Radiation Therapy

Aajonus described the mechanism of radiation damage through a sustained analogy he returned to in nearly every account of his own history. He compared healthy, living bone and spinal tissue to malleable clay that is soft, permeable, and biologically responsive. When clay is fired in a kiln at even the lowest temperatures, Cone 2 or Cone 4, it becomes a hard, brittle solid. Fired at higher temperatures, Cone 10, it becomes pottery. Taken to the extreme, it becomes glass or porcelain. This is what he said radiation does to living tissue: it burns the moisture, flexibility, and biological permeability out of the substance and leaves behind something rigid, dense, and incapable of normal cellular exchange.

In his case, the radiation beam was directed at the tumor on his incision but was broad enough that it reached his entire spine from the tailbone to the brain stem. The machine swept back and forth across the area in a slow, continuous arc. Each pass took approximately 20 to 30 seconds. The beam would make one full sweep, shut off, reposition, and sweep again, repeating this cycle for approximately 10 to 15 minutes total, once a week, for ten full weeks. He estimated each session was equivalent to approximately 2,000 standard x-rays, with some accounts placing the total exposure at approximately 10,000 x-rays per session. One x-ray, he noted, takes a millisecond. These sessions ran for 10 to 30 seconds at a time.

The cauterization of his spine was not immediate. It developed progressively over roughly four to six months following the completion of the ten-week course. Within that period, the spinal tissue gradually hardened and lost all functional mobility. His range of motion was reduced to an almost imperceptible shifting of the torso, any movement beyond which produced immediate and severe pain. Sitting down in a chair required three to five minutes of careful maneuvering, and often when he reached the seated position a spasm would force him back to standing and the process would start again. Lying on a soft surface such as a bed or couch was impossible. He was forced to sleep on a hardwood floor because only a flat, unyielding surface reduced the pain enough to allow rest, and even then he could not sleep more than ten minutes at a time before waking in excruciating pain.

The radiation caused the vertebrae to grind against the spinal nerves whenever he moved, because the flexibility of the spine that would normally absorb and distribute movement had been eliminated entirely. He described the sensation as the vertebrae pinching, cutting, and lacerating the nerves with any motion.

Radiation also stops cells from regenerating and from dividing. He said this is the core mechanism by which radiation prevents healing. You do not get younger, you do not get stronger, you get old and diseased and ultimately develop cancers from the very treatment meant to address cancer.

Aajonus was unequivocal that his multiple myeloma, which is cancer of the blood and bone, was caused directly by the radiation therapy. He described this not as a rare adverse effect but as a predictable and known consequence of the treatment, one that the doctors who administered it were fully aware of but did not disclose.

He developed blood and bone cancer within approximately six weeks of completing the radiation therapy. Leukemia as a result of radiation-damaged bone marrow was also something he named specifically, explaining that the bone marrow throughout his body, including all of his ribs, was damaged by the radiation that spread throughout the body during his treatment. Doctors then told him he had a one percent chance of living and that chemotherapy was his only remaining option.

He stated this sequence plainly and repeatedly: he went in for radiation to treat a tumor on a surgical incision. That radiation gave him multiple myeloma. He did not have blood and bone cancer before the radiation. The doctors created that condition through their treatment and then presented a new and more dangerous treatment as the solution to the condition they had caused.

In his published account in "The Recipe for Living Without Disease," he noted that radiation therapy would cause blood and bone cancers, cauterize his spine, greatly restrict movement, give him psoriasis and bursitis, prevent proper healing, and that chemotherapy would subsequently cause lymphoma. In total he ended up with five cancers: stomach, blood, bone, and lymph, with the blood and bone as direct results of radiation and the lymphoma as a result of chemotherapy administered afterward.

Approximately six weeks after the radiation therapy was completed, a secondary effect manifested in the bones around his teeth. The body's response to the radioactively charged minerals introduced by radiation therapy was to draw calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus from existing bone to neutralize the radioactive iodine and other radioactively charged minerals such as barium. His body ate its own bones in the attempt to neutralize these radioactive substances. All of the bone around his teeth dissolved entirely, leaving his teeth dangling in his gums with no structural support.

