Sleep

The nervous system's detoxification is entirely dependent on the absence of light and on the body being in a state of complete rest. When light is present, the nervous system is always working, generating psychotropic byproducts that accumulate throughout the system. It cannot simultaneously work and detoxify. This is why people who work night shifts and sleep during daytime hours cannot fully detoxify the nervous system during their sleep periods, because exposure to sunlight during sleep interrupts the process. People on night shifts perform their nervous system detoxification during their waking work hours instead, which is why Aajonus said they should not expect to feel as well or as emotionally balanced as people who sleep at night.

During the nighttime detox cycle, all of the metallic minerals, free radicals, and heavy metals leaving the brain and nervous system dump into the lymph and blood. This creates a condition of significant acidity and over-toxicity in the bloodstream. When this process is happening intensely, as it does during heavy neurological or brain detoxification cycles, the person will often wake automatically between midnight and two in the morning and be unable to return to sleep until approximately five to five-thirty in the morning. Aajonus was explicit that this should never be fought. Attempting to force sleep during this window will cause frustration and anxiety rather than rest. The correct response is to get up and do something productive: write, paint, dance, or engage in any creative activity. Trying to sleep when the body is in heavy neurological detoxification is not only futile but potentially harmful, because if a person were somehow to sleep during active neurological detox with certain areas of the brain open, it could damage tissue and cause permanent loss of function, imagination, or emotional wellbeing.

If this waking cycle between midnight and two lasts for weeks, Aajonus advised restructuring the entire sleep schedule rather than fighting the body's timing. The adapted schedule involves going to sleep at eight o'clock in the evening, sleeping until the body naturally wakes during the detox peak, staying awake and productive through the detox window, then sleeping again from five-thirty onward. If work obligations require being functional, a person following this pattern would sleep from five-thirty until seven or seven-thirty, do their normal day, return home, and be in bed by eight or eight-thirty, only to wake again around one or two in the morning. This cycle continues until the heavy detoxification phase of the nervous system concludes. During the waking hours of midnight to five-thirty, Aajonus recommended eating six to ten eggs to support the body's work during that detoxification period.

On ordinary nights without heavy neurological detoxification, the nervous system still conducts its cleaning from sundown through to morning, with the peak concentration between midnight and five. The blood will still be highly acidic upon waking from this normal nightly process, which is why Aajonus consistently recommended beginning the morning with green vegetable juice to alkalinize the system. He specified a base of approximately eighty percent celery juice, ten to fifteen percent parsley, with other greens, noting that celery does not carry enough carbohydrate to cause problems and that the chlorophyll-rich juice would neutralize the acidity created by the night's detoxification.

One of the most specific and repeatedly emphasized pieces of guidance Aajonus gave about sleep concerns what happens to the bloodstream after five hours without eating. Regardless of a person's body weight, even if they weigh seven hundred pounds, the protein level in the blood drops to the point where red blood cells can no longer sustain themselves after approximately five hours of fasting. At that point, the red blood cells become cannibalistic and begin eating each other in order to maintain the protein level. This is highly toxic for people whose cells are already compromised by accumulated poisons, because when toxic red blood cells consume other toxic red blood cells, the resulting breakdown products cause an anemia-like reaction and significantly increase the acidity and toxicity of the blood.

For the healthy indigenous people Aajonus referenced, such as the Maasai, the Samburu, and the Fulani, whose cells are built on raw foods and are therefore healthy, the body consuming its own red blood cells is not problematic. For people coming from a history of processed and cooked food, it is severely damaging. The body eating its own toxic red blood cells is itself toxic, and waking from eight to ten hours of uninterrupted sleep means losing somewhere between two and six tablespoons of red blood cells to cannibalistic consumption. In a three-hour period alone, a person can lose up to five or eight tablespoons of red blood cells, which constitutes severe anemia.

This is the primary reason most people wake from eight to ten hours of sleep feeling exhausted, groggy, nauseous, weak, and lethargic. They are anemic. The blood is also highly acidic from the nervous system's night detoxification. The conventional response is to reach for caffeine from coffee, soda, tea, or chocolate, or to consume high-sugar foods to raise blood sugar levels. Aajonus was unambiguous that none of these remedies address anemia. Caffeine, nicotine, and theobromine from chocolate mask the symptoms of anemia but do not resolve it. They further deteriorate the body. Eating resolves anemia. Eating protein specifically resolves it. The blood needs protein, not stimulants.

Aajonus estimated that approximately eighty percent of the reason that ninety-five percent of people in the United States and elsewhere reach for caffeine in the morning is the daily anemia caused by going through the night without eating protein.

To prevent the anemia that results from going five hours without protein during sleep, Aajonus designed a protocol for eating during the night. The approach varies based on whether a person is hyperactive and highly physically energetic, or whether they are a slower, less hyperactive type who can go back to sleep after waking and eating.

