Traditional Chinese Medicine

Aajonus's position on acupuncture was direct: it does not cure. He described it as a temporary fix at best. His explanation for how it produces any apparent improvement was that it creates traumatic or toxic conditions in the body that cause the existing detoxification process and its associated symptoms to either stop or diminish. In other words, when someone undergoing a detoxification experiences acupuncture and their symptoms lessen, it is not because the underlying condition has resolved. It is because the trauma or disruption introduced by the needles has interrupted the detoxification cycle. He used this same explanatory framework for herbalism, homeopathy, and other alternative therapies, noting that the apparent improvement is a suppression or distraction, not a cure.

He also made an analogy to herpes to illustrate one of acupuncture's mechanisms of action: "just as acupuncture does not create a disease but may bring disease to fruition." His point was that acupuncture can trigger the expression of latent conditions, accelerating a detoxification that was building beneath the surface. This is not necessarily curative; it may be destabilizing depending on the individual's nutritional state and capacity to process the toxins being mobilized.

When asked why the Chinese had used acupuncture and herbalism for thousands of years if these practices were not genuinely curative, Aajonus's answer was unambiguous: only the peasants and the aesthetes, who were uniformly poor, relied on these practices. They could not afford meats and dairy. They had to do whatever seemed to cause distraction from their symptoms, whether the relief was real or merely perceived. The longevity of the practice was a function of poverty and limited options, not of demonstrated efficacy.

Aajonus gave herbalism a slightly more nuanced treatment than acupuncture, though his overall assessment was similarly skeptical. He cited a success rate of approximately 22% for herbal therapy, compared to homeopathy at about 27% and the body's own natural detoxification rate of approximately 60% without any intervention on a cooked diet. This framing placed herbalism below even the body's unaided capacity to resolve disease, meaning that in many cases herbal treatment was producing outcomes worse than doing nothing.

His core objection to herbal preparations as used in Chinese medicine and most other traditions was that the herbs were dried, processed, or otherwise cooked, which destroyed the enzymes and altered the molecular structure of the plant compounds. When someone asked him whether a Chinese herbal remedy called "Clear Lungs" might help with lung congestion, he responded that if the herb were fresh and juiced, it might have some value, but dried preparations were a different matter entirely. He did not endorse the product.

For someone who needed the therapeutic effects of an herb, Aajonus recommended eating or juicing the fresh herb directly. If the fresh herb was unavailable, he provided a method to minimize the toxicity of dried herbs: steep the dried herb in water in the sun for a long afternoon, or for 24 hours, then add the raw juice of one quarter fresh lemon and one to three tablespoons of unheated honey to each cup before drinking. This preparation did not eliminate the problem of dried herbs but reduced it.

He also addressed the use of herb roots and tubers that could be juiced, such as wild yam and licorice. His position was that herbs used medicinally should constitute no more than 5% of the juice volume and no more than 2 ounces per day, unless the person was suffering from severe illness.

Regarding dried ginger as recommended in Chinese medicine for digestive purposes, he offered this explanation: Chinese medicine recommends dried ginger because it is slow to digest and allows juices to be secreted throughout the digestive tract as the pulp passes toward the rectum. Fresh ginger, by contrast, has a tendency to thin mucus. In people who are not eating enough protein and fat, mucus in the digestive tract will not adequately protect the mucous membranes from irritation caused by fresh ginger. This was one of the few instances where he acknowledged a practical rationale within Chinese medical thinking, even while contextualizing it within his own framework of nutritional deficiency.

Aajonus placed Chinese dietary philosophy, including its medical traditions, within a political framework that he applied consistently. The dynasties controlled the population through food. By restricting the laboring classes to high-carbohydrate diets dominated by grain, the ruling class ensured that the population remained emotionally unstable due to chronic blood sugar imbalances. A grain-dependent population would be perpetually in turmoil within themselves, within their families, and with their neighbors. They would never achieve the mental clarity or emotional stability necessary to recognize their political situation clearly or to organize against those who outnumbered them badly. Royalty, rulers, guards, and warriors ate primarily meat and fat, which Aajonus described as providing clarity and strength.