When he closed his jaw and pressed his teeth together, or bit down in any way, he bled profusely, losing up to half a cup of blood at a time. He was receiving one to three blood transfusions per week to replace what he was losing from his gums. His gums turned purple, which he later described as a visible indicator of radiation poisoning, and noted that even decades after the radiation treatments, his gums continued to bleed during teeth brushing, though by that point only very slightly, and that they remained purple for decades as a sign of residual radiation poisoning.

Doctors wanted to pull all of his teeth and give him dentures. He refused. Everything he consumed had to be blended into liquid form and drunk through large straws. His diet at this period consisted of things like powdered donuts blended with RC Cola or 7-Up, Rice Krispies with Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, all consumed through large-bore straws. He continued in this state until he began consuming raw dairy, after which, over approximately one year of drinking large amounts of raw milk, the bone around his teeth was restored and he was able to chew again with minimal gum bleeding.

Aajonus described several mechanisms the body employs when confronted with radioactively charged matter it cannot dissolve or eliminate efficiently. He explained that the body will attempt to surround radioactive material with mummified cells, essentially walling it off the way humans use twelve to fifteen feet of concrete to contain radioactive material in industrial settings. The body cannot achieve that level of containment, however, and the radioactively charged minerals remain circulating and irradiating surrounding tissue.

He described the radioactive charging of iodine as particularly significant. Iodine from iodized table salt, which he was compelled to consume as a child by his father, was distributed throughout his bones and tissues. When radiation therapy irradiated his body, that existing iodine became radioactively charged. Any metal in the body behaves the same way. He stated that once charged this way, such minerals become radioactive for a minimum of 55,000 years, and if the substance is uranium or something similar, the half-life extends to 550,000 years. He noted that he still experienced, on average about once per year, intense episodes of radiation nausea and an iodine taste, 43 years after the original treatments, which he took as evidence that the radioactively charged iodine persisted in his body far longer than physics textbooks suggest.

The body's attempt to neutralize this contamination by pulling minerals from bone explains the widespread bone degeneration that occurs in cancer patients who receive radiation. He connected this directly to why cancer patients treated by conventional medicine frequently develop osteoporosis, and why he personally lost all the bone around his teeth.

He also noted that radioactive material located anywhere in the body continuously irradiates surrounding tissue, preventing cell division and healing in that area, causing ongoing tissue destruction, producing weakness, disease, and leukemia as ongoing consequences of having radiation deposited in the body.

Aajonus was aware that modern radiation therapy differs from what he received in 1968. He noted that in his era the treatment involved long, continuous sweeping exposures of ten minutes or more per session, whereas by the time he was giving workshops, the treatment had been restructured into microsecond-on, microsecond-on pulses. He did not conclude from this that modern radiation therapy is safe or acceptable. His core objection was to the effect of radiation on living tissue regardless of delivery method.

When a woman in his account sought his opinion about pinpoint radiation for her condition, and when his own mother was told she would receive pinpoint radiation for a cancerous lymph node after a lumpectomy in 1993, he stated in both cases that there is no technology capable of controlling the extent of radiation fallout, that there is no way to prevent the radiation from affecting tissue beyond the targeted area, and that the doctors' assurances to the contrary were simply false. His mother had eleven lymph glands removed and then underwent pinpoint radiation. She subsequently required supplemental oxygen for seven to eight years, which he attributed to the irradiation of her lungs, which sit directly behind the breast tissue that was treated. He described the medical professionals who made those assurances as "greedy, freaking, liars, and harmers" in his own words.

He went to her doctor and told that doctor directly that if he ever treated his mother again, he had friends who would ruin the doctor's practice and his family. He instructed the doctor to tell his mother he would not treat her.

He was direct about this. If a person was currently receiving radiation or chemotherapy, he would not take them on as a patient. His stated policy was: "No, if you are taking radiation or chemo, I won't treat you."

