Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Beyond the Knife: One Woman's Path to Natural Cancer Recovery with Cynthia Chin-Lee
What does it take to look beyond standard cancer protocols when your life is on the line? In this deeply personal and illuminating conversation, children's book author and high-tech retiree Cynthia Chin-Lee shares her remarkable journey of reversing breast cancer through unconventional means.
Diagnosed with invasive lobular carcinoma just one month into her retirement, Cynthia faced the standard recommendation of immediate surgery followed by radiation. Rather than following this path automatically, she chose to research alternative approaches—a decision that would prove life-changing. With quiet determination, she negotiated with her medical team for time to implement dietary changes and less invasive treatments first.
The centerpiece of Cynthia's approach was targeting cancer's universal methionine addiction through a whole-food, plant-based diet. Within six months, specialized imaging showed no evidence of disease, all without surgery. "Once I got my cancer diagnosis, it became easy to commit to the diet," she explains. "It was like, do I eat for a healthy life, or do I eat to encourage the cancer?"
This conversation goes beyond personal anecdotes to examine evidence-based approaches to cancer treatment. Both Joe and Cynthia address the sobering 30% recurrence rates for conventional breast cancer treatments and discuss how to evaluate medical information critically. They share practical advice about researching through scientific databases like PubMed and the importance of building community with fellow cancer patients exploring integrative approaches.
Whether you're facing cancer yourself or supporting someone who is, this episode offers valuable perspectives on becoming an empowered patient who questions assumptions and makes informed choices. As Cynthia puts it, "There are a lot of other ways to treat cancer than the standard protocol—in fact, you need to go beyond the protocol."
Visit CynthiaChinLee.com/blog to learn more about her journey and read profiles of others who've successfully implemented methionine restriction in their cancer treatment plans.
Intro for podcast
information about subscriptions
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today I have a very special guest. Her name is Cynthia Chin Lee and we actually know each other for the past several months, and Cynthia is a children's book author, a high-tech retiree and a cancer thriver and that's actually what we have in common. But her story goes a month after retiring from a career in high-tech, she received a diagnosis of cancer and you know, as anybody knows, that rocks your world and people react so very differently, and I think that's a wonderful way to enter into this picture. A terrible thing to have in common. But as it turns out, you know, we can turn these things into an inspiration and a tool, a pathway to health. Cynthia, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Thank you, Joe.
Speaker 1:I'm doing well surviving cancer and survivors and people learning about how to do that get together and share our thoughts and ideas. But you certainly have an incredible story and I'd sure love to hear a little more about it.
Speaker 2:Sure, a month after I retired from my high-tech career and I was enjoying myself, and then I went for my annual mammogram and the doctor said well, I think we see something, and I got called back. The first argument I had was when the doctor suggested biopsy, because my husband, whose father had passed away of lung cancer and had a biopsy, was a subject of controversy Because, as we know, biopsy and surgery can sometimes cause cancer to spread story too, because, you know, I had this giant lump sticking out of my neck and they were telling me well, the only way we're going to know for sure what it is is to take a biopsy.
Speaker 1:But my first instinct was, well, I don't want that, because you're going to spread it, I mean. But then they're telling me that there's no way to know beyond a shadow of a doubt what it is unless you take a piece out. So what was your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:So you know, I wanted to know what I had. My husband didn't want me to do the biopsy, but I decided I would take the risk. And later, when I did more research, I did find that the statistics for biopsy seeding cancer, at least for breast cancer, is about 3%. Yeah, you are. You have to weigh the pros and cons.
Speaker 1:Exactly Everything seems to be a double-edged sword in this world. There's no like for sure. This will help you or hurt you.
Speaker 2:Right. So I ended up doing the biopsy and they said, yeah, it's invasive lobular carcinoma. Fortunately for me, it's a estrogen positive breast cancer, which, if you're going to have a breast cancer, it's good to have, you know, a hormone positive breast cancer because they have drugs, medicines that can help you.
