Vitamin E Supplements

Aajonus described the origin story of commercial vitamin E with considerable specificity and repeated it across many separate teaching contexts. Kodak and Fuji, in the course of producing film developing chemicals, generated a toxic waste byproduct fluid that they could not neutralize or degrade through any known chemical process. Because the fluid was extremely toxic, regulatory requirements mandated that it be stored in stainless steel drums or barrels ranging from 55 to 100 gallons in size, which were then buried in underground concrete vaults with walls between six and twelve feet thick. The cost of purchasing land, building and maintaining those vaults, and continuing to collect and store the waste was running into the hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Aajonus sometimes cited figures of 500 to 600 million dollars per year for land, mining, building, and storing. The companies paid out over 200 million dollars every year to scientists to find a solution.

The turning point came when one scientist examining the molecular structure of the waste noted that it resembled the structure of alpha-tocopherol, natural vitamin E, by approximately 70 to 73 percent, with Aajonus citing slightly different percentages across different sessions (70%, 72%, 73%). The scientist brought this observation to company executives with the proposal that they call the substance vitamin E, argue to the FDA that its structure was sufficiently similar to vitamin E to market it as such, encapsulate it, and sell it commercially rather than continuing to pay for burial. Aajonus stated that this is exactly what happened.

He pointed out that the FDA, staffed largely by people with backgrounds in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, accepted the argument that 70 percent structural similarity was sufficient to classify the substance as a form of vitamin E. He compared this reasoning to claiming a plastic shell of a Rolls Royce with no engine is the same as a Rolls Royce, because it looks like one from the outside. The molecular difference between the actual nutrient, d-alpha-tocopherol, and what is being sold in most supplements, which he called simply tocopherol or alpha-tocopherol without the d prefix, was in his view the difference between a living functional nutrient and a toxic industrial chemical.

He noted that Fuji and Kodak, far from suffering when digital photography eliminated the need for film developing chemicals, had already stored enough of the waste product to continue selling it as vitamin E for decades. Aajonus cited varying timeframes across different workshops, saying at different points that they had enough stored to sell for 30, 50, 60, or 80 more years, and that they were making two billion dollars per year from sales rather than paying for disposal.

Aajonus was consistent across sources in his figure that 99 percent of all vitamin E commercially available, including products labeled natural or from food sources, is this film developing fluid waste. He occasionally specified 99.9 percent. The one percent or less that might be from actual food sources such as soy or corn he described as present only in trace amounts per capsule.

His specific accounting was that even in products labeled as natural vitamin E from food sources such as soy or corn, the actual food-derived content amounts to approximately five international units per every hundred units in the product. The remaining 95 units are the Kodak or Fuji developing fluid waste. He stated this ratio plainly and repeatedly: five units from soy or corn per hundred total units, and 95 units from the chemical waste.

He noted at one point that the natural vitamin E label is technically supported in the FDA's view because the product does contain some units derived from food, making it classifiable as natural, while the vast majority of the content remains the industrial chemical. He described this as a marketing gimmick made possible by the fact that the chemical companies producing the supplements do not fully disclose to the vitamin manufacturers themselves how the product is made or what percentage of it comes from which source. In his view, most vitamin supplement companies are run by people with good intentions who genuinely believe they are selling a health product, because they are deceived by the chemical laboratories producing the raw material. The laboratories are the knowing parties in the deception.

Aajonus provided a specific economic argument for why the contents of a natural vitamin E capsule cannot realistically be what the label claims. He asked his audiences to consider how much vitamin E is actually present in corn or soybeans, and how much raw material would be required to extract a meaningful quantity. His answer was that the vitamin E content in corn is so small that to produce 100 international units of pure, genuinely food-derived vitamin E from corn would require five years worth of corn from one plant, and would cost approximately one thousand dollars for a single capsule. He posed this directly to audiences as a rhetorical check: no vitamin company is going to produce and sell a product that costs one thousand dollars per capsule. Therefore, no vitamin company can be producing a product that is genuinely one hundred percent food-derived vitamin E.

He extended this to explain what actually happens. The vitamin companies go to food manufacturers such as Kellogg's, General Mills, General Foods, or Purina and purchase their waste products, meaning the material left over after food processing. This waste has already been through extensive chemical and heat processing by the time the vitamin company acquires it. The vitamin company then uses a solvent, specifically kerosene or a kerosene derivative, described as a natural solvent by the lab since kerosene is a naturally occurring petroleum product, to extract what little vitamin E content remains from that waste. This process constitutes the five units per hundred that are listed as coming from soy or corn. The remaining 95 units per hundred are then supplied by the Kodak and Fuji developing fluid.

He also addressed the physical reality of vitamin E concentration in a supplement capsule by pointing out that the actual quantity of vitamin E in a 100-unit capsule is so small it would fit on the tip of a pen, with approximately 600,000 units of vitamin E fitting on a pen tip. This means the capsule itself is almost entirely composed of other substances, including binders, fillers, and the chemical waste material, with the actual active ingredient representing less than 0.001 percent of the capsule by volume. He challenged audiences to ask themselves what all that other material in the capsule actually is.

