Saliva

The bacteria resident in human saliva are what Aajonus called putrefactive bacteria, meaning bacteria that digest animal tissue and animal products. He was explicit that these bacteria do not feed on plant matter, fruits, or vegetables. When he placed saliva samples onto different substrates in his own experiments, the bacteria showed activity on dairy fats, dairy molecules, and animal matter but not on fruits or vegetables. This specificity, he argued, is one of the clearest anatomical indicators that humans are designed primarily as meat and dairy consumers. The body places bacteria in the first stage of digestion precisely because the food those bacteria are equipped to process is animal food.

The only enzyme of note in human saliva is ptyalin, which Aajonus described as a carbohydrate-fractionating molecule. He stressed that ptyalin is present only in a minuscule quantity, constituting roughly 2% of salivary content, and that the only other animal known to produce it is the horse. He drew a sharp distinction between the horse's ptyalin and the human variety: a horse's mouth is composed almost entirely of molars designed for grinding vegetation, and ptyalin is present in quantity proportional to that dietary role. In the human version, ptyalin is present in trace amounts and, he argued, is designed to break down the sugars in milk rather than starches in grains or vegetation. He used this to establish a dietary principle: if ptyalin can only manage the carbohydrate fraction of human digestion at about 5% of total food intake, then carbohydrates should constitute no more than 5% of the diet.

He also noted that ptyalin can over-alkalinize the mouth when carbohydrate consumption is high, which he considered a problem rather than a benefit. Populations that have eaten high-carbohydrate diets over many generations, he said, have developed more ptyalin through dietary adaptation, but this represents a departure from the original human design rather than an improvement.

Aajonus rejected the conventional and alternative-health position that saliva should be alkaline or near-alkaline. He stated plainly that no carnivorous animal in nature produces an alkaline salivary secretion, and that healthy human saliva is acidic, consistent with a digestive fluid carrying bacteria that process animal matter. He reported that his own saliva had measured at 5.5 pH consistently for thirteen years, alongside his urine and blood, and that this acidic reading was a sign of correct function, not disease.

He described the push by some alternative practitioners to raise salivary pH to around 6.6 or 6.7 as a misapplication of the observation that alkalinizing juices make people feel better. He argued that practitioners extrapolated from that observation to the incorrect conclusion that making the entire system alkaline, including saliva and urine, would be healthy. In his view, over-alkalinizing the digestive tract by pursuing this kind of pH manipulation disrupts the acidic bacterial environment that saliva is meant to establish, and it does not occur in any naturally healthy carnivore.

Beyond its digestive role, the salivary glands serve as one of the body's primary elimination routes for heavy metals and toxic minerals stored in the brain. Aajonus described the brain as the body's highest-concentration depot for metallic and industrial toxins, accumulated through vaccines, cooked foods, environmental pollution, amalgam fillings, and medications. These metals discharge from the brain and travel downward through the gums, tongue, and salivary glands, exiting through the mouth.

He described this process in anatomical detail: mercury, aluminum, lead, thallium, and other toxic metals migrate down from the brain into the gum tissue and out through the dentine and gum surfaces. As they move through this tissue, the body mobilizes alkalinizing minerals, specifically calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and potassium, to bind with the acidic toxic metals. The result of this binding is plaque on the teeth and a white coating on the tongue, both of which Aajonus consistently reframed as signs of active detoxification rather than poor hygiene. A white-coated tongue indicated that the body had sufficient mineral resources to bind the toxins before they caused direct damage. A blue tongue indicated insufficient minerals to perform that binding, which he considered a more serious condition requiring increased dairy consumption.

The salivary glands themselves become depleted of fat through this process. Because the toxins dumping out the brain rob the facial tissue of fat to facilitate their movement, the salivary glands and surrounding tissue dry out. This produces what people commonly experience as dry mouth or cotton mouth. Aajonus was emphatic that this condition is not dehydration and not a signal to drink water. Drinking more water, he argued, would make the situation worse by leaching more minerals from the already-depleted tissue. The correct response is fat replacement, specifically a mixture of butter and honey, or coconut cream and honey in a ratio of roughly 6 to 10 parts coconut cream to honey, applied to the lips and tongue. He described placing butter-honey mixture under the tongue or on the lips as resolving dry mouth immediately without any water intake.

He also noted that the mouth is the primary dump site for mental and brain-derived poisons more broadly, and that the progressive wrinkling of the face over a lifetime results from the fat being continuously stripped from facial tissue as the body uses it to escort these toxins out through the gums, tongue, and salivary glands.

