Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Tumors Don't Stand a Chance When You Fight Smart with Dr Robert Hoffman
The battle against cancer often feels like navigating a maze where the map keeps changing. In this deeply personal episode, host Joe Grumbine shares breakthrough news – his recent CT scan reveals his major tumor has completely resolved, while a secondary mass has shrunk by 50%. This remarkable progress comes after just three cycles of chemotherapy combined with a strict methionine restriction diet.
Dr. Robert Hoffman joins Joe to dissect these promising results while confronting a critical crossroads in treatment. Despite clear evidence that Joe's current approach is working, his oncologist insists radiation therapy is the necessary next step. Together, they explore the concerning long-term side effects of radiation and discuss alternative approaches that could deliver results without devastating collateral damage.
What makes this conversation so valuable is how it pulls back the curtain on cancer treatment decision-making. Joe shares conversations with fellow patients who suffered permanent damage from radiation therapy, his research into continuing chemotherapy without radiation, and his plans to travel to Japan for specialized testing unavailable in the US. The discussion reveals how combining "workhorse" chemotherapy drugs with dietary interventions might be creating a synergistic effect against cancer cells that standard protocols alone cannot achieve.
Beyond medical strategies, Joe candidly discusses his recovery journey – rebuilding strength after significant weight loss, finding supplements that support healing without compromising his anti-cancer diet, and maintaining the mental fortitude to challenge medical consensus when necessary. His experience demonstrates that being an active participant rather than a passive recipient of care can dramatically alter treatment outcomes.
Whether you're facing cancer yourself or supporting someone who is, this episode offers invaluable insights into navigating the complex landscape of treatment options with knowledge, courage, and hope. Join us for a compelling look at how integrating traditional medicine with complementary approaches might create more effective, personalized cancer treatment pathways.
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Hey, well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we have back with us Dr Robert Hoffman. Robert, welcome back to the show. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Always glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's been quite a busy couple of weeks but we're moving forward right. We sure are. So just this past Monday I had a CT scan and they did it with a contrast and they inject that radioactive and it sort of sees what is active, what's moving or what is lighting up because of the glucose being in your bloodstream. Is that right? I'm not sure, joe.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure what the contrast agent is for CT Got it All right. That would be for the glucose pet, for sure, but the contrast agent for CT. Let me see if I can look up a little bit on my other phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is interesting because when we're talking about these things, part of it is just to share the story of what's going on, but the other part is just so people can learn and understand. You know what's happening, People get yeah, I mean it's so invaluable, what's?
Speaker 2:who could tell it better than a patient? Exactly, yeah, I mean. And zero For sure, let's see. Okay, c-t contrast agent. Hang on for me, please. Yeah, no worries, all right, here we go. No-transcript. These agents are typically injected into a vein or administered orally to improve the clarity of CT images. So I think they're not glucose.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. Glucose agent is for glucose PET. I think you're right, Glucose agent is for glucose PET. Here the type CT contrast agents are so-called iodinated contrast agents that are maybe linked to iodine, barium sulfate, for example.
Speaker 1:That's an old timer.
Speaker 2:So the contrast agents work by changing the way x-rays interact with the body. The absorbed x-rays more readily than surrounding tissues, causing them to appear brighter on the ct image. Okay, blah, blah, good, all right, you had it, it's good. Some people don't want to take it. Um, I think everybody should take it. Uh, it's not the most pleasant stuff, but we need an accurate image, we need accurate imaging, and this is especially true in your case.
Speaker 1:Exactly. You know, I've got, I had multiple tumors, I had the beginnings of metastasis, so it was starting to move into my lymph nodes a little bit, and so we need to be able to see everything we can a little bit, and so we need to be able to see everything we can. And you know, the good news is is it showed some of the tumor. Was they called it resolved, which means it's basically gone, not basically it's gone. It's gone, it's not there anymore.
Speaker 2:And then they referred to it as the big mass on the neck Right and it said resolved, that means gone.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so that to me was the best news. And then all the other little things. They talked about vasculature and all the different little you know descriptions of things, and everything that was noted was unremarkable, which is again the best news ever.
Speaker 2:You have what they call the nodal mass Right, which I guess is. They say it originated in lymph node metastatic lymph node probably and it shrunk about 50%. Yeah, shrunk about 50%, yeah, so that was very encouraging, but it means we have to be on the lookout.
Speaker 1:Right, right, we're still in this, even though you know it's been, you know, nine weeks. We've undone what this thing took 20 years to make, yeah, and so that's great, but we're not done yet. Well, I think we're in time warp speed.
