food during that window, the body builds glycogen from carbohydrate, producing the sticky, AGE-laden fuel that compromises mental clarity and neurological function for the rest of the day. If the person avoids high-carbohydrate food during that window and instead eats protein, the body builds its glycogen from pyruvate, resulting in clean, non-sticky neurological fuel that persists through the rest of the day. After noon, some carbohydrate can be introduced without disrupting the pyruvate-based glycogen pattern already established.

He described drinking milk or having a fruit smoothie in the morning as damaging "for the rest of the day," because the sugar from the milk and the sugar from the fruit immediately prompts the body to build carbohydrate-based glycogen, locking in a sticky-fluid state for the entire morning and establishing the carbohydrate pathway for the day's glycogen production. He specifically noted that eating fruit in a morning smoothie alongside eggs and milk would cause the body to pull sugar from both the milk and the fruit, produce sticky carbohydrate-derived glycogen, and undermine the neurological clarity that pyruvate-based glycogen would otherwise provide.

Vegetable juice, by contrast, does not trigger the carbohydrate-glycogen pathway because it contains what Aajonus called negative carbohydrates, meaning carbohydrates that require more energy to process than they provide. For this reason he recommended vegetable juice as the first food upon waking, to alkalize the blood and prepare the digestive tract without setting the carbohydrate-glycogen pattern.

The recommended morning sequence began with vegetable juice upon waking. Twenty to forty-five minutes later, cheese is eaten. Ten minutes after the cheese, an egg is sucked down. Five to ten minutes after that, another egg is sucked. The egg provides rapid pyruvate material because egg white is broken down quickly, especially when mixed with bacteria from the mouth, allowing the pyruvate glucose-glycogen to reach the brain within seconds of ingestion. After the eggs, a meat meal with fat follows. Cheese and honey can be added approximately thirty minutes after the meat meal for mineral replenishment, timing that avoids the cheese being used primarily to absorb poisons rather than to deliver minerals.

He described the cheese-and-food timing as a cycle. Cheese ten minutes before the food, then the food, with twenty-five minutes of active eating time before the body begins dumping poisons again into the digestive tract. If the meal takes longer, cheese must be reintroduced to continue absorbing poisons.

For people with Crohn's disease or serious digestive problems, he recommended starting with four or five eggs in the morning, using the cheese-and-egg cycling protocol to keep the stomach clear of poisons while ensuring enough pyruvate material reaches the brain and nervous system.

Aajonus returned repeatedly to the principle that fat must accompany protein in order for pyruvate to function correctly in the diet. Without fat in the meal, the body is deprived of its primary fuel source and is forced to convert a much greater proportion of dietary protein into pyruvate to use as energy. While pyruvate is itself a clean fuel, this overconsumption of protein as fuel wastes the structural and regenerative value of meat and eggs, which Aajonus regarded as the body's primary building materials for cellular reproduction, glandular repair, and tissue regeneration.

When fat is eaten with meat, the body has a ready fuel source and limits pyruvate conversion to approximately fifteen percent, the amount the citric acid cycle requires. The remaining eighty-five percent of the protein then goes toward cell regeneration, rebuilding cells that are alive, and supporting cellular division. He described this as ensuring that nutrients are used in the proper way at the proper time.

His recommended minimum was three ounces of fat with a half pound of meat. He often specified one to three tablespoons of butter per meat meal, and sometimes used five or six tablespoons when he included ingredients that helped digest the fat, such as onion or garlic. He described his standard recommendation for most adults as two ounces of cream and three tablespoons of butter with each meat meal, and advised two meat meals per day for most people, with three meat meals per day for those with hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, or diabetes.

He extended the principle to fish specifically, noting that fish is digested and absorbed very quickly, meaning a large proportion of it will turn into pyruvate rapidly unless fat is present to direct the body toward fat-as-fuel. He recommended eating fat with fish to prevent excessive pyruvate conversion and to allow the fish protein to go toward building the system rather than being burned as energy.