Even setting aside the developing fluid issue, Aajonus maintained that any process used to extract vitamin E from a food source introduces toxicity. The primary solvent used by laboratories when producing what they call natural or all-natural supplements is kerosene, which is classified as a natural solvent because it is derived from petroleum, which is a naturally occurring substance. He asked audiences repeatedly whether they would soak their food in kerosene for 10 to 30 minutes, rinse it off, and eat it, noting that this is precisely what happens when any supplement is produced from a food source using solvent extraction.

He elaborated that there are approximately twelve varieties of kerosene derivatives used by different laboratories for extracting different nutritional elements, and that the process typically involves soaking the food material in the solvent until it becomes liquid, then rinsing briefly, and processing the resulting extract into powder, oil, or capsule form. He compared this to diluting gasoline in water and calling it drinkable because the gasoline is now diluted, pointing out that dilution does not eliminate the toxic character of the base substance.

He noted specifically that wheat germ oil vitamin E has the same problem. Cold pressing wheat germ oil raises the temperature to approximately 170 degrees Fahrenheit, which destabilizes the vitamin E. Solvent extraction avoids that heat problem but introduces kerosene contamination, leaving no processing method for isolating vitamin E from wheat germ that avoids both forms of damage. Even if the resulting product is labeled d-alpha-tocopherol, indicating it came from wheat germ or another food source, the solvent extraction process has already made it into essentially the same thing that Kodak and Fuji are selling, chemically speaking.

He said the only method that would produce genuinely pure vitamin E from a food source without chemical contamination would be gravity and electrical current separation, a process in which the different molecular components of the food are separated based on their physical and electrical properties without any solvents or heat. He acknowledged this method exists and is used, but stated that it is an extremely slow and labor-intensive process that makes the resulting product available only to billionaires and millionaires who can afford to have it custom produced. No commercially available supplement is produced this way.

Aajonus described witnessing firsthand the damage caused by commercial vitamin E supplements through the example of Diane Cannon, a customer he observed during his time working at what he called Antilles health food store in Beverly Hills in the late 1970s. He was working there as a nutritionist and experimenting with vitamin supplements at the time.

Cannon was consuming two large bottles of vitamin E capsules per week, which Aajonus described as major bottles. He stated he warned her in 1979 that she could not continue taking the substance, and she responded that the government would not allow a harmful product to be sold. Over time, the effects of consuming that volume of the developing fluid chemical became apparent. Her skin became paper thin, described as translucent, to the point where it could be peeled away or would rip open from the lightest contact. He compared it to toilet paper in terms of how easily it tore. He attributed this directly to the solvent character of the chemical being sold as vitamin E, stating that a solvent dissolves and thins whatever it contacts.

Beyond the skin deterioration, he stated that Cannon's neurological system began to deteriorate, and she experienced psychological disintegration described as going crazy or becoming unable to handle her emotions. She became what he called an addict, unable to stop taking the supplements despite the damage. He stated she was in a ruined condition for approximately 12 years. He described this case as proof visible to anyone who looked at what happened to her, and noted that he saw it developing in real time while working at the store.

He also mentioned famous movie star patients more generally, without identifying them beyond that description, who had been taking large amounts of vitamin E for their skin and experienced the same outcome: skin becoming translucent and beginning to tear, because the product functions as a solvent against skin tissue rather than supporting it.

Aajonus made a specific connection between vitamin E supplementation and thyroid damage. In one exchange with a workshop attendee who had mentioned taking supplemental thyroid hormone daily, he noted that taking thyroid medication means the thyroid will never work again on its own. During that same conversation, when the subject of vitamin E arose, he stated that 300 IU of vitamin E creates thyroid damage. He described this as potentially toxic in a way that could contribute to the kind of thyroid dysfunction that leads people to need supplemental thyroid medication in the first place. He did not elaborate extensively on the mechanism in this passage, but identified it as a concrete consequence of vitamin E supplementation at that dosage.

He also stated in his books that d-alpha-tocopherol, meaning what is labeled as naturally sourced vitamin E from soy or other sources, causes headaches and degeneration of the thyroid and pineal glands. He based this on observation of laboratory animals and people, noting that he had paid over one and a half million dollars to fund tests over a fifteen-year period documenting these effects.

Aajonus was consistent in attributing the regulatory approval of film developing fluid as vitamin E to the revolving door between the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and the FDA. He stated that the last several heads of the FDA had all come from pharmaceutical or chemical industry backgrounds, and that the staff of the FDA were hired with the same backgrounds, creating an environment in which a 70 percent molecular structural similarity to a known vitamin was treated as sufficient evidence to classify and sell the substance as that vitamin.