His reasoning was that radiation keeps cells from regenerating, creates more dead cells, and burns them to death. When he tried to help someone rebuild while they were still receiving radiation or chemotherapy, they would go into immediate detoxification, begin vomiting, and become frightened that the diet was making them sick. He acknowledged that the diet itself was not causing the vomiting, but rather that it was triggering the release of toxins that the radiation had created, and that the person in that state was already panicked and would not be able to correctly attribute what was happening.

He further explained that as long as a person is still receiving radiation, the body's resources are entirely engaged in dealing with that active poison. The body does not have the capacity to clean out old stored toxins during this period. What Aajonus's diet can do under those circumstances is make it easier by giving the body clean-burning fuel to handle what is in the blood, but it does not initiate deeper detoxification while the radiation is ongoing.

He described one woman who had undergone extensive radiation therapy and whom he did agree to help. He told her: "You've got a good chance of getting well, even though you had had a lot of radiation therapy, but it's going to be difficult because the symptoms of radiation poisoning are mass vomiting, nauseousness, and irritability." He warned her that when the radiation begins to actually purge from her body through the diet, she would find herself vomiting radioactive matter. He described this as the body dumping it directly into the stomach for expulsion. He said it would be difficult alongside the already-occurring vomiting from dead cells being expelled.

He also noted that chemotherapy congests the lymph system and caused him personally to develop lymphoma, that chemotherapy poisons approximately one billion healthy cells for every one cancer cell it addresses, and that patients who have undergone either radiation or surgery of some sort were the ones in his experience who did not respond to the Primal Diet when they had expected it to work. He referenced research by Hardin B. Jones, an emeritus medical physicist and physiologist at Berkeley, who concluded from his research in the late 1970s that individuals who refused any kind of cancer therapy lived an average of twelve years, while those who received chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery, or any combination thereof, fared substantially worse.

Aajonus compiled a list of specific remedies he found effective in his own body and in working with patients who had suffered radiation treatments. He identified animal fat as the quickest way to clean radiation out of the body, stating that animal fat has a tendency to clean out toxic tissue and drugs. He said cream is the only fat he knows of that soothes the nervous system. He connected summer cravings for ice cream to the sun's radiation beating down on people who lack sufficient fats in the tissue of their skin, explaining that radiation is normally absorbed into animal fat in the skin and transformed into vitamin D and other complex fats and cholesterols. This logic extended directly to therapeutic uses for radiation poisoning: replacing the damaged and depleted fats with abundant raw animal fat supports the body's capacity to buffer and neutralize the ongoing radiation damage.

His specific remedies, in the order and detail he recorded them:

Organic no-salt raw cheeses eaten frequently absorb and neutralize free-radical radioactive minerals. He instructed people who are highly toxic from radiation to eat a piece of cheese every fifteen minutes, and ten minutes before eating anything else, so that the cheese can absorb toxins in the digestive system before they can enter the rest of the body. He also recommended grating a small amount of cheese directly into meals as a way to ensure the cheese is present to absorb toxins even when a person cannot manage the full frequent-cheese schedule.

Aloe vera gel eaten directly from the plant, excluding the green skin, soothes and heals radiation burn.

Oranges and avocados eaten together neutralize radiation, particularly the nausea and burn associated with radiation poisoning. He worked with at least a hundred people who suffered radiation treatments and observed this combination lessening radiation poisoning symptoms repeatedly. He noted he could not be certain whether it actually removed radiation from the body or only ameliorated the symptoms, but that when taken regularly, radiation symptoms eased dramatically.

Pineapple and no-salt raw cheeses eaten together help dissolve cellular radiation damage and harness the byproducts.

Papaya eaten with no-salt raw cheeses helps prevent scarring from radiation burn.

No-salt raw butter eaten with no-salt raw cheeses helps prevent radioactive substances from entering cells and buffers nuclear exchanges.

No-salt raw butter eaten with unheated honey supports digestion and healing.

One ounce of raw milk consumed once hourly helps protect the intestines and nerves.

Clay baths, specifically applying wet clay over the body and keeping it moist, help draw radiation and radioactive particles out through the skin.

