Red Blood Cells

Red blood cells are born and mature exclusively in the bone marrow. Aajonus was emphatic about this, correcting the widespread belief that the spleen manufactures blood. The spleen stores blood; it does not produce it. Blood reproduction is entirely a bone marrow process, accomplished through cellular division: one cell divides into two, those divide further, and the cells grow until they reach maturity. Once mature, red blood cells migrate or are released into the bloodstream to begin their work.

He specified that in the fetus, blood production begins elsewhere, passing through the kidneys before settling permanently into the bone marrow. By approximately 46 months of development, bone marrow becomes the sole site of blood cell production and remains so for the rest of life.

The primary bone marrow sites he identified as most productive are the large joints and long bones: the knees, the hip joints, the femur joints, the elbows, and the shoulders. The more bone marrow a given site contains, the more red blood cells it generates. This is why Aajonus paid particular attention to the skin at the knees and elbows as diagnostic indicators. Flaky, dry, thickened skin building up at those joints, in his reading, pointed to problems in the marrow underlying them. Because the red blood cells pass through those joints as they are produced, inflammation or infection in a joint directly damages the young cells being made there, producing weak, immature, or mutated red blood cells that cannot carry adequate oxygen.

A red blood cell that enters the bloodstream before it is fully mature is, in Aajonus's description, essentially useless. It occupies space in the blood, consumes whatever nutrients are available in the bloodstream, but contributes nothing to oxygen transport or carbon dioxide removal. The result is what he called secondary anemia: a person can have a normal or even high red blood cell count and still be functionally anemic if the cells circulating are immature. All the red blood cells in the world, he said, still mean anemia if those red blood cells are not mature.

Normally, the bone marrow holds cells until they are ready. But when the bone marrow environment is heavily toxic, it cannot do this reliably. In those cases, the body may send immature cells to the spleen as a secondary maturation site, which Aajonus described as a workaround that adds complexity and compounds problems. This is not normal or healthy but rather a compensatory measure the body takes when the bone marrow is too contaminated to complete its work.

Aajonus described the spleen as functioning analogously to the gallbladder: not a producer of anything, but a storage vessel. The spleen holds a reserve of mature red blood cells, typically around a pint to a pint and a half for most people, and up to a quart or quart and a half in some individuals or under some conditions. White blood cells are stored there in much smaller proportions, approximately one percent, under normal conditions. In unhealthy people with overproduction of white blood cells, more white blood cells may accumulate in the spleen as well.

The evolutionary rationale he gave for the spleen's reserve was vivid and consistent across his talks. If a person swinging from a tree hit a sharp branch and lacerated the jugular vein, losing two cups, three cups, or even a quart and a half of blood before the wound clotted, that person would be immediately and severely anemic. Without enough red blood cells to transport oxygen to the muscles, they could not run, climb, or defend themselves from predators. They would become, as Aajonus put it directly, dinner for whatever cat or predator was nearby.

The spleen's function in that scenario is immediate. As soon as bleeding stops and the clot is established, the spleen begins dumping its stored red blood cells back into the bloodstream. The person is no longer anemic. They retain the energy and vitality to move, fight, and survive. Their body then has time, typically 60 to 90 days, to rebuild the blood supply through bone marrow production without facing the lethal vulnerability of active anemia.

He also described the spleen's role in temperature regulation through blood viscosity. When the body gets too hot, the spleen draws red blood cells out of the bloodstream, thinning the blood and cooling the body. When the body gets too cold, the spleen dumps red blood cells into the bloodstream, thickening the blood and warming the body. This mechanism operates continuously as a thermoregulatory tool.

In the context of menstruation, Aajonus noted that the spleen's reserve means a woman losing a significant volume of blood during her period does not need to become weak or anemic. The reserve replenishes what is lost almost immediately, allowing her to continue functioning normally. The bone marrow then works to rebuild the stored supply over the following days.

Aajonus reduced the function of red blood cells to one thing: transporting oxygen to every other cell in the body so that fat can be used as fuel. He framed fat as the body's primary and most efficient energy source, providing strength, stamina, and sustained energy in a way that carbohydrates or protein cannot match. The red blood cell is the delivery mechanism that makes fat metabolism possible. Without adequate oxygen transport, the body cannot oxidize fats or the acetates and acetones derived from other macronutrients, and energy production collapses.