Because the salivary glands participate in the elimination of heavy metals from the brain, the teeth and gums are constantly exposed to these acidic compounds as they pass through. Aajonus's position on dental decay followed directly from this understanding. He argued that bacteria do not cause cavities. In his account, one molecule of mercury is capable of destroying approximately 5,000 healthy cells, and as mercury and other metals pass down through the dentine on their way out of the body, they damage the dentine cells. Once dentine cells are damaged, bacteria arrive as a cleanup mechanism, not as a cause of the damage. He stated that he had placed bacteria directly onto teeth in a laboratory setting, without any toxic minerals present, and that no dentine degeneration resulted.

The plaque that accumulates on teeth is, in his framework, a protective mineral complex that the body deposits to isolate the toxic metals coming from the brain. If the plaque is composed of raw dairy-sourced calcium and minerals, it retains full alkalinizing capacity and effectively neutralizes the acidic metals. If the plaque is composed of calcium from pasteurized dairy, he said that pasteurized calcium has only 50% of its alkalinizing capacity, and pasteurized phosphorus loses its alkalinizing ability almost entirely. Under those conditions, even thick plaque may fail to fully protect the dentine, allowing toxic metals to break through and cause the cell damage that then draws bacteria as janitors.

He described amalgam fillings as a compounding source of this problem, since mercury vaporizes continuously from amalgam fillings at body temperature and at an accelerated rate during chewing, brushing, or exposure to hot food and drink. This vapor rises into the jaw, gums, and brain, adding to the toxic metal burden that eventually exits through the salivary glands, gums, and tongue.

The most practically developed aspect of Aajonus's teaching on saliva concerned the technique of sucking rather than gulping any liquid. He described his own practice at length across many workshops: rather than swallowing fluids in large mouthfuls, he draws liquid through his teeth, over his tongue, and across his palate in a motion he compared directly to an infant suckling at a breast. He was explicit about the mechanics: lips and teeth are held close together, and the liquid is drawn through in small increments, which creates sustained contact between the fluid and the salivary glands, causing continuous saliva secretion and mixing.

The purpose is to deliver the salivary bacteria into the fluid before it is swallowed. When a person gulps, virtually no saliva mixes with the liquid, and the bacterial content of saliva is not introduced into the food or drink. When a person sucks the way an infant does, the saliva production is continuous and substantial, and the bacteria from the salivary glands travel with the fluid into the stomach and intestinal tract, where they contribute to digestion of animal matter. He noted that he could visibly observe saliva continuing to flow into his mouth even after stopping the sucking motion, and that this was the desired state.

He described the practical consequences of adopting the suckling method over gulping in his own consumption. When he gulped milk, he was drinking up to a gallon and a half per day and still felt thirsty and unsatisfied. When he switched to sucking, his daily milk intake dropped to two and a half quarts, then to approximately half a gallon, and he felt more satisfied on less. He attributed this to two mechanisms: the bacteria delivered via saliva allowing better digestion and nutrient utilization, and the slower intake rate preventing the fluid from rushing directly to the kidneys and being excreted without cellular uptake.

He measured his intake during workshops and reported consuming approximately one and a half tablespoons to two tablespoons at a time, describing it as visually appearing to be more because of the sucking motion. He also used a glass chemistry laboratory straw with a very small hole, which forced him to suck hard and generated even more saliva in the process.

For infants, he described the suckling process as biologically efficient precisely because of this saliva contribution. He cited cases of babies on the Primal Diet consuming as little as two six-ounce feedings in twenty-four hours, growing fat and healthy, and producing very little waste. His explanation was that the baby, while nursing, produces as much saliva as the volume of milk being consumed, so the total digestive fluid being introduced to the gut is doubled, and the bacterial content of that saliva pre-digests the milk in a way that maximizes absorption and minimizes waste. He observed that when children transition from nursing to drinking from a cup, they begin to digest milk less efficiently and experience more gas, specifically because the suckling action no longer draws saliva into the milk.

He extended the suckling principle to all fluids, including juices, water, eggs consumed as a liquid, and any fermented or cultured drink. He recommended spending ten to fifteen or even twenty minutes on a single drink depending on its volume, never gulping. For anyone who found the technique difficult, he suggested using a baby bottle, though he tested this himself and found it less effective than adult sucking through the teeth because the resistance in a baby bottle's nipple is insufficient for an adult's musculature.

