Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
The Hoffman Effect: A Paradigm Shift in Cancer Treatment
A paradigm shift is sweeping through cancer treatment, challenging decades of established thinking. While conventional wisdom has focused on cancer's addiction to glucose, Dr. Robert Hoffman's 50-year research journey reveals something equally powerful: cancer cells are addicted to the amino acid methionine.
This groundbreaking episode takes you into the heart of scientific discovery as Dr. Hoffman shares how he developed methioninase, an enzyme that depletes methionine and has shown remarkable results against various cancers. Despite published research and promising case studies, Dr. Hoffman's work faces resistance from established medical authorities – a classic example of how paradigm shifts in science often progress "one funeral at a time" as old thinking gradually gives way to new evidence.
The conversation takes a deeply personal turn when host Joe Grumbine shares his own battle with aggressive head and neck cancer. After finding himself drowning in conflicting medical opinions, Joe discovered Dr. Hoffman's work and embraced a comprehensive approach combining methionine restriction, fasting protocols, and conventional treatment. The results have been nothing short of transformative – a visibly shrinking tumor and minimal side effects from chemotherapy that would typically cause significant suffering.
What emerges is a powerful message about patient empowerment. "You hire a doctor, and the cancer is in your body, not theirs," reminds Dr. Hoffman. This episode isn't about rejecting conventional medicine but rather enhancing it with complementary approaches and taking an active role in treatment decisions. The weekly support meetings mentioned provide a forum where patients share experiences and build collective wisdom that benefits everyone.
Whether you're facing cancer yourself, supporting someone who is, or simply interested in cutting-edge medical research, this episode offers hope, practical insights, and a compelling case for keeping an open mind. Join the community of patients and researchers who are rewriting the rules of cancer treatment by combining the best of conventional and innovative approaches.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and I have with me again today Dr Robert Hoffman. And I want to reintroduce Robert because, as my life is changing, the impact of our experience has changed as well. And Robert Hoffman is a scientist and he has been working. He's a discoverer and a paradigm changer and many years ago he discovered a mechanism where cancer cells are addicted to amino acid called methionine addicted to amino acid called methionine and he's dedicated his life to publishing and testing and studying and developing an enzyme to help people. And, robert, I'm so grateful that you're here with us today.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Joe, and I'm really grateful to be with you. You're a great model for cancer patients.
Speaker 1:Well, I never imagined in a million years that that would be the case. And for the listeners, I want to take a step back. We're going to do it very briefly, but about seven, eight years ago my father passed away. I was 50 pounds overweight, had a stressful life and I got a wake-up call. I was going to become him and I began a journey of health. At that point, about seven, eight years ago, I lost 50 pounds.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot of things. I thought I learned a lot of things and you know I've been working with cannabis medicine for 40 years, been working with cancer patients. I thought I knew about cancer. I thought I knew some things. I watched things that I did, work and help people and I made assumptions based on those observations and I created a paradigm for myself about what health was. I did things, I tried them, I tested, I experienced, I followed as much of a scientific method as I could and then six months ago, I got diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma and my life changed dramatically. This was a very aggressive head and neck cancer that was already big and I realized very quickly that I needed to solve this or it was going to undo me, and in the process I thought I was doing everything right. So I'm fasting, I'm cut out my sugar and carbs, I'm being very rigorous, but I was eating protein as my primary fuel source. I was eating tons of protein. And as I'm going from doctor to doctor and studying and learning and starting to go wow, nobody agrees, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm wrong about some things, and I'm putting more and more focus at this, more and more focused, I'm like I can't mess this up. So I start researching and meeting.
Speaker 1:I stumbled upon this article about methionine somewhere in my research and then I stumbled upon this enzyme methionine is, and I went to go say, well, where can I find this stuff? I thought I could buy it on Amazon and there was only one name came up and I said all right. And there was only one name came up and I said all right. So there was an email address. I sent an email to that address. I said I want to buy some methionine. I don't know anything more than that. And I got a response that give me a call. And, robert, that's where our journey began, wouldn't you say yes? And from that point you invited me to a phone call. You said come join this call we do every Sunday at 4 pm Pacific time and we got a group of people together and we talk about all this and I sat on that first call and listened and it has been instrumental in your willingness to come on the show.