Speaker 1:Isn't it wild? Like for people who don't know anything about cancer. That's like they think it's just this one word and it means this one thing. But it means so many different things and the causes of cancer many times affect the ways that it can be treated and even the survival rate, like in my situation. It was the same thing. Mine was HPV driven instead of bad choices driven, hpv driven instead of bad choices driven, and it made the difference between a 40, 45% survival rate to 90, 95% survival rate and and different treatment options. So you were in the same same situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, going to a regular doctor, the opinion was surgery and radiation. But within 30 days and I went back and I did more research. And I was lucky because I had a friend, sue Ann Kaiser, who's another children's book author, and I had seen her get breast cancer 18 years earlier. She did surgery, but when the doctors went back and said more surgery, you didn't get clear margins, as they call it, so they didn't cut away all the cancer. She said no, she stepped back, she changed her diet, she started doing lots of things and I witnessed that just as a friend when.
Speaker 2:I got my diagnosis, I called her up and I said okay, sue Ann, tell me how you did it. What did you do? I called her up and I said okay, Sue Ann, tell me how you did it. What did you do? And I realized that there are a lot of other treatments that are less invasive than surgery and radiation.
Speaker 1:Well, you know the problem with surgery people don't realize. People are like, oh, just cut it out. But the problem with cancer is any little bit that's left behind is going to spread and you're in there looking around and you might not see it all. And you know the scans can see it, but the human eye can't necessarily see it and there might be cellular masses that aren't big enough to even see that they think they cut away and unless it's somehow encapsulated there's no way to be sure. And you know they go and almost like give you some extra time. But you know that cancer grows fast as it can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know. What makes it worse is they've done a lot of animal studies and they show when you surgically remove the primary tumor, you actually stimulate the other cancer that's floating around in your body. So there's a possibility that surgery is making things worse.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, People don't know about circulating tumor cells that are just literally like. As soon as a mass gets big enough, it starts breaking pieces off and just floats around the blood just looking for another place to land, and there's no way to catch it. It's just there until you make them die.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I gently told my doctors that hey, you know what I really don't want to do? Surgery. Give me at least six months and I'm going to change my diet and I'm going to do supplements and I'm going to do letrozole, which is the hormone blocker, and they said you know, we normally don't give you letrozole until you do surgery.
Speaker 1:You must do surgery first right.
Speaker 2:I said well, please, you know, give it to me before surgery. And you know, if things get really wildly bad, then maybe I'll consider surgery.
Speaker 1:You can always go and get surgery, but you can't un-get it once you have it Right exactly.
Speaker 2:So I was very fortunate I found Mark Simon and Dr Hoffman and the methionine restrictive diet, which is pretty much a low protein, whole food plant-based diet.
Speaker 1:A rough road. Yeah, so tell me how did you find Dr Hoffman? Because I'd like to hear about how everybody stumbles into his world.
Speaker 2:I found Dr Hoffman through Mark Simon Okay College of Research Institute. They used to do the Zooms together. And then they kind of like do them separately. But I also found Mark Simon through Chris work.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he has a program called Chris beat cancer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've read his book and I know who.
Speaker 2:I you know did his program and through mostly strong. Have you heard of feeling strong?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, through healing. So I went on his website and I said, oh, there's this support group called Healing Strong. So I kind of joined Healing Strong for a few years, and then from a woman I met through Healing Strong. She strongly encouraged me to look at Mark Simon, and then Mark encouraged me to look at Dr Hoffman's stuff so I've done methionin a's and I do the low methionine diet, but it it basically worked for me yeah so what was? Very tell me what happened like you.
Speaker 1:You started taking the hormone blocker. You shifted your diet um. Did you start taking the methionine a's right away, or did you?
Speaker 2:I did not take it right away because I don't think I was a perfect candidate for it.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:So I was taking the nutritional oncology's nutraceuticals the nori nutraceuticals. And then about, yeah, six months after my diagnosis. I was lucky in that I had a clinical trial for imaging. So for women it's mainly women with estrogen positive breast cancer they have a new. They have a PET scan that's estrogen based. So for for people that don't know, so for people that don't know, very often cancer is imaged through a PET scan and the.