He was specific that the blood was not designed to carry proteins, fats, or carbohydrates to cells as a primary function. That is the lymphatic system's job. The blood's role in nutrient delivery is a consequence of lymphatic system failure in modern, toxic people, not an intended design feature. Under healthy conditions, the blood does two things: red blood cells bring oxygen in, white blood cells take carbon dioxide out. Nothing more.

Carbon dioxide, in his description, is produced as a byproduct of cellular metabolism. White blood cells absorb it and carry it to the lungs for expulsion, or release it through the skin. Carbon monoxide, he distinguished, is a product of cooking and combustion, not natural body metabolism. If a person were not exposed to environmental pollution and were eating a raw diet, the white blood cells would not encounter the more damaging forms of carbon waste.

Red blood cells also contribute to body heat. Aajonus described healthy red blood cells as producing significant heat by consuming the waste products of white blood cell activity. He described this as red blood cells essentially eating their own waste by consuming the discards of white blood cells. The white blood cells, he said, get most of their nutrients from the intestinal tract, while red blood cells can draw on that source as well but to a lesser degree.

This heat-generating function depends on red blood cells being healthy, mature, and adequately nourished. A body with compromised red blood cells will struggle to maintain proper body temperature, adding thermoregulatory stress to all the other burdens of inadequate oxygen transport.

Because the bone marrow is approximately 60 percent fat, it becomes a primary storage site for fat-soluble industrial toxins, particularly heavy metals. Aajonus identified aluminum, lead, cadmium, and mercury as among the metals that concentrate in bone marrow and directly damage the environment in which red and white blood cells are produced. When red and white blood cells develop in contaminated marrow, they emerge weak, damaged, or mutated, incapable of carrying the full load of oxygen or removing the full load of carbon dioxide they were designed to handle.

The consequence is reduced energy, reduced vitality, and a body perpetually operating below its potential. He estimated that a person with compromised bone marrow might have red blood cells carrying only two-thirds or half the normal oxygen load, and that alone accounts for enormous loss of physical capacity. He recalled workers on his grandparents' farm in the 1940s throwing 30- to 60-pound bales of hay 12 to 15 feet into a loft as routine labor. He contrasted that with modern farmers who rely on forklifts even for their children, attributing the loss of that physical capacity directly to the degraded quality of red blood cells in modern people.

When contamination is severe enough, particularly with lead and cadmium in the bone marrow, the body may begin evicting immature red and white blood cells out of the marrow prematurely. These cells enter the bloodstream before they can function, and the spleen pulls them back out because they are useless there. The spleen is then working as a filter for immature cells rather than simply as a reserve, which Aajonus described as an unnatural and taxing burden on the organ.

In extreme cases of bone marrow contamination, he identified the pathway to leukemia: toxic overload in the marrow, cancer developing in the bone marrow itself, with harder bone cancer potentially originating from marrow as well.

Aajonus made a specific and detailed argument about table salt destroying red blood cells. His mechanism was that salt molecules, when they enter the bloodstream, clump together. A cell expecting a broad array of nutrients instead encounters a concentrated cluster of salt molecules roughly the same size as 90 different nutrient varieties combined. The cell cannot absorb the clump and, worse, the electromagnetic properties of the salt pull ions out of the cell. The cell can no longer feed itself. It shrivels like a grape drying into a raisin, and it dies.

He stated that two tiny grains of salt are sufficient to destroy two million red blood cells. He gave the scale: two million red blood cells fit on the head of a pin. That is not a large number relative to total blood volume, but he described someone eating salt at every meal as losing approximately three tablespoons of blood per day to this mechanism. Over time, this level of daily destruction outpaces the bone marrow's ability to replace the lost cells and steadily deteriorates the entire system.

He described the situation as a vicious cycle: the more salt consumed, the more water is needed to dissolve it; the more water consumed, the more minerals are needed; and most people reach for more salt to meet that mineral need. He recommended no salt for most people, with the exception of individuals with adrenal exhaustion, who might have a specific need for it.

Aajonus mentioned the phenomenon of leukocytosis in the context of cooked food. After eating a cooked meal, the white blood cell count rises significantly. He presented this as evidence that cooked food introduces substances the body treats as foreign or threatening, triggering an immune-like mobilization. The implications for red blood cells are indirect but real: a body constantly running elevated white blood cell counts in response to cooked food is diverting resources and creating a bloodstream environment where red blood cell function is chronically stressed.