He framed this using the analogy of a plastic shell of a Rolls Royce with no engine. The shell looks like a Rolls Royce from the outside, but sharing external appearance with something does not make a thing identical to it. He applied the same logic to the molecular structure argument: looking 70 percent like vitamin E does not make a substance vitamin E. However, the FDA accepted the argument, and this acceptance is what enabled the commercial market for the product to develop without regulatory interference.

He was careful to distinguish between knowing and unknowing participants in this system. The chemical companies, specifically Kodak, Fuji, and the laboratories producing the raw material for supplement manufacturers, he held fully responsible as knowing parties. The supplement manufacturers themselves, in most cases, he characterized as good-intentioned people who believe they are producing a health product and are deceived by the chemical houses. The FDA he characterized as institutionally compromised by industry capture, and therefore structurally unable to evaluate the claim correctly even when the chemistry was available to reveal the fraud.

Aajonus's position was that the premise underlying vitamin E supplementation is itself based on a false understanding of where vitamin E in the body comes from. He stated in newsletter writings that the human body creates vitamin E from completely raw natural fats through healthy natural bacterial processing during digestion. When digestion is healthy and uncontaminated, intestinal bacteria do not merely break food down but redesign food molecules, and this process includes the production of vitamin E.

He identified cooking, processing, and chemical treatment of food as the causes of destruction of those creative intestinal bacteria, which in turn produces the deficiencies in vitamin E that people then attempt to address with supplements. The supplementation strategy is therefore, in his framework, addressing the symptom of a problem rather than its cause, and doing so with a substance that is itself toxic and causes additional harm. The solution in his framework is restoring the raw fat content of the diet and the bacterial ecology of the intestine, not consuming isolated or synthetic vitamin E.

He stated that absence of vitamin E causes oxidation and other toxic processes that produce the symptoms commonly associated with aging, making the deficiency genuinely significant, while simultaneously insisting that commercial vitamin E supplements not only fail to address the deficiency but actively harm the body in the ways described by the Diane Cannon case and the thyroid effects he documented.

Aajonus acknowledged that people who take vitamin E supplements sometimes report improvements in how they feel, and he explained this within his toxicity framework. His position was that the toxic character of the chemical being consumed forces the body's adrenal system to produce hormones in response to the intrusion of a poison, producing a hormonal rush similar to caffeine or nicotine. That rush temporarily buffers or hides symptoms, stops detoxification processes that were causing discomfort, and creates a subjective experience of feeling better or having more energy.

This effect he characterized as a toxic high, not a sign of genuine nutritional support or healing. He noted that the body, when overwhelmed by a sufficiently toxic substance, stops the ongoing detoxification work it was doing in a particular tissue or system, because it cannot manage both the incoming toxin and the existing detox process simultaneously. When that detox process stops, whatever symptoms it was producing also stop, which the person then interprets as the supplement having fixed the problem. In reality the problem has merely been suppressed while the toxic accumulation from the supplement begins its own separate damage process.

He also pointed out that 2 to 12 percent of supplement content is utilizable by the body at maximum, meaning 88 to 98 percent of what is taken is waste that the body must recognize, isolate, and eliminate, using its own stored nutrients in the process. In this way supplements are not only toxic in their chemical character but also nutritionally costly, consuming good nutrients to process and remove the supplement material.

Aajonus's broader position, applied specifically to vitamin E throughout these passages, is that no supplement is what it claims to be on its label, and that all supplements should be classified as drugs rather than as foods or nutrients. The specific problem with vitamin E is the most extreme example of this principle, because in that case the substance being sold is not merely a degraded or chemically altered version of a food nutrient but an entirely unrelated industrial chemical with a superficial structural resemblance to the actual nutrient.

He stated that even if a substance is labeled organic, the USDA and FDA organic standards allow over 300 chemicals in certified organic products, meaning the organic label provides no protection against the specific contamination issues he described. He applied the same point to supplements labeled as derived from soy or corn: the soy or corn waste being purchased from manufacturers like Kellogg's has already been through every chemical process imaginable before the supplement company acquires it, meaning the starting material for the natural portion of the supplement is already heavily contaminated before any further processing.

His summary position was that no supplement is truly natural, organic, and bioactive, and that anyone claiming to sell a natural supplement is either deceived themselves or is deliberately lying. The strongest case for this across his teachings is always vitamin E.

During his time working at Antilles health food store in Beverly Hills in 1977 and 1978, Aajonus conducted what he described as two years of supplement research, observing the effects of supplements on the people who came through the store. The store carried between 1,200 and 2,300 supplements depending on the account, and across all of them he identified only nine that had any significant beneficial effect. Those nine were all prepared at temperatures below 82 degrees Fahrenheit and were not chemically treated or extracted. He stated that by the time he left supplement research, six of those nine had been destroyed by changes in production, leaving only three that were still what they claimed to be, and those were available at only two or three specific locations.

The remaining supplements, in his observation, created toxicity throughout the bodies of the people taking them, particularly in their glandular systems. He identified this observation as the foundation of his blanket position against supplementation, which he maintained for the rest of his teaching career.

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