Speaker 2:PET scan. The standard is a glucose PET scan, Correct? But I, because I had estrogen-positive breast cancer, qualified for this clinical trial of an estrogen PET scan. So it was an NIH Department of Defense clinical trial. So it was an NIH Department of Defense clinical trial. So I got my baseline estrogen PET scan at the beginning of my diagnosis and it confirmed the biopsy which was high intake of estrogen on my right breast at the same spot. And then, as part of the clinical trial, you do another estrogen PET scan. They call it a MAMI PET M-A-M-I, so it's a MAMmy pet after six months. So it's really ironic. But the same week that I get this phone call from UCSF, I'm in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2:So UCSF is where I got my medical care. They called me and said hey, you missed your appointment for the anesthesiologist. And I said what they said yeah, you have surgery appointment for the anesthesiologist and I said what they said yeah, you have surgery scheduled for next week. Whoa, yeah, I know. And I said no, just cancel that, please, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think we'll pass on the surgery. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna pass on the surgery. But that week I also had my second mammy pet. The second pet scan and scan showed that there was no uptake of estrogen. So basically no evidence of disease wow no yeah, the, the phd person that was doing the pet scan, the she was really happy. She said come over here and take a look at this, not that.
Speaker 2:I can relate to it. She said you have reversed it, so that was just great news. I continued on, though I mean, I don't take it for granted and then at one point, I think like a month or two later, I felt like I was getting too little protein, and I wanted to. I did a blood test and that kind of confirmed it, but I also had symptoms, so I wanted to try to get protein on that diet.
Speaker 1:It's a rough right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to eat a little more protein and that's when I went on the thionase okay because Mark said hey, talk to Dr Hoffman. If you're gonna even increase your plant-based protein, right, you should take the methionine. So that's when I went on methionine.
Speaker 1:So you know, the thing is is, once you have mutated cells, once you have a mass of any kind, you have a problem for life. It doesn't you know it's, you have circulating tumor cells and there's no way to detect it. I mean you can test, you can test for markers, you can test for, like in my case, it's a virus. So they have a test, they can detect the virus presence in my blood and if it's not there, well, the particular cancer that I have caused by that virus is probably not going to be there. But that doesn't mean something else or something hasn't mutated. I mean, there's just no way. There isn't really a fail safe. So once you know that your body has mutated in this way, there's a high likelihood that it'll do it again if given the chance and that gives you kind of a life's work of not giving it a chance.
Speaker 2:That's right and you're lucky. You have a marker test, so I also have a blood marker test that I can do. It's the. Ca-3. And the other good part about my cancer journey was I would go in for a scan every six months and it's an ultrasound. The doctors want to do MRI with gadolinium and I just had read so much negative stuff about gadolinium I said no, I said I'll do an MRI without the gadolinium and then they said, well, that's not going to help us, or they. They can't get off of their protocol.
Speaker 1:I know they're so stuck on their standard.
Speaker 2:So I said Well, hey, I won't do the MRI with contrast, but I'll do ultrasound and I will do mammograms. So I would go in every six months for my ultrasound. I'm still doing it and, like within a year and a half, my tumor shrank down to not detectable.
Speaker 1:I love it. So this is something that I experienced, and I'm sure you did as well. So you have this sort of I don't know dance. You have to do with these physicians. You know, like there are things that only a doctor can order, you can't like. In my case, I requested this particular chemo cocktail. I can't go to Amazon and order it.