Speaker 1:And you know, I mentioned the whole paradigm thing because I believe that you know you're a pioneer, I'm a pioneer. Some people that are willing to take chances and study things are pioneers. But sometimes we're just wrong. You know, we think something is a certain thing, we assign a value to things and, as a scientist, a lot of times we'll just observe, right, you notice a thing and you go oh well, we make an assumption. Tell me how you went. You know you've been studying this enzyme and how it works and replicating things and publishing papers and going through the rigors of science. Why don't you share a little bit about that? Because I think that's really important for people to understand.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, I got into this area of methionine addiction a little bit. I don't want to say by accident, but let's say by luck, but let's say passed away. Unfortunately, his main interest was methionine. I had no interest about methionine but I was in Dr Irby's lab. I had to learn about it. It was so boring, this pathway, that that pathway, who cares?
Speaker 2:Then, by chance, I read a couple papers that said um, cancer cells can't grow on the precursor of methionine, it's called homocysteine and normal cells can grow. And I said, wow, that's really really big. I could. I said really big. Um, my, my boss, he didn't stop me and I said, okay, I want to work on this. So I cultured some cancer cells on methionine. I cultured some on homocysteine in place of methionine. I cultured normal cells the same way, with and without methionine. The normal cells didn't care. Methionine, homocysteine, they both grew. They grew on both media. The cancer cells wouldn't grow on homocysteine, they grew beautifully on methionine. They had this at that time we called methionine dependence. Then some paper came out and said, oh, the cancer cells can't make methionine. Well, I did a whole bunch of tests and I found the cancer cells made tons of methionine but they, despite that, they make making their their own, they needed an external source. And years later, many years, decades later, I understood that this was an addiction. So in those early days I tried to study the mechanism.
Speaker 2:And we weren't the first to develop the methioninase enzyme. The first, I think, was Dr Kreiss and Sloan Kettering, but he didn't continue the work. Then, in the 90s we're talking now fast forward from the 70s to the 90s we started developing our own methioninase and we found that this methioninase could slow or arrest the growth of tumors growing in mice. And we found that if you combined it with chemotherapy it worked even better. And we even put it into some human patients kind of a one-off by IV and we found it depleted all the methionine in their blood.
Speaker 2:And then we did some studies in China in monkeys, and we killed a monkey because the methioninase is a bacterial enzyme so foreign to the monkey. If you treat them once they're okay, but if you keep treating them they develop a severe allergy called anaphylaxis which can be lethal Right. So over the next 15 years we were really low key, kind of depressed, working on other projects a little bit of methioninase and then Around 2017 or 18. Dr Hahn and Dr Kawaguchi in the lab showed that you could take methioninase by mouth totally safe, no anaphylaxis, nothing. It stayed in the gut and that is very unusual for a protein, an enzyme that can survive in the gut, which is very low pH, very acid. It's designed to dissolve things right.
Speaker 2:It's designed to dissolve things right.
Speaker 1:Right, it's designed to dissolve things, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's not. Proteins are not designed really to survive in the gut. When we eat a hamburger, all the proteins get broken down into their component, amino acids, acids, and the body restruct, uses those amino acids to construct your own personal enzymes. That you're, that yours, that your immune system won't react to you. They become you. So anyway, we were lucky, so lucky, and a couple years later we started with patients. Dr Hahn took some, himself very brave researcher, no problem. So for the last four or five years we've given patients. Around 350 patients have taken methionine at least one time. And one thing we learned for sure it's completely safe. And one thing we learned for sure it's completely safe, although we have tons of studies in the lab that show methionine NACE is effective against every kind of cancer and almost every kind of chemotherapy makes it work better.
Speaker 2:We haven't done a clinical trial but we've published 12 case reports, some of them very promising. We can't make a claim because almost every case the patient was taking multiple things Right. Two of our breast cancer patients that had very metastatic disease went into remission. Very serious leukemia case she's in remission. A metastatic rectal cancer case. It was close to remission, doing good. A liver cancer case has gone into kind of steady state. The lady is very much alive. So we have a lot of results. We can't make a claim because almost all the patients were treated with other agents. But we're very encouraged and we got two or three stage four pancreatic cancer patients now that are hanging in there. We had one previously. She's going into her fifth year, stage four. She's alive. She takes methionine ACE and keeps taking her chemo and low methionine diet. You know I tell the patients it's encouraging, but I tell everyone. You know we can't make any claims and every patient's different. But here's what we've learned so far. We've published most of it. So that's kind of the story, joe.
Speaker 1:It's a powerful story.