He described the practical consequence of eating meat without fat as the body turning nearly all of the protein into pyruvate and burning it as fuel, which he called "a waste of meat." He used milkshakes without fruit, cream, butter, and eggs as the primary fat accompaniments. He also noted that people with sugar problems are particularly prone to converting protein into pyruvate and burning it, meaning that for those individuals, including fat in every protein meal is especially critical.

He pointed out a further application. If someone is eating high-carbohydrate foods alongside fat, the fat slows the sugar's absorption and directs it toward the muscles as fuel rather than toward the brain and nervous system, reducing the sticky glycogen problem there. High-carbohydrate foods eaten with fat in the afternoon, after the glycogen-formation window has closed, are used for detoxification and muscle fuel rather than as the primary brain and nervous system fuel substrate.

Aajonus described in detailed neurological terms why pyruvate-derived glycogen produces superior brain and nervous system function. When neurological fluid is clean and non-sticky, synapses fire rapidly and accurately. The ganglia and axons pulsate normally, transmitting nerve signals without delay or misfiring. Aajonus described his own mental performance during workshops as evidence of this, saying he could maintain continuous, detailed, multi-threaded discourse for hours because his brain ran on pyruvate-derived glycogen rather than carbohydrate-derived glycogen. He noted that as a child he was not capable of this, and that his mental performance improved in direct proportion to his adoption of a meat-and-fat-centered diet that generates pyruvate rather than carbohydrate-based glycogen.

He contrasted clean pyruvate-derived neurology with the sticky fluid produced by carbohydrate-based glycogen. When the neurological fluid is thick with advanced glycation end products, synapses can misfire, stick to the walls of axons, or fail to complete their transmission. Ganglions and axons bulge. The result is the experience of lost thoughts, forgotten words, mental fog, and difficulty with sustained concentration. He described it as similar to trying to fire a synapse through syrup. He noted that even a single morning of high-carbohydrate eating would set this sticky pattern in motion for the entire day.

He also pointed out that high carbohydrate consumption leads to over-excitation of the nervous system, the manic, hyperactive, sugar-driven state visible in children after eating sweets and in adults who binge on fruit. Pyruvate, because it produces a clean and non-sticky glycogen, supports calm, sustained neurological function without the excitatory spike and crash pattern of carbohydrate-based glycogen.

Aajonus gave egg white a specific and important role in pyruvate production. He stated that the body makes a lot of pyruvate from egg white, and that egg white is one of the richest protein sources for this purpose. He recommended raw eggs sucked directly so that saliva and mouth bacteria are mixed with the egg, which he said allows the egg to digest in twenty-seven minutes without requiring hydrochloric acid or digestive enzymes, because egg molecules are very small. This speed of digestion means the pyruvate material reaches the brain and nervous system rapidly, compared to six to ten hours for milk.

He stated in one workshop, "Make sure you get enough pyruvate from the egg white to build the glycogen from the brain and nervous system from the protein, which has no stickiness. Your pyruvate sugar is made into glycogen. No sticky byproduct."

Aajonus used his personal experience of sucking eggs during workshops as a practical demonstration of pyruvate's role as immediate brain fuel. He described the experience of feeling a thought slip away or losing a train of thought as a sign that pyruvate-derived glycogen in the brain was running low, and he responded by immediately sucking a raw egg. Because egg molecules are small and require only bacterial action rather than hydrochloric acid or complex enzymatic digestion, the egg begins to digest in about twenty-seven minutes when the egg is first mixed with bacteria in the mouth, and the resulting pyruvate reaches the brain very rapidly. He described the restoration of focus and mental clarity as occurring within seconds.

He said he never turned to high-carbohydrate foods or starches in this situation, as those would produce sticky glycogen and impair the very function he was trying to restore. He went for solid, clean protein, specifically raw egg, and was able to continue detailed, sustained intellectual work for hours on that basis.

Aajonus described a pathological scenario in which the body, lacking adequate fat intake, pulls fats from glands and bones. When bone and glandular fats are depleted, minerals are pulled with them, and then proteins begin to be consumed as well, causing the body to "evaporate" or dissolve its own structural tissues. In this state, the body converts protein into pyruvate not at the clean fifteen-percent rate of a well-fed system but at much higher rates, using protein as a primary fuel rather than as a building material.