Speaker 1:You know you have to have a physician approve it, insurance has to deal with it, and so you have to have a friendly relationship with these people that are there to assist you, help you, heal you, bring you whatever it is you need. But the truth is you're the one who has to be in control and you have to kind of manage that. And some doctors are more I don't know opinionated or forceful or strong-willed than others, and others will listen. So you know how did you find your experience with these doctors? You know surgery. You can always say no to a surgery, but when it comes to scans and procedures and tests and things like that, like they get it in their mind it has to be this way and you have to in some way convince them that you're not fighting them. But you just don't want this thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to negotiate it with the doctors and sometimes they'll listen and sometimes they won't. For some of the blood tests, like the marker for my breast cancer, they won't do because they said they don't believe in it. So I pay out of pocket.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But a few of the things. I convinced them to order the blood test, like they ordered the blood test for B12 and vitamin d, because those are markers that they said, okay, we know you're vegan, so, yeah, you want to have the test, so they ordered it. Um, it's also the same way with the imaging. I had to negotiate with them like, okay, I'll do this, I'll do the ultrasound, but I won't do the mri, heavy contrast.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the same.
Speaker 1:You know they, these, these scans. People don't realize that the amount of radiation and the, the contrast agents, and you know, some of these can be extremely toxic and it's not like you get it once, like you're going to be scanned barely regularly for probably the rest of your life and you have to determine for yourself how much of that are you willing to take and is there some other way? My experience is that they don't tell you about any other thing. They say this is what we're going to do and you're either going to say yes or no to it. But it's on you really to figure out what other options are out there and maybe even looking at different doctors. Who is a genetic brilliant man and understands a lot of things about cancers and repurposed drugs and other ways around, things that many doctors wouldn't, and my insurance happened to cover him as well. So I was able to go and see this other doctor.
Speaker 1:But you're up in the Bay Area. That's quite a trek down. There's probably another integrative oncologist or somebody who has other thoughts and ideas if you needed. But how do you find them? It's sort of maze and turns out a big network is a big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I was lucky that UCSF had an integrative oncologist, but it was funny because he did not even agree with my going plant-based.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:He just said reduce your meat. But you know he was the one that ordered some of the blood tests for me and that's why I'm so grateful for Dr Hoffman's Zoom and Mark Simon's Zoom, because there's really a community of the patients, the cancer patients, who want to do the integrative and less invasive treatments, and we learn from one another so much.
Speaker 1:It's such an important tool and I'm always talking about that call I mean, I haven't been on Mark Simon's call but I'll probably join that one day simply just because the experience of all these different people is where I've gained so much knowledge and even ideas. You know, like Dr Exime and some of his things, and him and I have become close and just meeting with people like you and I are getting to know each other and turns out we've got a lot in common. And I think that you know when you go to a doctor they're going to. They read out of a playbook, they have their standard of care, that they're trained and, depending on what their specialty is, they're going to have their playbook. And I had a surgeon tell me one thing. I had a radiation oncologist tell me, well, don't do the surgery. And then I have a medical oncologist tell me, well, you have to do the radiation and the chemo. And then I had an integrative oncologist through UCI. So we're both in the same UC system, but I'm in UC Irvine and she had a lot of great ideas and she has never got back to me. And so this is all you know and this is after I had internal medicine, so you probably don't have cancer. So you know, I let mine sit for nine months just thinking I was going to get over it.
Speaker 1:And you know these doctors, many people when they get diagnosed I think they just automatically just do what they're told. And I think that's where so many problems come from. And part of it, I think, is it takes a special kind of person that just says you know, obviously you have a tremendous will to live because you went through the effort. I'm the same way. I mean, I love every minute of my life and I was like I'm not going to risk. Once I realized I was facing a difficulty like that, I was like, well, I'm not going to stop to solve this thing. Is that kind of what drove you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believe in questioning authority and I have a blog for anyone who might want to read it. It's CynthiaChinley dot com slash blog and I think there are lots of truths that we live our life and we also see that society will perpetrate many untruths or evil or you know, and we have to question all those things Indeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that, as we're going through like I don't know about you Once my community. I've been an activist for many years on a lot of levels and I question everything as well. I think we have a lot of that in common. But I have a lot of people that you know cared. I've helped a lot of people with cancer, but I had a lot of people that you know cared. I've helped a lot of people with cancer. I've been working with cannabis medicine for 40 years and made cannabis oil and it's helped a lot of people. It didn't help me, but it's helped a lot of people and everybody seemed to have an idea. Did you find that? Did everybody come to you with? You got to try this, you got to try that.