Speaker 2:It's over 50 years. I mean, I did a little bit of time warp in my summary, but I started this project in 1973.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, that's, that's still doing it.
Speaker 2:So and, like you said, it's a paradigm shift. So for the last hundred years the paradigm has been cancer cells are addicted to glucose Right. It stems from the research of a German scientist called Warburg, w-a-r-b-u-r-g the Warburg effect.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's what I do. The finally addiction is the Hoffman effect. That's what it's called now. I love it, but there's sure a heck of a lot of resistance. The so-called opinion leaders don't want to go near it. They don't want a paradigm shift, they want to stay with their paradigm which has given them fame and fortune. Exactly, they ain't moving and they put out a lot of disinformation about yours truly. I can imagine they try to ostracize me, never communicate me, don't invite me to meetings, don't let me publish in the so-called fancy journals. And they one of my favorite students I had kind of a not only teacher, student relation with, but kind of grandpa, grandson. He went dark on me because his boss told him to stay away from me. Um, so that's if you're reading Kuhn's book. You know I am. I'm going to read it again. Kuhn's book will tell a little bit. For example, when Bruno tried to say that the sun was just a typical star, they burned him at the stake in the middle of Rome, upside down. That was in the 1500, I think.
Speaker 2:That's not that long ago In the big picture not that long ago and a paradigm shift very hard. The great scientist called Max Planck. I'm not giving the proper German pronunciation there. He discovered quantum mechanics, and he said cancer progresses, one funeral at a time.
Speaker 1:So true.
Speaker 2:The opinion leader has to die. Yes, and Kuhn certainly agrees with that. So here we are very nascent paradigm shift which is over a half century trying to get out of its little rabbit hole, if you want to call it. I don't know. That's where they are. Who is leading the paradigm shift? The patients, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Absolutely, and that's one of the reasons that I took this torch when I realized what I was dealing with. You know, I've worked with cannabis medicine for 40 years and there's powerful medicine there and it has its own amazing values. But I was wrong about things about it, because my paradigm included observations and there's not enough research that backs any of it up, because it's been illegal for so long, and so we just watch and we make assumptions and observe, and that's where a lot of problems come from. We don't have anybody pointing out the downside, Nobody's trying to challenge it, Nobody's really studying it in a way that makes sense. And you know there's in Kuhn's book. There's all these different motivators for a paradigm shift, and one of them is just a simple urgency. There's a big problem that needs to be solved and that's one of the ways paradigm shift Well, that's where it shifted for me personally solved, and that's one of the ways paradigms shift. Well, that's where it shifted for me personally. So I'm now part of a big shift, but my paradigm had to shift in order for that to happen. All the things I believed about health they weren't all wrong, but some of the fundamental principles that I relied on to make judgments and answers and and advice and treating myself and everything. When I realized that I had missed a part that was a fundamental part. It changed everything and I began a totally different approach.
Speaker 1:All the doctors that I've been talking to, nobody agrees on anything I've talked to. One doctor said I don't have cancer. I talked to a surgeon said well, this is what we need. I talked to a radiation doctor he said this is what we need. I talked to a Chemo doctor she says this is what we need. Talk to an integrative guy he says this is what we need. Nobody's agreed on anything. If I know solid science, get Joe. Yes, exactly. So then when we start talking and I start talking to all these people 20 people, 30 people sometimes and we all have this in common we all are dealing with cancer ourselves personally.
Speaker 1:And in this journey I came to realize that there isn't just cancer. Everybody's cancer is unique and everybody's answer is unique, even though there are common threads. So we have pillars. Like you know, glucose is a thing I mean cancer feeds off of it. But methionine is a thing and if you don't address that thing, the glucose doesn't matter anything because it's going to feed and grow and you know, unless you starve yourself to death, the cancer is going to go on, and everybody has different switches, Everybody has different things that cause it to happen. Everybody has their own metabolism, their own set of problems and, as a patient, as a person who's dealing with a problem like this, you need to get involved as deeply as you can.
Speaker 1:And what I learned on a quantum level is that everything's energy right and you have this amount of energy in amount of time and whatever you put towards it, you have the ability to make a change. And I was able to and I actually call it a blessing now because I'm not dying the way I was a couple weeks ago but in my ability to focus all this energy on this allowed me to see some things clearly. And in our conversations you you've been with me for now over three months and you've watched the tumor grow and get oppressive. I wasn't sleeping. I haven't slept in three months. I this thing was choking me out. It was almost twice the size that it is right now. This thing was choking me out. It was almost twice the size that it is right now and I was desperate.