He described this directly in one workshop: "The actual ignitor becomes the fuel, which are the sugars. The sugars and the proteins are made into a burning fuel, which is a pyruvate." He saw this as a sign of a malnourished or fat-deficient body trying to keep running on inadequate resources.

He also described a related problem for people who avoided fat with their meat meals. Without fat present, the body turns nearly all the protein into pyruvate and burns it as fuel, leaving very little protein available for cell regeneration, cellular division, or structural repair. He said this was why he recommended fat with every meat meal without exception, calling fat the essential companion to protein that ensures protein's structural value is preserved.

He noted that people with existing sugar problems are especially prone to this pattern of converting excess protein into pyruvate for fuel, making fat supplementation with meals even more important for them than for metabolically healthy individuals.

While Aajonus was critical of excess carbohydrate consumption, he did not eliminate carbohydrate entirely. He described the five percent carbohydrate contribution in the citric acid cycle as essential. The carbohydrate or vitamin C combines with pyruvate in the cycle to allow fat to be used as energy. Without this small carbohydrate contribution, the fat-utilization process cannot proceed as efficiently. He said that vitamin C in its natural food form, from sources like pineapple or oranges, supplied this catalytic five percent, and that one fruit per day is generally sufficient for most people.

He distinguished between carbohydrate used in this small catalytic role and carbohydrate consumed in quantities large enough to become the primary glycogen substrate. The former is beneficial and necessary, while the latter is what produces the massive advanced glycation end product accumulation and neurological congestion that he described in detail. He said the body makes fats from carbohydrates in the form of acetates, but those burn quickly and provide only a brief burst of energy, requiring large amounts to sustain output, whereas normal animal fats utilized through the pyruvate-citric acid pathway provide two and a half times more sustained energy.

Fruit, if eaten, should be reserved for the afternoon, after the glycogen-formation window has closed. At that point, fruit consumed with fat functions as a detoxifier and as a modest carbohydrate contribution to the citric acid cycle rather than as a primary glycogen substrate. He said he personally ate at most one piece of fruit per day and sometimes went days without fruit, and that athletes who require more fat conversion might use slightly more, always paired with fat to time-release the sugars and direct them toward muscle fuel rather than nervous system fuel.

Aajonus placed pyruvate in direct contrast to acrylamides, which he described as highly toxic byproducts of cooking carbohydrates and proteins together at high heat. Acrylamides accumulate in the body, contribute to cancer risk, and were suppressed as a finding by industrial and political pressure, with researchers losing their academic tenure for publishing the findings. He stated that acrylamides cause approximately sixty percent more cancers.

Pyruvate represents the body's internal answer to the acrylamide and advanced glycation end product problem. When the body makes its glycogen from pyruvate via the glucagon pathway, no acrylamides are produced and the metabolic process is clean. By contrast, cooked carbohydrates already look to the body as if they have been processed, causing the body to skip the glycogen-conversion step and convert them directly into advanced glycation end products and glycotoxins, which then store at seventy to ninety percent.

Aajonus addressed pyruvate explicitly in the context of blood sugar problems, hypoglycemia, diabetes, and depression caused by blood sugar dysregulation. He described the conventional cycle in which over-consumption of carbohydrates, including cooked carbohydrates and even raw fruit in excess, stimulates the liver and pancreas to over-dump sugar into the blood, triggering an insulin response that then drops the blood sugar too low, producing hypoglycemia, and eventually exhausting the pancreas into diabetes.

The remedy he proposed was not carbohydrate restriction alone but active replacement of the carbohydrate-glycogen system with the pyruvate-glycogen system, accomplished by eating large amounts of raw meat. When raw meat is the primary dietary protein source, the body forms its blood sugar from pyruvate, producing clean neurological fuel with minimal waste and no stored advanced glycation end products. He said this approach, combined with raw fats to support protein assimilation and reducing fruit to once daily in the afternoon, feeds and regenerates the liver and pancreas over a period of many years, eventually repairing them to where they stop automatically over-dumping sugar and over-producing insulin.