Speaker 2:Yeah agreed and now we have to see what's going on with this lymph node mass, that you head off to Japan for a methionine pet, a med pet that'll tell us if that mass, or whatever we wish to call it, is active.
Speaker 1:Right, right, absolutely. And you know, I think that my opinion and my thought is that the chemotherapy is still in my system, it's still working. It's not, it's, it's still circulating, I still feel it, I still taste it, it's still in there, and so it's still working. It's still working and, and I, um, I, I took a little, a little bit of a break, but not really, I mean, I, I, I, I just relaxed a little bit while I went on my vacation, but I'm back in lockstep with my protocols and even being a little more aggressive, as though it was in a really bad spot, and I think it's important right now to make the most of this drugs that are in my body to knock this thing out completely. But part of the, the answer, until I can get to japan, is to determine, you know what do we got, what's going on, and you know they have this nav dx test, which tests for the presence of the virus that caused this, which is important. I certainly want to know if that's coming back, but the last test was zero and hopefully it'll remain that way.
Speaker 1:But we found several other tests that will. You know, there was one specific for squamous cell carcinoma antigen, which seemed like that would be very helpful in identifying if I've got any activity going on. And then there's a few other tests that I have in my little dialogue there that says I really want to get a regimen of regular testing, maybe even every month, done until I can determine you know what's going on, is there any activity going on? And you know what's going on. Is there any activity going on? And you know I can feel this thing continuing to shrink. There's still some solid material or mass here, but if you think about it, this tumor was huge.
Speaker 2:The big tumor. Joe is gone, right. What I think you're feeling is what the radiologists call this lymph node or nodal, call it a nodal mass, right, right, kind of jargony, but I think that's what you're feeling. He said about 6.3 centimeters down to 4. 4 is a little more than an inch and a half. That's probably still shrinking, but we really need to know what that is.
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely, absolutely. That's part of what this is all about. This whole conversation has been about trying to get to the bottom of the problem and how to solve it, and so far, the actions that we're taking seem to be working extremely well. But we also have to stay focused on understanding what we have, and I'm really looking forward to getting the rest of the results, because they scan my chest as well and I don't have that those results yet you can be pretty confident that that's going to be a negative. I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, we'll get it.
Speaker 1:I want the image. When I get the image as well, that'll be interesting to see, because I've got an image from not quite a year ago of a CT scan and then I've got the PET scan from about eight months ago to contrast it with. So we're going to have a pretty dramatic contrast, I believe. Well, we don't need the scan to know that. Right, exactly, exactly I. I just look in the mirror and that's uh, that's, that's, that's exciting stuff, but I just, you know, part of the thing is is for me. I'm doubling down on my effort right now because the the, the difference from I just found out I have it to this giant mass is a huge difference, and now that it's gotten so small, it'd be easy to go okay, we're good, but we're not good until we're, until we're done. And even when we're done, we get on a maintenance schedule, and we got to figure that out still. So so, one step at a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for now we we've, and we'll confirm this when you, you know, talk to the doctor and get the rest of the scan. We have to focus on that nodal mass Right, exactly and, and, and, and see what we have to do to do Yep, and I, you know I'm up against the radiologist or the radiation oncologist and the medical oncologist.
Speaker 1:They have their plan. What they want to do, which is, you know, hit me hard with radiation and chemo again. And you know it's interesting, I've met some people. I have a friend who I've known for many years and I discovered after her listening to some of my podcasts and us just talking, she had the exact same thing that I had, or the same cancer. It didn't manifest exactly the same, but they gave her the treatment that they want to give me, where they screw your head down to the table and they hit you with the radiation and then the chemo on top of it. And she has suffered horrendous side effects for many, many years and it's never going to go away. And I know another person who had a very similar situation as well and she said you know, the inside of her mouth turned into hamburger and she said the burning in her esophagus and just her memory has been shot and just a lot of really bad side effects that I don't want any part of.
Speaker 2:And, joe, I got a little bit of encouragement. Yeah, when you say they want to give you chemo plus the radiation right, well, maybe it's a different chemo and we can go just with the chemo, because that's what I would suggest so well, right, why don't we just stay with chemo?
Speaker 1:well, and I suggested that to the, to the uh medical oncologist, and she says no, it's not the, not the standard of care that she works with. She said it's a combination of those two and she said more chemo wouldn't do any good by itself is what she said.