Speaker 2:Or were you just, yeah, you know absolutely, because even when you do your own web research, there are tons of different ideas and treatments. I went to doctors that had different ideas and you know, I just decided I would do the things that personally made sense to me. Not everything that's non-conventional makes sense to me, exactly.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of things there's. Frankly, you know, I've been in the natural medicine world for, like I said, a good 40 years. I make natural products and I work with all kinds of herbs and supplements and minerals and all kinds of things. But the truth is there isn't one answer for everybody and the thing that helped this guy over here may or may not help you and half the people out there just trying to sell this thing and maybe they have some evidence that it does a thing, but that doesn't make it. So there's so much misinformation, there's so much sort of bits and pieces of information and then at the end of the day you have to decide and you know you come to sort of bits and pieces of information and then at the end of the day, you have to decide and you know you come to sort of I don't know. I found that I came to learn my body really well. My body and I communicate extremely well. Now that I've dealt with this, where maybe before I didn't pay so much attention, did you find that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's so much individual variety that a medical doctor can't know about you as an individual. You know I found recently that I was allergic to some antihistamine and then my son was allergic to three sets of antibiotics he was given and it's like it's not predictable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the other thing too is your body changes. So you know, I went through my young life allergic to these certain things and then I outgrew them and then later on I became allergic to another thing and it's like, well, what the heck? You know, there's no rhyme or reason. You don't get a flag that says, hey, something's changing in there, it just changes. And all of a sudden you get a symptom. And then you know you got to figure it out or you don't.
Speaker 1:You know, I think most of us walk around with a lot of symptoms, of things that we don't either notice or we don't. They don't bother us enough, or we cover them up with a thing. And you know, cancer hides underneath everything. It seems it it'll mask itself or it'll it'll. You might have this symptom that you think is an allergy or a reaction to something, and it may be something entirely different. I think, like there's so many options, like when you look up alternative cancer therapies. There's just like hundreds. You know there's supplements and herbs and fruits, and you know diet varieties and you know the first thing you hear about is you know sugar, right, that's the big thing. You know. And in this group that we're in, most people, I think, started it down that route and you know, we go down, we cut the carbs and the sugar out, think we're going to starve the cancer and we don't know anything about this methionine addiction. And it really doesn't matter. Cancer doesn't care. If it's getting its methionine, it'll eat whatever you got.
Speaker 2:and so you got cancer has a tricky way of adapting. But you know, the methionine addiction of cancer is a universal hallmark of most cancers yes, exactly once I discovered that, I started going.
Speaker 1:You know what? There are some pillars that I can rely on and I started really narrowing my cause. I was doing everything too. I mean, I was trying, I had all these different supplements and you know, drinking the teas and and the diet, and doing everything I could. Cause I was going to do everything I could and but then after a while I started going okay, well, how do you know if this is helping you or not? Right, you're taking 20 things and you don't know if you're really getting better or not.
Speaker 1:Then it comes down to and I think you know Dr Exame is really strong about that it's like what's the evidence say? You know, is there? Is there something that says this helps everybody, or most people? And so, when it comes down to the diet and the things like the methionine restriction and oxygen therapy, and there are certain things, cancer doesn't like oxygen. There's no cancer that likes oxygen.
Speaker 1:So you're like, ok, well, if you could oxygenate your body a little better, you're going to help yourself. You're going to create an environment where the cancer is not going to do so well, not going to do so well. So there are certain things that I've come upon that I say, well, if I'm going to spend my time, because it comes down to like, how much energy can you put to treating yourself right? You know, I mean that's one thing that's been difficult for me. It's like when it was going after me hard, I had to put everything on the side and that's the only thing I did. Well, guess what? You could do a lot when you could dedicate your whole life to a thing. But then you start getting your life back and all of a sudden you're like well, how do you manage it all? And how did you manage all the different treatments and therapies along with the rest of your life?