Aajonus described a practice of using one's own saliva to culture raw milk into kefir. He recommended expectorating into raw milk, drawing on his framework claim that salivary bacteria are perfectly matched to the individual's digestive needs, indigenous to the person's own chemistry, and capable of breaking down raw animal products in the most biologically appropriate way. He contrasted this with commercial kefir or probiotic cultures, which he described as washed, altered, and no longer indigenous to milk, having gone through changes that make them less effective than the individual's own salivary bacteria. He argued that the introduced bacteria in commercial kefir and yogurt are not the same organisms that were originally resident in the milk and that the individual's own salivary bacteria, expectorated in quantity into raw milk, would produce a ferment that the body could break down and absorb more completely, including the cream fraction that the body uses to nourish the brain and nervous system.

Aajonus described dry mouth as a fat-deficiency condition caused by the brain's continuous dumping of toxic minerals through the salivary glands, which strips available fat from all facial tissue as those toxins are escorted out. The remedy he specified was not water but a fat-rich mixture applied directly to the mouth. He described two formulations: a mixture of raw butter and honey placed on the lips and tongue, and a mixture of coconut cream and honey in a ratio of approximately 6 to 10 parts coconut cream to honey. Either of these, he said, resolves dry mouth immediately because they replace the fat that the detoxification process has removed from the tissue, rather than adding water that would leach away more minerals.

He described placing butter-honey mixture under the tongue in cases where a person was near unconscious and unable to eat, citing a case in "We Want to Live" in which he placed a teaspoon of the mixture under a severely ill patient's tongue every forty minutes. His reasoning was that the salivary enzymes in the mouth would dissolve the butter-honey mixture, allowing some nutrients to be absorbed directly into the blood through the oral mucosa, with the remainder draining down to soothe the throat and stomach. He described the honey-butter mixture as having the property of lubricating the intensely dry mouth produced by medical drugs, water IVs, and nutritionless hospital food.

He also mentioned that honey placed in the mouth could dissolve bone. He described an incident of sucking on a bone for two and a half hours with little progress, then adding a quarter teaspoon of honey to his mouth, after which the bone crumbled and dissolved rapidly. He attributed this to honey's enzymatic and digestive properties, particularly valuable when hydrochloric acid production is impaired.

Aajonus acknowledged the oil-pulling practice from Ayurvedic tradition, in which oil is swished around the mouth and then expelled, supposedly drawing toxins from the body. He accepted the underlying mechanism, agreeing that the brain does dump most of its poisons out through the gums, and that swishing oil in the mouth can bind some of those exiting toxins. However, he described his own preference as pulling with raw cheese rather than oil. He stated that he would take raw cheese, swish it around in the mouth for about five minutes, and spit it out, then follow immediately with an egg or a small amount of cheese and egg to re-nourish the oral tissue after the pulling had cleared toxins.

In one passage, Aajonus referenced an immunotherapy practice from earlier medicine in which mucus from a sick child was rubbed on a cow's udder, after which the milk produced by that cow was given to the child, resolving the child's condition within hours. He connected this to the broader principle that saliva carries a chemistry that is matched to the individual's digestive and immune needs. He described expectorating into food or milk as putting the full biochemistry of the individual's own salivary system into contact with what is being consumed, which pre-digests it in a way specific to that person's body.

He also described the technique of mixing egg white with saliva in the mouth to neutralize its sliminess. He explained that when he sucks egg white through his teeth in amounts of one teaspoon to one tablespoon at a time, the contact with saliva and the repeated mechanical action of biting on the teeth while sucking causes the egg white to thin completely, losing its slimy texture and becoming thin and slightly salty, like ocean water at reduced salinity. By the time he swallows it, the saliva has already begun digesting the egg white proteins.

Aajonus named brushing the teeth with commercial toothpaste and using mouthwash as the primary behaviors that destroy salivary bacteria. He stated that people who brush with toothpaste and rinse with antibacterial mouthwash have no effective bacterial population in their saliva, because these products destroy the resident bacteria. Without that bacterial population, the saliva loses its primary digestive function. He did not describe any supplementation or intervention that restores the bacterial count once destroyed, other than time and the cessation of the damaging practices.

He also implied that gulping rather than sucking, while not destroying the bacteria, renders them functionally useless by preventing them from mixing with the food or liquid being consumed. Gulping delivers zero salivary bacteria to whatever is being drunk except for what may happen to be floating on the surface of the tongue at the moment of swallowing.

---