Speaker 2:And well, she tried to tell you that in the beginning I know I'm gonna. She wanted you to do chemo radiation exactly what.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna ask her what the drugs are, so that at least I'll know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we can get somebody else to prescribe them if we have to.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's what my thought is, is if I can figure out what that cocktail is and then we can say, okay, well, let me. The good news is is I still got to deal with my mouth, and I wasn't able to do that while I was going through the chemo.
Speaker 2:Even so, Joe, it seems radiation is so, it seems, so perilous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't want it. I don't want it. I mean, you know, if it's going to come to life and death, okay, that's another conversation, but we're not at that place and we're not going to. We're real far from that and it's never going to get back to where it was Cause we're not going to let it.
Speaker 2:No no, it's never going to go back to where it was. You know, I just can't understand the logic these doctors have. You know that you had three cycles of chemo very good standard drugs. You had docetaxel, right, yeah, docetaxel, yeah, docetaxel. Cisplatin, 5-fluoruracil these are all warhorses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they did a great job.
Speaker 2:They're the $10 drugs too. They've been around for generations and they work.
Speaker 1:They did a knockout job.
Speaker 2:I'm just curious. Uh, it seems to me, if you're going to get another chemo, we could. We could do more of the same, or we? Maybe the logic just sort of says hey, wait a minute, let's do another cycle of the same.
Speaker 1:That's what I asked her originally when we had our last meeting and I said well, let's just say we get close but we don't finish it. I said would you be willing to order another cycle of the same? And she was flat out she says three cycles is going to do what it's going to do. She said another cycle wouldn't do anything. How do we know that? I know, I agree, I totally agree. So what we know is we have those three drugs that did work extremely well and we're going to find out what their other cycle would be. And if we have to go and find another doctor that could order that, then maybe that's our answer. If it comes down to it, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I think we have to go with chemo as far as we can on that mass. But maybe before we get too involved with it we need that methionine Pat to see if it's active agreed, agreed.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to work on on being able to get out there and do that and figure out exactly. How do I, how do I? From lax joe oh, I'm an hour and a half, no big deal I can get to lax easy okay, there's about umpteen flights to Japan every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chihiro used to work for United. She knows exactly how to use that airline, okay, and get a good deal. And you got, you know, you got her to take care of you. You got Mr Whale he's such a nice guy okay, so you got a whole team there ready to take care of you, all right. So, all right, let's see.
Speaker 1:Let's see, let's get the rest of the conversation with the doctor and see what they have to say. We'll get the rest of the scan and meanwhile that'll be my. My next plan is to to get out there and let's get this thing going and find out some real answers. All the blood work in the world gives you clues, but this will tell the truth.
Speaker 2:Well, the med pet will tell you if this is an active cancer. Absolutely I suspect that it is, but we have to know. The really good news is, geez, it went from 6.3 centimeters to 4, for God's sake, absolutely. That's so good. Why we stop? I know I don't get it. I don't either. I think you know minimum, hey, let's do, let's do another cycle. That would make sense to me. It's not that you've reached your limit of toleration, I don't know.
Speaker 1:In fact I looked at the the I. I researched those drugs and they said you can do up to six cycles. That's what the standard of care is Before it becomes a toxic dose. You can take up to six cycles of that she's giving it. We have to stop at three. It doesn't say why she said it'll do all the good it's going to do is what she said?
Speaker 2:Those were her words, well, first of all, she has no experience of combining the chemotherapy with the methionine restriction.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but she don't want to hear that she doesn't. No, and I get that.
Speaker 2:I get that she doesn't want to hear that. You know, and it's ironic, joe, yeah, I'll tell you this and you can do a little research. Uh, uc, irvine, where your works, yep, some other branch or whatever they're going to do a clinical trial on a low methionine diet. So and I forgot the name of the doctor, but she's probably you can look her up. Yeah, she's from romania, okay, so you may want to see who the I'll see if I can make it. Who are the medical oncologists at UCI?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we find a name that looks a little bit Romanian, we can get in touch with her. I will absolutely do that. It's so ironic, and probably your doctor. What's your name again, nibar?
Speaker 1:Nibar, yeah, I think she's Pakistani, or she's some whatever yeah nabar.
Speaker 1:So dabar nabar is is in another universe than these other looks in a parallel universe right, exactly working out the same building it could be. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to say, but yeah, it's wild. In speaking with Cynthia, she interviewed me for her blog and she came on my podcast, but she told me about her story and she worked with UC San Francisco, I think. Yeah, so this UC system, I think, has got a good medical program, but it was flawed with her as well. They wanted to do surgery and all this.