The general protocol is to set an alarm for five hours after going to sleep, factoring in the approximately thirty minutes most people take to fall asleep. When the alarm sounds or when the person wakes naturally, they eat something with protein and go immediately back to sleep. Acceptable nighttime foods include raw eggs, half a cup of raw milk, half a cup or a full cup of milkshake, a couple of ounces of meat, or a combination of cheese with honey and milk. The milkshake in particular is recommended because it promotes sleepiness and relaxation, making it easier to return to sleep. Warm milk serves the same function, making the body want to go back to sleep much as it does for a baby. To warm milk for this purpose, Aajonus suggested immersing a canning jar filled with milk in a bowl of hot water that is not hot enough to burn the hand, and leaving it for ten to fifteen minutes.

The food should have protein as its core component. Cream, butter, and honey alone are not sufficient because they are not concentrated enough in protein. Fruit of any kind does not work for this nighttime eating. The specific formulations mentioned include half a cup of milk, a couple of raw eggs, half a cup to a full cup of milkshake made from milk, eggs, honey, and a little cream, a small piece of meat of approximately two ounces, or a combination of cheese with honey and some milk. Some people kept a prepared milkshake and made a full recipe before bed, drank half before sleeping, and left the other half at the bedside for the nighttime wake.

Aajonus recommended keeping something at the bedside specifically so the process of waking and eating requires minimum disturbance. The instruction was to wake, drink or eat it, and go right back to sleep, with as little engagement as possible to make returning to sleep easy.

People who are highly physically energetic, producing large amounts of physical hormones and oriented strongly toward physical activity, face a complication: if they sleep five hours and then eat, the protein and nutrients flood the system with so much energy that they cannot return to sleep. For these people, the five-hour alarm would be counterproductive, leaving them lying awake for hours frustrated that they cannot sleep when they want more sleep.

For hyperactive, high-energy individuals, Aajonus prescribed a different schedule. They set the alarm for three hours after going to sleep rather than five. At three hours, even a hyperactive person is not fully rested and will still be tired enough to eat and return to sleep readily. Almost nobody other than Aajonus himself is sufficiently rested after only three hours of sleep, which means the hyperactive person eats at the three-hour mark and then sleeps for five more hours, achieving a total of eight hours in two segments rather than one unbroken stretch. This way they never go five hours without eating, they do not trigger the cannibalistic red blood cell destruction, and they wake after the second five-hour segment with real energy rather than anemia-induced exhaustion.

Aajonus gave the case of John Fox from Nevada City, who had been on the Primal Diet for two years and was a former long-term vegetarian with scoliosis. After two years on the diet, Fox had physically improved significantly, standing straighter, filling out, and appearing healthier. However, he reported having no energy until ten o'clock in the morning or noon. He was sleeping seven to eight hours or more without eating during the night. He was described as a slower, non-hyperactive type, an inventor and scientist who uses his brain and works methodically but is not physically hyperactive. When Aajonus asked him whether he was waking in the night and eating, Fox said he had never tried it despite hearing the instruction in two previous seminars. He set his alarm that night, woke after five hours, ate an egg and approximately three quarters of a cup of milk, and woke in the morning with complete energy. According to Aajonus, that single change resolved the problem permanently, and Fox never experienced that morning energy deficit again.

A second case involved a man in his mid-forties, appearing much older than his age, with no energy and the beginnings of fibromyalgia symptoms. After three years on the diet, this man also struggled with morning energy until implementing the nighttime eating protocol.

For people who want to sleep ten hours total, the approach is to sleep five hours, eat, sleep five more hours, or to set the alarm every four hours if that pattern works better, finding any configuration that ensures protein consumption at least every five hours throughout the night.

Aajonus was direct in stating that the conventional belief in a fixed eight hours of sleep per night is not biologically universal. The amount of sleep a person needs is directly tied to how sick or healthy they are. The sicker and more toxic the body, the more sleep is required, because ninety percent of healing, cellular regeneration, and cellular reproduction occurs in the sleep state or in an equivalent alpha-wave resting state. When Aajonus was at his sickest, recovering from cancer and from cancer treatments, he was sleeping ten to twenty-two hours per day. During a period after eating a poison mushroom, he slept ten to twenty hours a day.

As health improves and the body becomes stronger and less burdened by toxic accumulation, the need for sleep decreases because healing becomes more efficient and requires less time. Aajonus himself, during his usual period of good health, slept anywhere from three to four and a half hours per night on average, supplemented by a nap of ten minutes to an hour and a half during the day. He described going as low as one hour of sleep on some nights and still functioning fully. He reported lecturing all day, working through the night, and then sitting patients from eight-fifteen in the morning to eleven at night after minimal sleep, sustained by a ten-minute cat nap if needed.

During healing cycles, which Aajonus said occur heavily approximately every two and a half years and can last from six weeks to twenty weeks, the body requires much more sleep. During those periods a person may need six, eight, or even ten hours, and Aajonus advised accepting this, reducing demands on oneself for productivity and income if necessary, and prioritizing sleep during that window because it is the primary vehicle of healing.

