Steroids

Aajonus explained that pharmaceutical manufacturers derived the steroid concept by studying adrenaline's molecular structure and its known effect on muscular energy and force. Adrenaline feeds the muscles and creates the pumping effect athletes seek. The synthetic steroids were chemically developed to replicate that molecular architecture. Because they are chemical rather than biological in origin, and because they pass through approximately 3,200 types of chemical reactions during their development, they carry an enormous residue of foreign chemical activity into the body. Aajonus described all steroids the body makes as hormones, usually intracellular, and noted that the body makes its own steroids using animal fats. The pharmaceutical version substitutes vegetable fats processed through industrial chemistry, which produces a fundamentally different compound at the cellular level.

Aajonus was explicit that anabolic steroids pump adrenaline into the system quickly and deliver a fast burst of energy involving testosterone, estrogen, and the full range of adrenal hormones. That effect is real in the short term and is why athletes find them useful. The damage, however, accumulates in proportion to that same stimulation. Steroids drive the body into a state resembling the adrenal overdrive that Aajonus associated with chronic disease development, where hormones are being spent on managing a toxic load rather than being reserved for genuine physiological need. He described most supplemental and pharmaceutical substances as forcing the body to elevate its hormonal levels in response to toxicity, and steroids operate by the same principle at an extreme level.

The physical consequences Aajonus described most directly were drying and blistering of the tissues. He pointed to Arnold Schwarzenegger as the central example. Schwarzenegger had eaten raw milk, raw meat, and raw eggs throughout his natural bodybuilding career and had won Mr. Universe seven times on those foods. When he transitioned to steroids after coming to the United States, the long-term consequence was open-heart surgery, and his body showed the characteristic effects of steroid use: drying up and blistering. Aajonus contrasted this outcome with Austrian athletes who did not take steroids and continued competing into their sixties. He also described Schwarzenegger's appearance at the time of the workshops, noting that his skin hung like an old man's despite Schwarzenegger being roughly the same age as Aajonus, who reported no sagging flesh. Aajonus attributed that contrast directly to the destruction of cells through steroid and supplement use: "If he had just stuck to his raw foods instead of going into the supplements and eating all that protein powder and the hormones and steroids, he wouldn't look like that. He wouldn't broke his tissues down. But he poisoned them. So cells die and they sag and you can't replace them."

A recurring argument in Aajonus's discussions of steroids was that athletes resort to them because their bodies are not receiving the fats and proteins necessary to produce genuine physiological energy. In wild animals and in primitive tribal peoples who eat raw foods, hormone levels, including adrenal hormones, are nearly absent in the blood except during emergencies. High hormone levels in modern athletes indicate that their bodies are compensating for nutritional deficiency and toxic burden by using hormones as an energy and detoxification resource. Athletes eating high-carbohydrate diets have no fat reserve to draw on for sustained muscular energy, no raw animal fats to supply the building blocks for proper hormone production, and so they exist in a state of chronic adrenal overdrive that eventually collapses. Steroids extend that overdrive artificially.

Aajonus held that Schwarzenegger did not need steroids even during his competitive years because he already had the nutritional foundation through raw foods. He "wanted to cheat," in Aajonus's phrasing, and was told by the people around him that the synthetic drugs would make him bigger and better. The cultural context was a period when nearly everyone was on a terrible diet, so the relative advantage from steroids was more visible. But the cost was long-term tissue destruction that raw food nutrition would have prevented entirely.

Aajonus presented the lubrication formula as the mechanism by which the body can build muscle at a rate that exceeds what steroids appear to accomplish, without any of the associated damage. The formula, described in his book as consisting of egg, butter, lemon juice, and a small amount of honey, is eaten with each meat meal. The purpose is to supply the body with a fat source so that when the raw meat is consumed and converted to pyruvate, a protein sugar that burns as high energy, the body does not consume the incoming protein for fuel. Instead it uses the butter and fat for energy while directing the protein entirely toward cellular division, rebuilding cells, and building muscle tissue. Fat provides two and a half times more energy per volume than carbohydrate or protein, meaning the body has a vastly superior fuel available and no reason to cannibalize the protein it needs for tissue construction.

Aajonus described this mechanism in the context of multiple case studies in which clients were accused of using steroids by other gym members because the rate of muscle gain on raw foods was faster than what observers associated with natural training.