Speaker 2:They're all reading the same guidebook, okay. Whether it's the fanciest university, or East Podunk U, they're all the same. And oh, I'm going to go to Sloan Kettering, I'm going to get the best of the best. No, you get it Sloan Kettering, you get it Podunk Right, it's the same guidebook.
Speaker 1:It's the same book, written by the same pharma companies and the same pharma companies.
Speaker 2:Hey, we're not against the pharma companies.
Speaker 1:No, no, no.
Speaker 2:But it's just, that's an influence. It's the same drugs and ironically, joe and I'll tell you I'm a little bit surprised thinking back on it that it was so easy to get your drugs because they're all generic now and for a while they were really in short supply because nobody wants to make them. Why should you make cisplatinum, 5-luoroyluracil, docetaxel, the $10 drugs, when you could be making Keytruda or something like it? It took in $24 billion.
Speaker 1:There you go, and now they've got all these fancy immunotherapy drugs, and they're all coming out with something new every week.
Speaker 2:Yeah now the new fancy drugs, joe, are the antibody drug conjugates? Right Boy, are they expensive? There you go. I mean you know and so. But the old war horses, the old war horses are good. Yeah, are they good enough? Usually not, but they're good, and we're hoping, and we see with you. Looks like methionine restriction makes them a lot better.
Speaker 1:And a giant end of fasting, and a lot of other folks too. Yeah, agreed, and I think the fasting I'm big on the war horses, joe, I'm big on them, I love it. I love it. You know you work with what works, and I couldn't agree more, and that's why I embraced this plan.
Speaker 2:And I'm glad I did well. You can't argue with. You cannot argue, you don't need scans. We just need to look at joe 1.0 and joe 2.0 exactly like different people?
Speaker 1:oh, absolutely, and you know the best thing is is is I, my body's, rebuilding itself now and I'm getting stronger every day, and you know the the the thing that happens is.
Speaker 1:it's crazy because the when you when you get, you look a lot better without hair. Well, that's what a lot of people say, and and and. As I said before, I couldn't care less one way or the other. You know, I, I, what I don't have is this, and that's what I do care about. You got rid of that monster. Yes, exactly, so the thing was as well. I was battling that. It took so much out of me. You know, I lost all this weight from the diet and from just not being able to be active, and I lost a lot of muscle mass, I lost my stamina, I wasn't sleeping, so my immune system was compromised and I was really weak there. For right towards the end I was in the worst state I'd ever been in my life and once I started sleeping again, it made a big difference.
Speaker 1:And then I've been really focused on the diet and, you know, trying to get all the calories I need without bringing the methionine in, and I've been doing pretty good with that. I've found, you know, these foods that I can eat, that that have some calories to them, and I'm trying to find hominids eat that that have some calories to them, and I'm trying to find hominix. I found hominix. I love that stuff I, I, I, I take we all love it three doses a day now, and I take them first thing in the morning. And a lot of calories, yeah, and I and I burn it off. All your aminos, exactly no cysteine, no methionine, yeah, so so you know, that's enabling me to rebuild my muscles and it's made all the difference in the world. I've gained back 10 pounds from where I had lost 25, and so I'm I'm, probably at a best weight I've been in a long time, and it's, it's I be, everybody that sees me. Here's my voice. They say you know you're sounding stronger.
Speaker 2:You just, and I just know I'm getting stronger, and that to me, and you are, you are you know, joe, this, your case, I think, really highlights the roadmap that cancer patients have to go through. Yeah, you know, they could take one roadmap and just do everything the doc says and yes, doctor, right. Or they can study and learn themselves and know that there's other things possible than what the doctor knows about and tells about. Yeah, but how to get there? How?
Speaker 1:to get there, yeah, and you got to be willing to pivot and change and admit you're wrong and realize that sometimes things change. And you know, my path has gone here and there and here and there and I thought I was on a good road and I found out I was on a wrong road. And then, even doing all the right things, I had to find out there was adjustments. You know, the diet caused a zinc deficiency. Dr Castro found that. So I get a supplement. And as we're going along, you know all of these little pivots and you know and speaking of that, I don't know if you got a chance to look at it I sent you over a bunch of links about the NMN.
Speaker 2:I just don't know about that, Joe. It's just not my area. No, no, no it's my philosophy If it doesn't hurt, do it.