He drew a parallel between this Chinese dynastic strategy and the origins of Buddhist and Dharmic disciplines. He argued that the meditative and philosophical frameworks of both Buddhism and Chinese Dharmic traditions were developed specifically in response to the suffering produced by these grain-based diets. When people had no access to the foods that actually stabilize body chemistry and support neurological function, spiritual disciplines offered a method to manage the emotional and psychological instability produced by their food supply. The disciplines were not, in his view, evidence that meditation or spiritual practice could substitute for proper nutrition. They were coping mechanisms built around an imposed dietary deficiency.

This analysis extended to his observation about Chinese dietary philosophy more broadly. The 80% grain, 5% meat, 10 to 15% vegetable structure dictated by the dynasties was not a health-optimized diet arrived at through experimentation. It was a control mechanism. Rice was better than other grains because it caused fewer problems, but the entire framework was designed to serve political ends rather than human health.

Aajonus developed his own system of reading health status from the palms of the hands, which he acknowledged was related to but distinct from the Chinese method. He was explicit that he had tried using the Chinese system by the book and found that it did not work for him as described. The Chinese method of reading glandular activity and health status from the mounds and coloring of the hands was the starting point, but he modified it substantially based on his own clinical observations. His system, as he described it in workshops, allowed him to assess how the glands were functioning, how the blood was working, and how the lymphatic system was operating, within a session of approximately 6 to 10 minutes per person.

He also practiced iridology, shooting the irises with a digital camera and enlarging the image on a screen to show clients where the body was damaged, what toxins were present, and how diet could address the specific conditions visible in the iris. These consultations provided an individualized diet prescription including specific foods, amounts, and timing.

Aajonus reported direct clinical experience with Chinese patients and observed that the widespread belief in Asian lactose and casein intolerance was not supported by what he witnessed. He noted that Asians are described as 86% lactose intolerant and casein intolerant, but every one of his Chinese patients in Singapore who consumed raw milk from Australia reported no problems. He described how the major Chinese-language newspaper in Singapore ran a full front-page color spread on the Primal Diet, featuring both of his books, after journalists observed formerly thin and sick Asian patients becoming visibly healthier and stronger after a few years on the diet.

He used this as a specific illustration of the principle that lactose intolerance is a condition produced by pasteurized and processed dairy, not by raw milk. When the dairy is raw and unaltered, the enzymes necessary for digestion are intact, and the body can use the milk without the reactions associated with cooked dairy products.

When a correspondent wrote to Aajonus about a Chinese Buddhist master, Dharma King Dechan Jueren Master Yu Tianjian, who taught that emotional imbalances cause illness and that meditation and inner transformation are the path to health, Aajonus responded with a counterposition grounded in his 33 years of observation. The master's teachings held that adjusting inner emotions, changing one's thinking and lifestyle, and practicing meditation would allow the body to return to natural functioning and regulatory ability.

Aajonus's response was that people who made no changes whatsoever to their lives except adopting the Primal Diet, eating raw meats, raw dairy, raw animal fats, and some vegetable juices, saw their diseases reverse and heal and their progressive degeneration cease approximately 90% of the time. He did not dismiss the value of emotional and mental work entirely, but his framework located the primary cause of imbalance in biochemistry rather than in mental or spiritual states. The connection he drew was that Buddhist and Chinese Dharmic disciplines were "established when dynasties only allowed the lackeys to eat grains and little or no meat." The high-carbohydrate diet kept the population emotionally unstable with sugar imbalances, and the spiritual disciplines were responses to that instability, not independent paths to health.

In one workshop context, Aajonus mentioned the Chinese practice of burying eggs for extended periods to produce what are called century eggs. He noted that these eggs, which become all black or white depending on the clay used to bury them, were sold for extremely high prices, reportedly $1,000 per egg in the context he described. He identified these as a form of high meat, the aged and fermented animal food that he recommended for its neurological and systemic benefits. The buyers he described were elderly Chinese men seeking restored sexual function, and he reported that one such egg could produce effects lasting approximately 30 days. He connected this to his broader endorsement of aged and fermented animal foods, which he routinely recommended despite their intense smell, noting that they smell strongly but taste essentially like a hard-boiled egg with excess salt.

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