He also noted that most animals, including apes, gorillas, and monkeys, sleep only five to six hours per day at most, with no more than three and a half to four hours at a single stretch. He used this to support his argument that unbroken eight-to-ten-hour sleep is not natural and is actually harmful given the anemia it produces.

Aajonus acknowledged that for some people who cannot sleep, a deep meditative state equivalent to the alpha state can substitute for sleep in terms of allowing the nervous system to detoxify and the body to heal. He mentioned a man who had had a serious head injury from a propeller accident and could not sleep normally, using meditative alpha states as a substitute. The body must be in complete physical rest with a calm mind, though actual unconscious sleep is not strictly required for healing to occur. However, Aajonus recognized that most people do not enter the alpha state deeply enough while awake to achieve this, so sleep remains the practical vehicle for the majority of people.

Aajonus gave specific food guidance for the hours before sleep to support relaxation and ease of falling asleep. Fish eaten at least one hour before bedtime is listed as optimal for relaxation. The milkshake, made from raw milk, raw eggs, honey, and cream, is recommended as a pre-sleep food because it relaxes the body and promotes sleepiness. Warm milk with honey and a little extra cream before bed was called out repeatedly, with Aajonus saying it makes the body relax the way warm milk does for a baby and recommending it particularly for people who are hyperactive or irritable. The warming method is to immerse a canning jar of milk in a bowl of water that is warm but not hot enough to burn the hand, leaving it for ten to fifteen minutes.

The nut formula, consumed at least three hours prior to bedtime, is described as optimal for both relaxed sleep and relaxed waking. The nut formula can be taken once or twice weekly, or split so that half is consumed one day and the remaining half the next. The minerals in raw foods generally help the body relax by protecting cells and binding with toxins that irritate cells, which explains the nut formula's specific usefulness for people who wake feeling disturbed and anxious.

Red meats eaten close to bedtime can cause the opposite of relaxation. Aajonus warned that red meats eaten specifically to help with sleep may produce more energy rather than relaxation, working against the desired effect.

For overweight people, Aajonus said a milkshake before bed is unnecessary unless the person is hyperactive, anxious, or emotionally unsettled, in which case even a half glass of milkshake is appropriate, with the other half reserved for the nighttime wake. A half cup of warm milk is the lighter alternative in those cases.

Raw food in general is described as safe to eat immediately before sleep without disrupting the body's rest, because raw food contains all its own enzymes and bacteria and the body does not have to work to neutralize or digest it. Bacteria do the work throughout the night without requiring metabolic effort from the sleeping person. Cooked food before sleep is problematic because there are no enzymes present, forcing the pancreas, liver, and other organs to work intensively during the sleep period when they should be resting and cleansing the body.

Aajonus addressed sleep apnea specifically in terms of its cause and management. Toxins stored in the nervous system, particularly caffeine residues, soda pop, chocolate-derived compounds, and the residues of injections such as novocaine, can drip down into the throat during sleep and temporarily paralyze the throat muscles. This causes the cessation of breathing until the thyroxin hormone is produced to restart the breathing reflex. The masks used conventionally for sleep apnea do not address this underlying cause. Aajonus's recommendations for managing sleep apnea included sleeping on the side or face rather than the back, because lying on the back forces the poisons to run down the back of the throat, which is what triggers the paralysis. He also recommended placing hot water bottles on the neck and eating cheese and honey together twice daily to ensure adequate mineral intake to support nerve cell stability.

When a person wakes feeling disturbed and anxious, Aajonus attributed this to either a large quantity of old toxic adrenaline in the system, or to caustic toxins that are actively irritating the nerve cells during or after the night's detoxification. For people with this pattern, he suggested the nut formula at least once weekly and possibly twice weekly, or split across two days, because its mineral content helps the body chelate the toxic substances irritating the nerve cells. He also noted that if a person has high adrenaline toxicity from prior use of caffeine, nicotine, chocolate, or soda pop, that stored adrenaline will remain in the nervous system and continue to disturb sleep quality and waking states until it is cleared through proper nutrition and detoxification over time.

Aajonus noted that the amount of sleep needed scales with the level of physical activity. When he was doing heavy physical farm work in Thailand or the Philippines, he required more sleep than his usual three to four and a half hours. When doing primarily mental and consultative work with minimal physical exertion, the lower sleep requirement was sufficient. This is because physical activity creates greater cellular breakdown and repair demands, increasing the proportion of healing work the body must do during the sleep state.

Aajonus made clear that the healthier and more complete a person's raw diet, the less sleep their body requires for basic maintenance. He contrasted his own state with the sleep requirements people face when eating processed and cooked foods, which create far more toxic burden and demand more healing time. People who go off the protocol and consume fruit first thing in the morning or before bed, for example, experienced less emotional wellbeing and less energy compared to those who maintained the correct eating patterns through the night and morning. In a group of fifty-two people who followed his full daily eating and nighttime eating plan consistently for a three-week period, every single person reported being more efficient, productive, and emotionally happier on every day they followed it. Those who deviated, particularly by eating fruit early in the morning or before bed, had noticeably worse outcomes.