Speaker 1:I had a radiation doctor that wouldn't clear my treatment that they wanted to do. I had dental problems and we were talking in this notion. You said you know, there's a way to go about this, there's a neoadjuvant solution that we could go with a chemo-only treatment and buy us some time, maybe, shrink this thing down and get a handle on it. And I said, wow, that sounds beautiful. In my life, chemo was the devil. I would have never accepted that as a possibility. It was natural or nothing. You come to realize there's all these different pieces to an answer. This thing didn't come to me for just one thing. I didn't just have one problem. I had all kinds of things that caused it, and the answer isn't necessarily going to be just one thing, much as many people will try to sell you.
Speaker 1:And so I've been building oxygen therapy and nutrition and all these fasting and all these different things to build this. But this group that we have, it's a collective consciousness. We have all these people that have shared their experience and out of that we're gaining true knowledge because we're able to bounce it off of. It's a collective consciousness. We have all these people that have shared their experience and out of that we're gaining true knowledge, because we're able to bounce it off of each other and say, well, this worked for me. Well, that didn't work for me. Well, you can learn from that.
Speaker 1:And in this group, Dr Exame and some of the other folks we talked about the fasting prior to chemo. We talked about the oxygen therapy. We talked about really going hard on the methionine restriction methionine is, and then coupling that with a chemo treatment and really causing like a supercharger effect. You got a race car that's good and strong. Bolt on a supercharger and it doubles its horsepower. That's good and strong. Bolt on a supercharger and it doubles its horsepower. Well, it turns out that these things I was literally at the place where I was looking at a darkness, I, I was like I'm gonna keep going, but I don't know where, what I'm gonna do. And at the last second I get approval. At the last second I, this tumor that was weeping and giving me all problems cleared up. Just enough, they put a port in me. I got my first chemo treatment just under two weeks ago. And, Dr Hoffman, why don't you share with me what you're seeing?
Speaker 2:I barely recognize you, joe, I was, it's striking.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:The decrease of that tumor. It's striking, yes.
Speaker 1:And you know we talked about what might happen In my mind. You know I do it the energy, the prayer, all of it and I saw everything. The best could happen. But I want to share with you this thing that my goal was to get the most effect and the least amount of harm. And that was what all this was about. Right, all the dieting, the fasting, the methionine, everything all of it.
Speaker 1:And when I got the first treatment, I got, you know, the two drugs, the docetaxel and the cisplatinum. And then I got home with a pump that pumped in the 5-fluorosil for five days and you know they told me about the side effects. And you know they gave me a bunch of drugs for the nausea. And they told me that. You know, I gave me a bunch of drugs for the nausea and they told me that, you know, I'm going to be exhausted, I'm going to have nausea, vomiting, I could have headaches, I could have ulcers in my mouth, I get bone pain, all of these things, they told me. And I says, okay, I'm going to brace for it best as I can.
Speaker 1:I had already been fasting, so now I'll turn my weights down. I got to get my weight back up, I'm just so. I spent a few days just trying to eat and just rest and, you know, acclimate to this. And you guys, you guys, we, we did the meeting just just before I did chemo and then we did another meeting a week afterward and you were able to see a difference from one to the next. I've been on a roller coaster ride with the chemo side of things, but to everybody I've talked to they've all said you had less side effects than I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:Because of the fasting around the chemo time.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It completely worked 100 percent and I have been. I dropped weight. I hit my line where I won't cross, so I've been steadily building my weight up again. You know, with this diet it's hard, it's hard to get the calories in, but we just do it, we just figure it out and we just do it. And I did get some sores in my mouth but I got this buffer saline solution. I've just been swishing it over and over. It really helps a lot.
Speaker 1:I noticed that the nausea medicine, the side effects are constipation and headaches. The side effects are constipation and headaches and to me that's hell. I said I'd rather be nauseous and so I said, ok, I'm going to deal with the nausea. But once again I'm like wait a minute, I know something. And I got disillusioned because the cannabis oil that I was taking was wrong for me and Dr Castro luckily pointed it out. He says you're flipping off switches, that's causing it not to be effective and your chemo won't even work right. And so I stopped it immediately and I really got a broken heart over it.
