Statins

Aajonus described cholesterol not as a single harmful substance but as a family of sixty to sixty-six distinct varieties, all of them functional and necessary. He said these varieties serve three primary purposes: lubrication of the body, protection of cells from toxins by absorbing poisons before they can enter live tissue, and the production of cellular energy. He stated that approximately one third of fats in the blood are dedicated to each of these three roles. The brain, which is densely fatty, requires large amounts of cholesterol precisely because it must hold and isolate the heaviest concentrations of environmental toxins, including heavy metals, industrial chemicals, and petrochemical byproducts.

His framework held that the liver synthesizes cholesterol from fats consumed in the diet. After fat enters the duodenum, bile from the liver begins breaking it down so that the body can reassemble it into these sixty or more cholesterol varieties. Every variety is useful. He was explicit that the LDL and HDL distinction medicine uses was a simplification designed to frighten patients: "First it was, all cholesterol is bad. Now they know what you feel, they're complete assholes. They'll say, well, we got it half right, these are bad and these are good. Doesn't work that way. They're all good."

He explained that what medicine labels "bad cholesterol" is actually toxic cholesterol in transit, meaning old, damaged, or chemically contaminated fats that the body is drawing out of tissues and discarding. A high ratio of so-called bad cholesterol in the blood is therefore a sign that the body is actively cleaning itself, not a sign of danger. When a person eats fresh raw fat and produces clean new cholesterol, the body simultaneously pulls old toxic cholesterol from storage and sends it out for removal. You need a high overall cholesterol level, in his view, precisely because you want enough circulating fats to both build new tissue and remove the old contaminated material at the same time.

Aajonus's core objection to cholesterol-lowering medication was that it removes the very substance the body is relying on to survive in a toxic environment. He said that fat is the only substance the body can use to arrest poisons and prevent them from reaching and damaging live cells. Skinny people, or people with artificially lowered cholesterol, have nowhere to sequester the poisons they absorb daily from food, air, and water. When fat stores are insufficient or pharmacologically suppressed, those toxins go directly into cells and cause damage.

He described what he observed when his patients were put on cholesterol-lowering medication: they became weaker, more vulnerable to illness, and less able to function physically. The pharmaceutical industry, he said, understood that once a person is placed on cholesterol medication, their cholesterol will remain high by nature whenever they stop, because the body's need for it has not changed. This is the mechanism by which pharmaceutical companies secure lifelong customers. He said directly, "The pharmaceutical will hook you into taking cholesterol medication for your life because they know if you have a high cholesterol at any point, it's always going to be high for the rest of your life unless you do this diet for 40 years and clean out your arteries."

He also noted that the rashes and pain experienced by patients coming off medications that had been described as treatments for arterial hardening were, in his reading, the stored chemicals of those drugs re-entering circulation through tissue as the person shifted to a raw diet. One person he described had been on such medication for about three months and experienced intense skin roughness and pain that resolved slowly over years on raw food as the stored drug residue detoxified through the skin.

Aajonus returned repeatedly to specific individuals whose high cholesterol levels he used to demonstrate that the pharmaceutical framing was false.

The most frequently cited was a Hall of Fame professional basketball player whom Aajonus described as maintaining a cholesterol level of 672 to 680 consistently. Aajonus said this man continued to outplay teenagers on the court and remained in excellent health at that level. Whenever his cholesterol came down, whether through medication or other means, to around 400 or 500, his performance declined noticeably. At 400, Aajonus said, "he can't even function." The man's body required that level to sustain the physical demands and toxin management of his life.

The second case he cited repeatedly was an Olympic gymnast, described variously as silver or gold medalist, who was on the United States Olympic team when she consulted Aajonus. Her cholesterol was approximately 324 to 375, depending on the telling. Every three to six weeks she would become severely ill with colds or flu, incapacitated for two weeks at a time, unable to train. Her doctors told her the high cholesterol was the cause and reduced it with medication. When her cholesterol was lowered, she did not simply fail to improve: she became weaker, could not work out even when she was not sick, and was losing her place on the team. Paul Cohen, described as an Olympic tennis champion from the 1950s who also coached John McEnroe for ten years and had been on Aajonus's diet for approximately eighteen years, recommended the gymnast consult Aajonus.

Aajonus's recommendation was to stop lowering her cholesterol and allow it to remain at her natural level, which in some accounts he set at 327 and in others at 375. Once her cholesterol was maintained at that level on a raw fat diet, she stopped getting sick entirely, she trained without interruption, and she won medals. He said she was dispensing toxins through sweat during workouts, which required adequate fat reserves and circulating cholesterol to manage safely.

He also mentioned a third example: when he himself was very ill, his cholesterol was between 370 and 390. As he recovered over years on raw foods, it came down to 205, and sometimes as low as 197. He described 205 as still high by medical standards but entirely consistent with good health in his own experience. His ideal for a person actively detoxifying on the Primal Diet was a cholesterol level approaching 600 or even 700, because he interpreted that elevation as the sign that the body was efficiently cycling out old toxic fats while replacing them with clean new ones.

When a follower of the diet received alarming blood work from a physician, Aajonus's response was consistent with his broader skepticism of laboratory-based analysis. He said he did not give credence to blood content analysis because it measured quantity rather than quality, and quality was the variable that mattered. A total cholesterol of 353, or of 431 with an LDL of 321, was not cause for concern in his view. He told one person that 350 was actually low for someone on the Primal Diet and that he preferred to see cholesterol reach 600 on this diet, because that indicated the body was cleaning out toxic cholesterol faster than any other available mechanism.

He drew a distinction between the cholesterol that was new and clean, produced from fresh raw fat, and the cholesterol that was old and toxic, being drawn from tissues. Both appear in a blood test as total cholesterol, and a person eating raw fat heavily will naturally have both old material being removed and new material in circulation at the same time, producing an elevated number that reflects active biological housekeeping rather than pathology.

Aajonus referenced a book he called "The Cholesterol Myth" in his lectures and recipe book, describing it as the work of a scientist who spent his entire career studying cholesterol and concluded that without it, the body would have no protection, no lubrication, and no energy. He used this reference to support his position that the framing of cholesterol as dangerous was a commercial construction, not a scientific one.

He extended this critique to the entire pattern by which the pharmaceutical industry funds research, influences medical education, and uses advertising to create fear of natural biological substances. He said the industry trains doctors to think in terms of pharmaceutical solutions and that the cholesterol myth was a straightforward example of this: tell people a necessary nutrient is dangerous, set a threshold that captures a large percentage of the population, and sell them a lifelong prescription. He compared this to the pattern he described with blood pressure, where the threshold for dangerous levels had been progressively lowered over decades, drawing more and more people into pharmaceutical dependency.

He said pharmaceutical companies understood that cholesterol would always return to a person's natural level once medication was stopped, because the body's underlying requirements had not changed. This made the cholesterol patient a permanent revenue source in a way that treating an acute infection would not.