One tablespoon of moist Terramin clay blended in three ounces of raw milk, consumed two to four times daily, helps draw out and neutralize radiation and radioactive particles through the intestines. He referenced the preparation instructions for moist Terramin clay as being on pages 181 and 182 of "We Want to Live."

For raw milk that may be contaminated with radioactive fallout, he recommended adding one tablespoon of moist Terramin clay per quart of raw milk, or four tablespoons per gallon, allowing the clay to settle, then drinking the milk above the settled clay up to approximately three-quarters of an inch above the settled clay line. The milk settled with the clay is discarded. He noted that a small additional tablespoon of moist clay could be added to the drinking portion for further peace of mind, but advised consuming it with the milk rather than separately to avoid losing too many beneficial minerals.

He also addressed the medical industry's promotion of iodine supplementation for radiation protection, rejecting it entirely. He stated that colloidal iodine supplements, which he himself tried following instruction from alternative doctors, caused nausea, impotence, and anxiety, the same symptoms as radiation poisoning. He stopped after ten days. He described the mainstream recommendation to use iodine to protect against thyroid cancer from radiation as pharmaceutical industry-backed misdirection, noting that iodine in supplement form is a chemical element found only in rock when not in a bioactive state, not a form the body can safely use.

Aajonus's recovery from the spinal cauterization caused by his radiation therapy was gradual and took years, not weeks or months. By age 27, he had gained enough health through raw foods that he only needed approximately two hours of yoga daily to keep his spine from being in constant pain, but the spine was still cauterized, still damaged from the radiation. He understood this through the same ceramic analogy: a fired clay cup cannot be made soft and malleable again because it is no longer a living thing. But the human body is alive and can replace bone cells. The limiting factor is that bone cells live seven to seven and a half years, meaning it takes the body that long to fully replace all the bone cells in a given area. When there is the level of damage he sustained, combined with blocked circulation from the rigidity, the process is slower still.

He described the pain as finally stopping significantly when he began eating raw cheese with onion, a combination he credited specifically with addressing the radiation damage that had remained a source of chronic pain for over two decades. He noted that the pivot point of the radiation machine had been fixed, so a specific point on his spine received the highest concentration of radiation during each of the ten passes per session over ten weeks, and it was that point in his mid-back where he continued to experience pain whenever he used his arms, such as during juicing. The cheese and onion combination addressed that specifically.

His teeth and mandible bone took approximately one year of drinking large quantities of raw dairy to restore. He described this as relatively quick given the extent of the damage. Those teeth, though many were capped, remained his own teeth at the time of his workshops, which he offered as direct evidence of the restorative power of raw dairy.

His gums remained purple for decades following the radiation treatments, and he continued to experience minor bleeding during teeth brushing 43 years after the radiation, though that bleeding was very slight compared to the profuse bleeding of the original injury. He continued to experience approximately one episode per year of intense radiation nausea and an iodine taste, which he interpreted as the body continuing to process and purge the radioactively charged iodine deposited during treatment.

He was on a hardwood floor for the worst period of his recovery, unable to use a bed, couch, or any soft surface. The only relief he found during the acute phase was soaking in a hot bath with large amounts of Epsom salts, which was the only way he could sleep more than ten minutes consecutively during that period.

For reference, the sequence he described across multiple workshop accounts is as follows. Surgery occurred November 27, 1967. He was approximately 20 to 21 years old. The incision became tumorous within approximately six weeks, though in some accounts he places this at one to two months. Radiation therapy began February 12, 1968, by one specific account. Ten weeks of intense irradiation followed, once per week. Within six weeks of completing the radiation therapy, all the bone around his teeth had dissolved. Within six months of the radiation therapy, his spine was completely cauterized and he was functionally an invalid, sleeping on a hardwood floor, unable to sleep more than ten minutes at a time. Blood and bone cancer was diagnosed within this same period. He then underwent approximately three months of chemotherapy, which caused lymphoma and complete paralysis from the pectorals down, hair loss, and further deterioration. He was told he had a one percent chance of living. After refusing further treatment, he eventually encountered raw food and began his recovery.

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