Aajonus described what happens when a person goes too long without eating, particularly during the night. He set the threshold at approximately five hours. After five hours without food, the protein level in the bloodstream drops to near zero. At that point, red blood cells begin eating each other. He described this as the larger cells consuming the smaller ones, and noted that over eight to ten hours of sleep, somewhere between 50 and 200 red blood cells may be consumed by a single red blood cell. White blood cells, which normally eat only dead red blood cells, also begin consuming live ones when there is nothing else available.

He called this cannibalistic behavior a sign that the body is doing the best it can under the circumstances, keeping itself alive by recycling what it has, but it is far from optimal and contributes to chronic low-grade anemia and energy deficits that most people address with stimulants like coffee, caffeine, sugar, chocolate, or nicotine. His specific recommendation to counter this was to not allow more than five hours without food, including during the night. His nighttime protocol involved having a small milkshake before sleep, having half before bed and half during the night if waking, and eating cheese every half hour up to sleep. The underlying logic was to keep protein available in the bloodstream so that red blood cells had no need to consume each other.

In his live blood and iridology observations, Aajonus read the condition of red blood cells directly. A reading where the blood or the skin appears strongly red or ruddy indicated a high red blood cell count and, in his framework, suggested the person needed to eat more white meats rather than red meat. When white splotches predominated in a blood reading or in the coloration he observed, it indicated more white blood cells than red blood cells and signaled that red blood cells were not transporting oxygen adequately, with an excess of toxins requiring white blood cell activity. In that situation, he recommended red meat and naturally carbonated waters to strengthen the red blood cell population.

He noted that a blood reading reflects only that day's condition and can shift substantially from one day to the next. A person who appears to have a high white-to-red ratio one day may present as predominantly red another day depending on what they have eaten, how they have slept, and what detoxification is occurring.

He observed that in America it was rare to find people with genuinely good red blood cells. He remarked with some surprise when he encountered a group where most participants had reasonably healthy red blood cell status.

Aajonus consistently associated red meat with red blood cell production and oxygenation. He stated that fish and poultry primarily support white blood cells, not red blood cells, and that for a person who was pallid, jaundiced, weak, and visibly lacking in muscle, red meat was the necessary intervention, typically for three to six months, before other meats would be adequate. He acknowledged that healthy people could theoretically transmute any protein into whatever was needed, but that in the modern toxic population, the body needed a closer match between food and the cells being built, and red meat most directly supported red blood cell development.

He noted a caveat: some people eating only red meat developed blood that was too acidic, and he recommended eating one to three bites of fish with the red meat meal to counterbalance. If hemorrhoids appeared, he suggested eating fish exclusively for about a week before returning to a combination of fish or chicken with red meat.

For a person whose red blood cells were very weak, he suggested a formula including all the meats with emphasis on red meat, a pound of meat daily, raw eggs, dark berries such as blueberries, blackberries, and boysenberries, and specific vegetable juices with formula proportions of approximately 30 percent carrot, 25 percent celery, 25 percent cucumber puree, 10 percent cilantro, 5 percent zucchini, and 5 percent red beet, with one or two eggs added to each serving of no more than six ounces, taken no more than twice daily.

In a written response, Aajonus addressed a question about a son with too many red blood cells. He framed the condition as food-remediable if symptomatic, noting that mutations in blood cells occur from industrial chemical toxicity and that once stored toxicity is removed or contained, the condition can heal, including changes to RNA and DNA. He also stated that some individuals simply require higher red blood cell counts for their particular bodies, and that symptoms rather than test numbers are the meaningful diagnostic criterion. He expressed his general position that all medical tests were created by pharmaceutical interests to sell treatments and that he disregarded them as meaningful in themselves.

When capillaries and veins break, red blood cells escape the bloodstream and enter surrounding tissue where they cannot survive. Aajonus described this as the mechanism of bruising. The live red blood cells that have escaped die there. The purple color of a fresh bruise is a mixture of live and dead red blood cells outside their circuit. As the escaped cells die and are broken down by bacteria, the bruise progresses through color stages: purple to blue to black to yellow and eventually resolves. Inside the bloodstream, white blood cells would have eaten the dead red blood cells through phagocytosis before any decomposition occurred. Outside it, bacteria perform the equivalent breakdown.

He also noted that the kidney protects red blood cells from being lost in urine. The kidney produces ammonia that functions like the negative pole of a magnet, repelling red and white blood cells so they do not pass through into the urine. Without this mechanism, every urination would result in catastrophic blood cell loss and rapid anemia. The ammonia production is specifically described as serving the purpose of preserving red and white blood cells in circulation.