Aajonus returned to this pattern of accusation repeatedly across different seminars and workshops, presenting what are clearly multiple distinct clients as well as some accounts that appear to describe the same client at different telling. The consistent pattern is:

A man, typically in his late fifties to early sixties, slender and unable to gain weight despite years of effort, comes to Aajonus. He has been on the Primal Diet for one to two years and feels well. He asks whether he can bodybuild on the diet. Aajonus tells him to eat approximately one pound of raw meat twice daily, each meal accompanied by a complete lubrication formula, with half consumed alongside the meat and the remainder ten to fifteen minutes after. The man is instructed to work out after one of those meat meals.

Within two to two and a half months, the client gains four inches on his arms and six inches on his chest, all solid muscle. Gold's Gym members accuse him of taking steroids. He tells them he is eating only raw butter, raw meat, raw eggs, and honey. They do not believe him.

In the version of this account involving a man who was 57 to 58 years old when he began and approximately 61 to 63 at the time of the bodybuilding experiment, Aajonus noted that the man had been a tall, skinny person his whole life who could never gain weight without getting sick and losing it again through illness. On the diet, he eventually cut his meat intake down to three-quarters of a pound per day with the lubrication formula and was still building muscle, because with adequate dietary fat available, the body burns fat for energy rather than burning the incoming protein. Three and a half years after beginning, he had been working out intensively for only about one year before stopping because uric acid accumulation from going too hard too fast was causing stiffness and soreness. After he stopped working out entirely, he retained all of the muscle he had built. He had not worked out in three and a half years and had lost none of it.

In another variation, a man came to Aajonus at approximately 130 pounds at a height of around six feet, having gained some weight on the diet to reach 150 to 155 pounds. He asked about bodybuilding. Aajonus told him to eat a pound of meat twice daily with a whole lubrication formula. In two and a half to three and a half months he put on four inches on his arms and six inches on his chest. Gold's Gym accused him of steroids.

Aajonus also described bodybuilders more generally, noting that he had seen people put four inches on their arms in approximately three months and six inches on their chest in four months using one pound of meat per meal with an entire lubrication formula. The accusations of steroid use from other gym members were a reliable outcome across these accounts.

Aajonus used Schwarzenegger as an extended illustration throughout his talks, drawing on personal familiarity with Schwarzenegger's training practices at Gold's Gym in Los Angeles. He described watching Schwarzenegger eat raw eggs, raw milk, and raw meats "out of style" during his Mr. Universe years. Schwarzenegger won the title seven times, which Aajonus described as a record no one else had ever achieved more than twice. The raw food foundation was, in Aajonus's view, the actual cause of that achievement.

Aajonus also described the relationship between fat and muscular strength in Schwarzenegger's case specifically. Before exhibiting, when Schwarzenegger had all his fat on his body, he could lift 400 to 470 pounds. By the time he had cut the fat from his muscles for the exhibition stage, he was lifting 270 pounds, a reduction of 200 pounds. Aajonus used this as evidence that fat is the fuel that makes muscular strength possible, and that the cutting phase athletes undergo destroys their actual capacity even as it produces the visual effect of definition.

After Schwarzenegger adopted steroids, the consequences Aajonus described were open-heart surgery approximately five years before the time of the relevant workshops, and skin that "hangs like an old man." Aajonus noted that Schwarzenegger is four months younger than he is, yet Aajonus reported having no sagging flesh anywhere on his body, attributing the difference to his having maintained raw foods while Schwarzenegger destroyed his tissues with synthetic drugs and supplements. Aajonus also noted that Schwarzenegger subsequently outlawed the raw milk on which he had built his championship physique, which Aajonus described as hypocritical.

Aajonus addressed Armstrong in a separate but related discussion of performance-enhancing substances. Armstrong was not necessarily a steroid user in the classical anabolic steroid sense, but Aajonus described him as someone who "took every other drug he could that was so-called semi-legal," including man-made adrenaline preparations. Aajonus classified all of this under the same framework: it is still a drug, still not the body's natural production, still cheating, and still damaging. Synthetic adrenaline does not do what true adrenaline does, even though athletes take it anyway. True adrenaline is extraordinarily concentrated; the synthetic version is a chemical approximation that imposes its own toxic load.