Speaker 1:Exactly Well what I did a precursory research and it turned out. There's a lot of information from a lot of different angles and I haven't studied all these reports, but I scanned them and looked at the abstract and I got at least a little snapshot of what it is. And just to begin the discussion of it because I don't know that this is going to be any holy grail or anything but it seems that it had a multitude of benefits and one of the benefits was that it helped to ameliorate the negative effects of cisplatin and it helped some of the other chemo drugs. Where you get these side effects, you get a brain fog, you get weakness, you get nausea, and one of the benefits of this was it lessened those things or they're claiming this anyways, and that's a good thing was it seemed to work with a number of different tests to find these cancers and help them to work better. And it was a number of cancers colorectal cancer and I believe there was a head and neck cancer and there was a few different cancers.
Speaker 1:And there's these different tests that you know can determine. You know, if you've got the like the PSA test and all these other tests where it says, well, you've got these markers that will indicate that you've got a problem or you don't. And apparently there are some studies that are showing that this can help improve the the efficacy of those tests. And then there were several studies that showed there were mechanisms that helped to actually attack the tumors. And I didn't study this deep, I just, you know, did a brief scan and on the abstracts but I believe that I'm going to spend more time studying this I couldn't find anything to the contrary, and one of the things one of the studies was talking about One of the studies was talking about it was increasing the apoptosis. Yeah, and that's a good thing too. Yeah, and that's a system that can help destroy the cancer cells. That's right, and so it seemed that that was making that work better. So it seems that I couldn't find anything that said it's got a problem and that it's causing any of these problems.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of my. You can try it out. I'm using it right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went back to taking it and and immediately I can feel the the positive benefit from it, where it gives you a benefit of stamina, you know, reset your DNA and and work on, you know there's a lot of anti-aging properties to it, where it's restoring things that are going wrong. So I'm, I'm, yeah, yeah, it's nothing, nothing I could find. If it makes you feel better, do it. I mean, why not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's, that's kind of exciting. And you know, again, I'm not looking at anything as a silver bullet, but I look at sort of I've got this quiver of tools and I'm trying to eliminate as many of them that don't work, because why mess around with things that don't work or don't serve me? And I'm trying to take the the fewest amount of things that do the most good, and that way I can manage it and the diet's enough, you know, to keep me busy. So I try to. I try to keep all the extra things. You know, I like my soursop tea. I think that's got some benefit and it doesn't hurt, and you know it's easy enough to drink and all of that but other other than that, you know just.
Speaker 1:I think the message really is, though, that this search for answers and finding, being willing to take action when you learned about something, and taking the time to, you know, get good information, listening to different people Like I shared these results with half a dozen people that all have medical backgrounds, and they all basically agreed the same. They all had about the same, the same result. You know, full congratulations and and and we're we're well on our way. So that, to me, was just undeniable. Yeah, yeah. But you know, sometimes there's there's information that could be interpreted one way or another, and that's why you know, sometimes there's information that could be interpreted one way or another, and that's why, you know, I try to get the feedback from people I respect and look for. You know anything, but I didn't get anything other than positive, so that makes me real happy. I'm looking forward to the 11th. I have my appointment with the medical oncologist, so we're going to be talking about the results and you know what they ask her.
Speaker 2:Joe, you know, maybe not in the beginning, you just say, well, with your proposed chemo radiation for the next treatment, what would be the?
Speaker 1:chemo Right. Exactly, that's exactly what I'm going to do, and I've been able to communicate with her, even when we didn't necessarily agree, without being confrontational, and she's been respectful of my point of view. So I think we're okay to have this conversation with her. You know the?
Speaker 2:very fact that she treated you with this first trip. You know cycles of chemo, which is really not in her guidebook? Yeah, you know, it sort of is, but that's a good sign already.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's the way I looked at it. It was in her playbook, enough to consider it and she didn't take any time to agree. And you know I was in a dire space and I needed something to happen and she knew that. So I think that you know that helped her make the decision pretty quick.
Speaker 2:but it didn't matter. She's got to be impressed with this result.
Speaker 1:Oh, she is. She is Absolutely Every time she's. She's seen me twice since we began the treatments and both times she, you know her eyes got big and she's like here, get up close to the camera. I want to see that closer. And you know she was real, real impressed. And then you know the, the practitioner that I meet with or was meeting with, you know, prior to the infusions she'd do the same thing. You know she was actually there and you just watch her. She'd be looking at me like whoa. You know it was just such a such a dramatic change, you know what's up?
Speaker 2:I just got a message on my phone that it's starting to overheat got it.
Speaker 1:We're about to the end. I'm a little worried, okay? Well, let's just go ahead and we'll we'll close the session down and we'll let your phone get back to normal temperature. Okay, all right.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Joe, then we'll see you on Sunday. I look forward to it. This has been another edition of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine. Thank you for all your support and we'll see you next week. Bye for now. All right, take care.