Speaker 2:Well, I did follow Dr Exame's advice. I look for people who can show me the evidence.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So show me that. So I would look at those papers that are on the web. And you know, in PubMed the NIH medical library Turns out.
Speaker 1:Pubmed's quite a great tool. I searched everywhere and then, once we started getting on these calls and hearing about PubMed, I'm like let me spend some time in there. And you're like, oh well, this is actually evidence-based research and it's all different elements from clinical trials to published studies, to you know every step along the way. It's all there and at least you know that it has some sort of standard. You can't like I can't just come in as a lay person and say here, I'm going to publish on PubMed. You have to have some Right.
Speaker 2:Peer-reviewed scientific journals. And Dr Hoffman says the same thing. Where's the evidence? I wanted to say something to your listeners too, though. One of the reasons why I really I would question the conventional treatment is that the recurrence rates for many cancers are super high. Even for breast cancer, my cancer, it's like 30%. So it makes a thinking person say if there's a 30% recurrence then conventional treatments are not enough.
Speaker 1:Exactly Spot on Right, and it's so important to think like when, when they tell you these things, they don't, they don't give you that bit of knowledge. They just say this is what you need to do and follow it along and you know it'll come in the papers or whatever. But you got to think for yourself a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would also advise people who are going to do cancer treatment to look at every side effect or symptom of every treatment they do, and then you make the informed decision of what you're willing to risk and what you can put up with.
Speaker 1:That is the best advice I could, I could hear or give. You know every single thing you do is going to have a positive potential outcome. And it's going to have a cost, and it may be a cost of a difficulty of managing a diet that's hard to hard to follow, or it may be uh, you know the side effects of chemotherapy which I'm currently going through and it's not fun. But when you say okay, then what's that benefit going to be? Is it a sure benefit or a highly likely benefit? And you can risk it. You know, you can assess it, you know, when it comes to the things like the radiation, that's where I draw the line.
Speaker 1:I was like, just like the radiation, that's where I draw the line. I was like, just like the surgery, it's like, well, unless, like I know somebody who had a cancer that was completely encapsulated, they were able to completely remove it and it was a result of, I believe, the cannabis oil he was taken and it just made a big difference. The body wrapped it up in a, in a mass, and and the surgeon was able to just completely get rid of it. But generally that doesn't happen. It puts tentacles in and it goes into everything and it just seems almost like there's no way that that's a good idea, unless you can get it all or you can cut so far away from it. Then what do you? What are you left with? Right, you maim your body so badly that is that worth it. And then radiation Same thing Like I don't know anybody who's ever gone through radiation that's like wow, that worked out great it radiation can cause a secondary cancer, exactly.
Speaker 1:And it generally does, and it causes all these side effects and lingering forever side effects, and it can knock the cancer out. But you know, you look at the, the high likelihood of these problems and and these potential other problems that you're. You have to look at that and say, well, if I don't do it and there's some other thing that I could do, I don't know. It just seems like logic would dictate that you might want to go down that road. It's a lot of work though, and I think that's a big part of it. I think a lot of people, especially if you have cancer, it depletes you. I mean, it's a very draining experience emotionally, physically, mentally, and to have to muster up the energy to go and do these difficult things while you're dealing with it. I don't think a lot of people have that wherewithal. I think that's a big reason why people just follow.
Speaker 2:I want to make a comment about the methionine restricted diet. Yes, so I know it's not the easiest diet to follow. It's a whole plant-based low protein diet. Basically. However, I will tell you, for decades I tried to be vegetarian and vegan. I could never do it because I come from, like the typical omnivore family, and you know boys are having meat and seafood, but once. I got my cancer diagnosis. That was it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like the sword of cancer hanging over my head. Yeah, I think I will become plant based. And it became easy because the decision was kind of like know, do I eat for life, for a healthy life, or do I eat to hurt myself or to encourage the cancer? And I was like there was no way I could come. I was confused. It was like there's no justification for health exactly 100.