The Armstrong discussion extended into a separate dispute about credit for the Primal Diet. Aajonus stated that Armstrong's website livestrong.com had taken credit for the Primal Diet through a friend of Armstrong's, that Armstrong and associates had made approximately thirty million dollars using the diet over two and a half years while ignoring notices from Aajonus and his attorney, and that Aajonus had a twenty million dollar lawsuit pending against Armstrong. Aajonus connected this to Armstrong's subsequent exposure as a cheater in cycling, noting that it placed Armstrong in compounded legal and reputational difficulty.

Aajonus described a consistent mechanism across steroids, supplements, caffeine, cocaine, speed, Benzedrine, nicotine, and other stimulants: the body elevates its hormonal levels, including adrenaline and testosterone, in response to the toxicity those substances introduce. Hormones are 60 to 80% fat, and the body uses hormonal fat to bind with and contain incoming toxins. When someone takes a steroid or a supplement or a stimulant and feels a surge of energy and strength, what is actually occurring is the body's emergency response to poisoning. The fat in the hormones is being mobilized to deal with the chemical load. People interpret this as health and performance improvement because the feeling is real, but the underlying process is destructive. Aajonus compared taking steroids in this regard to taking cocaine: "You're going to deteriorate the body with that high energy."

Steroids specifically pump adrenaline, testosterone, and estrogen into the system quickly, and all of those hormones will drive energy into a person in the short term. But that is a drug response, not a nutritional one. Hormones in wild animals and healthy humans eating proper foods are produced at near-trace levels during normal activity, reserved for genuine emergencies. The entire hormonal system is designed for emergency use, not daily metabolic fuel. When people run on adrenaline chronically, whether from poor diet, stimulants, or synthetic steroids, they are spending down a reserve the body was designed to hold in reserve, and the consequence is adrenal exhaustion and systemic deterioration.

Aajonus specifically cited the complexity of synthetic steroid manufacture as a source of their damage. The approximately 3,200 types of chemical reactions involved in developing synthetic hormones means the body is receiving not just a mimetic hormone but a compound carrying the residue and byproducts of an enormous industrial chemical process. This is analogous to his description of pharmaceutical-grade supplements, which he said are extracted using kerosene derivatives and processed through industrial solvents, adding polymers, dryers, and other industrial chemicals in the production of pills and powders. Every step of that process introduces additional toxic compounds. Anabolic steroids, as pharmaceutical products developed through an even more elaborate synthetic pathway, carry a corresponding burden of chemical contamination that the body must respond to and attempt to eliminate, driving exactly the adrenaline spike and apparent energy surge that users experience as a benefit.

Aajonus drew a direct contrast between the body's own steroid production and the pharmaceutical version. The body makes its intracellular hormones using animal fats. Hormones are 60% fat, 35% protein, and approximately 5% carbohydrate or pyruvate. The pituitary produces growth hormones continuously as long as it receives proper fats and proteins. The body can use these hormones in place of fats when fats are lacking, which is why skinny athletes can appear vital and strong despite eating poor diets: they are producing hormones and essentially running on them as a drug. This is not health; it is the body in a constant emergency state.

When a person eats the raw animal fats and proteins the body requires, hormonal production normalizes to the levels appropriate for genuine need. Muscle building occurs through cellular division fueled by protein, with fat providing the energy substrate that prevents the protein from being burned as fuel. The result is solid, permanent muscle that does not require ongoing hormonal overdrive to maintain, as demonstrated by the case of the client who retained all his muscle for three and a half years after stopping exercise entirely.

In a discussion that connects to the broader steroid framework, Aajonus described commissioning laboratory testing on coconut cream because it was producing high steroid readings and he wanted to identify the actual chemical compound responsible. The laboratory results revealed not steroids but chemotherapy compounds, specifically AZT, along with acrylamides and advanced glycation products. Aajonus noted that AZT was the chemotherapy drug given to him in 1968, that it was banned a year later as too toxic for human use, and that it reappeared in the mid-1980s when pharmaceutical companies had stockpiled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the compound and needed a market for it. This finding was relevant to the steroid discussion because it illustrated that what appears in food or supplement testing as a steroid signal can mask or co-occur with other industrial contamination, and that the assumption that high steroid readings indicate beneficial hormonal activity in food products can be wrong in ways that matter enormously.