Speaker 1:I spent 30 years advocating for that plant and working with it and formulating and I just kind of put it on a shelf like a, you know, like a scorned girlfriend. But then the other night I was sitting there and I just kind of put it on a shelf like a, you know, like a scorned girlfriend. But then the other night I was sitting there and I was nauseous and I didn't feel like eating and I didn't feel like moving and I'm like I got to get out of this. I got to move and I got to eat and I remembered I'm like, wait a minute, what's the one good thing cannabis is for? It's great for nausea and appetite. And I said, you know what? I'm going to try a little bit. I took a tenuous little bit First time in my life. It was purely medicinal and calmed me down, settled my nausea. I got hungry again and I've been on a steady incline since that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the key of it is there is no one hit wonder. There's no one drug, there's no one medicine, there's no one herb, there's not even one practice. You got to build your solution and you got to find what works for you and you got to be willing to adjust and pivot and you got to be open-minded and you got to be willing to be wrong. I've been wrong in this journey a dozen times and I was like, okay, change, I just want to live. I want to live and I want to have a long, healthy, happy life and I want this cancer out of my body and that's all I care about.
Speaker 1:And I just feel that sharing this story here and inviting people to this meeting the show notes of this I put a link every week I encourage anybody if you have cancer, if you know somebody that has, even if you're not interested in this diet or anything like that, listen, there's people that are sharing amazing stories about their journeys and they're all tied around this paradigm shift and I just am so grateful. I keep wanting to come back and share with you and I feel like I have been able to bring awareness to a dozen doctors and practitioners and 20 or 30 patients at least put it in their mind. And you know, dr Hoffman, a lot of people have cancer and you look at them and you would never know and as disfigured as I am and have been, that was actually a blessing, because nobody's ever going to question that I have or had cancer. It's right there for everybody to see and when I can show you this dramatic change and I can tell you how it happened. I don't know. Maybe you'll listen right, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, I, I, my energy level has increased by exponentially. I was actually able to sleep on my left side a couple of days ago for the first time in six months, and it's just been. The sleep is all the difference in the world. You know, if you can't sleep, how do you heal? Yeah, you're in big trouble, and that's where my energy is coming from building my appetite, building my strength. And I'm getting ready. I got another week and a few days before my next round, so I'm trying to bulk up as much weight as I can get, get my strength in. We're ready to go round two. You'll be ready, I know it Well. Thank you so much, robert. It is just a-.
Speaker 2:Joe, thank you for your great story, your inspiration for every patient and they should listen to you. Well-. Educ. Story, or inspiration for every patient and they should listen to you. Well, educate. Every patient needs to educate yourself. Today I talked with one of my uh pancreatic cancer patients and he said the doctor proposed these two drugs. I said, well, maybe we need. I'll do a little study and you may need something else. Oh, I can't tell the doctor that. I said you've been on the Zoom. Did you see what Joe did? Of course, you can tell the doctor that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you bet and remember you're the patient you hire a doctor.
Speaker 2:You hire a doctor and the cancer is in your body, not his or her body?
Speaker 1:Yes, 100%. And if you can present yourself to a doctor in a way that says you're taking the time to learn and you have a goal that is not in conflict with theirs, you're just trying to solve a problem and maybe you present another solution. Nine out of 10 doctors are going to go. Well, at least I'll listen to you. They're people.
Speaker 2:If you just followed your doctor, you would have been at this point. You would have been so radiated I would have been Just by its little self, along with methioninase doing its thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, its little self, along with methioninase. Yes, doing its thing. Yes, and you know my goal and my hope is that I'm going to be like shihiro and we're going to have a good chance to be.
Speaker 2:We want to get rid of this thing totally. Yes, 100 with the chemo combined with methioninase, we've got a really good chance for it and I'm going out and told shihiro I want to operate. Why are you going to operate? Cancer is gone.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and this week I'm going to be getting some blood tests, thanks to Dr Exumay's advice, and I'm going to be getting my own markers so that I'll be able to go. Well, here's my baseline and here's where we're at, and the doctors haven't even ordered it, but I'm doing it myself.
Speaker 2:Don't count on them to order. You got to do it yourself many times, exactly.
Speaker 1:All right, Robert Well, thank you so much for taking your time. Thank you, Joe.
Speaker 2:Great meeting and share it with everybody. I keep doing it. We'll see you Sunday, okay.
Speaker 1:See you Sunday. Joe, all right, have a good one. Thank you you.