In the diabetes context, Aajonus defined the condition as an impaired ability to utilize carbohydrate-based blood sugar or protein blood sugar (pyruvate) due to insufficient production of insulin or faulty insulin manufactured by the pancreas. He described medicinal insulin as causing poor sugar assimilation and metabolism and causing the pancreas to further deteriorate, with the poorly assimilated sugars most often storing in the extremities and causing tissue deterioration leading to gangrene and amputation.

His dietary approach to diabetes via pyruvate involved eliminating carbohydrate-based glycogen production by shifting to a meat-and-fat-centered diet and allowing the body to make glycogen from pyruvate via glucagon instead of insulin. Because pyruvate requires glucagon rather than insulin for its conversion to glycogen, the insulin-deficient or insulin-faulty pancreas is bypassed as the primary glycogen-production mechanism. He recommended three meat meals per day rather than two for people with diabetes, hypoglycemia, or hyperglycemia.

He noted that unheated honey in substantial quantities, approximately three-quarters of a cup throughout the day, can replace the missing insulin function while the pancreas heals, and that raw meat, by shifting the body toward pyruvate production, reduces the demand on the damaged insulin system.

He also noted that people with kidney problems or diabetes store advanced glycation end products at the maximum rate of ninety percent, making the shift from carbohydrate-based to pyruvate-based glycogen even more critical for these individuals, since even more of the carbohydrate waste would accumulate in their systems.

Aajonus connected pyruvate directly to mood and mental health, particularly depression. He stated that for some people, simply changing to a raw diet that includes large amounts of raw meat relieves depression because the body shifts to pyruvate-based blood sugar, which allows clean body serums throughout the nerves. For others, adding raw fats to the diet is sufficient because without fat, proteins cannot be properly assimilated and therefore cannot be converted to pyruvate effectively.

He contrasted the neurological environment created by pyruvate-derived glycogen, which is clean, fluid, and conductive to proper synaptic firing, with the sticky, congested neurological environment created by carbohydrate-derived glycogen. He characterized depression, in part, as a consequence of impaired nerve transmission in a system congested with advanced glycation end products, and pyruvate-based nutrition as the mechanism by which that congestion is resolved.

He connected this to the liver and pancreas as well, stating that eating raw meat with raw fat and reducing fruit intake to once daily in the afternoon feeds and regenerates the liver and pancreas, and over many years repairs them to the point where they cease to automatically over-dump sugar into the blood and over-produce insulin. The over-dumping of sugar and over-production of insulin is one of the physiological mechanisms behind blood-sugar-related depression, and pyruvate-based nutrition addresses its root cause rather than its symptoms.

The Primal Diet morning protocol as Aajonus described it in detail was essentially a pyruvate-production protocol. Beginning with vegetable juice to alkalize and supply minerals and enzymes, then cheese to absorb intestinal poisons, then eggs and a meat meal with butter or another fat, the entire sequence was designed to ensure that when the body built its glycogen for the day during the first six to seven hours of waking, it used pyruvate as the substrate rather than carbohydrate.

He recommended avoiding all high-carbohydrate foods, including milk and smoothies containing fruit, during this window. He noted that milk contains a significant sugar load and that even raw milk consumed in the morning could trigger carbohydrate-based glycogen production, setting a sticky pattern for the day.

After the morning meat meal, he recommended waiting two to three hours before a milkshake to soothe the nervous system, then another vegetable juice, and then a fruit meal as the day's single detoxification-stimulating meal. The meat meal always included butter, one and a half to three tablespoons as a baseline, with higher amounts used when digestion support was needed. The milkshake after the meat meal contained no fruit.

He also recommended cheese and honey about thirty minutes after the meat meal to supply minerals for the day, specifying that this timing avoided the cheese being used primarily to absorb poisons rather than to deliver minerals.

Aajonus described the eighty-fifteen-five ratio as the foundation from which he derived the entire structure of the Primal Diet. He said he arrived at this ratio by studying what the body told him it could do, examining the proportions of how humans utilize fat and energy in the citric acid cycle, and then assembling a diet to match those proportions as closely as possible in daily food choices. He called this the "highest quality of fuel that your body can produce for energy" and described it as the reason the diet is high in raw animal fat and protein with minimal fruit and no grain.