Speaker 1:It does make it easy. You just have to decide this is what I want and this is what, and when you understand though I think once you get that, that understanding like I know, that was the one thing when I made that switch and I says, okay, I'm going to do this, and then I watched this thing start shrinking, I watched this thing work and that was the one thing I did, like that was the primary thing I did. All the other things I know helped, but I know that was the big thing, and the evidence is there. Everybody that has been on this diet, everybody that follows it, has, at very least, some very positive results, and I think most of the people that don't have those positive results aren't following it. I think, frankly, that it really is a silver bullet and it does make it easy. It's like and you know, I just got back from a vacation and I took a little brief break. I doubled up my methionine aids and I just I just said you know what I to have a hamburger. I haven't had a hamburger in four months and I had one, and I had four doses of methionine aids afterward and I said to hell with it. One, one time one thing, but I guarantee you, now that I'm back, I'm boom right back on it, stronger than ever. In fact, I'm even fasting to just to reset and and, and I know that that matters. I know that it works and I think really that's a key to all of this.
Speaker 1:I think with general health, I think a lot of it is just making these choices. There are things we know that work and we just have to make those decisions. I'd like to hear a little bit about your blog. I know we're running a little low on time, but I definitely I'm interested and I'm going to be interviewing you for your blog, so I'm interested in you. Know how? Where do you go with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I just wanted a place where I could put down the things that I was going through on my journey and I have some profiles of various people who have gone through the methionine restricted diet and been very successful. So you know, there's a profile of Gene Slattery, and Blaine Lesane is on there too, and another people from the Nori side.
Speaker 1:I enjoy doing it. I enjoy doing it and I hope that I can compile this along with the scientific documents and make a really readable lay to 15 years behind what the knowledge is. And this knowledge is cutting out there. I mean, they just did a symposium and they have leading scientific experts talking about this. There's hundreds and hundreds of published papers. Dr Hoffman published many of them but the point is, the research is out there, there is evidence, there's proof of this, and yet every doctor I've talked known about the methionine effect on cancer since 1959., Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:So that's a long time, but I kind of compare it to the tobacco and cancer controversy right, yeah. We knew about tobacco's influence on lung cancers in the 1920s and 30s and basically nothing was done until the 80s, so that's like 15 more years.
Speaker 1:How many people died and how many people could have lived Well. I think that what we're doing is important and that's the reason why I talk incessantly about this every chance I get, and I love talking with people and sharing their stories, and especially when you have a success story. So tell me about your current state. You've been cancer-free for how long now?
Speaker 2:I guess about two and a half years.
Speaker 1:Nice, nice. And how often do you get your test? When was the last time you had a test?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a test in January, so later this month or early. July I'm going to have another scan.
Speaker 1:So how do you feel Like every time you're about to get one, do you still get a little anxious?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still get a little nervous.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's called scansiety yeah, totally, totally. I hear you. I've got one coming up in the end of the month. After you know, it's been since January since I've had one and in January I had this giant lump sticking out of my neck.
Speaker 2:And you look great, Joe.
Speaker 1:I'm hoping you know that what's left is dead and they're not going to find any activity and we're going to be on to a new chapter in this. But you talk about some skin anxiety. I've got it for sure already.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, Cynthia, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you and, you know, anytime you have anything you'd like to share on your health journey, you've got a seat at the table here. I would like to give you your chance to share how anybody can get a hold of you, pitch your blog again, and anything you want to share.
Speaker 2:Sure, Well, my website is Cynthiaynthiachinleycom and if you look there you can see the blog is one of the tabs. So you can read the blog and I really appreciate being part of this and sending the word out there that there are a lot of other ways to treat cancer than the standard protocol and in fact, you need to go beyond the protocol.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. Thank you so much, cynthia. And this fact you need to go beyond the protocol Absolutely Well. Thank you so much, cynthia. And this has been another edition of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Gromline, and we will see you next time.
