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 Survival: Thriving Through Alternative Cancer Treatments With Dr Robert Hoffman
Taking control of your health journey can sometimes mean challenging conventional medical wisdom. In this deeply personal episode, we explore what happens when a patient refuses to accept standard treatment protocols and instead charts their own path through cancer care.
After receiving conflicting advice from different specialists and witnessing the dramatic results of his alternative approach, our host shares his recent conversation with his radio oncologist. The doctor's surprise at seeing unprecedented tumor reduction opens the door to a respectful discussion about patient autonomy, medical limitations, and the value of complementary approaches.
The conversation reveals how medical professionals often operate within the constraints of standardized care protocols, while patients have the freedom to research, experiment, and combine approaches. From low-methionine diets to fasting protocols paired with targeted chemotherapy, we explore the scientific rationale behind these complementary strategies. Most compelling are the tangible results—a tumor that once protruded visibly from the neck has shrunk to merely a shadow on recent imaging.
Connection proves to be a powerful medicine as well. We discuss the invaluable insights gained from a global support group of 1,700+ people with the same diagnosis, many of whom chose the aggressive treatment path that our host decided against. Their experiences provide critical real-world evidence that helps inform treatment decisions in ways that medical textbooks cannot.
The episode culminates with exciting developments: an upcoming meeting with a renowned oncologist to continue targeted treatment, participation in a prestigious medical symposium, and the expansion of a community dedicated to sharing knowledge about integrative cancer care. For anyone navigating a serious diagnosis or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers both practical guidance and profound hope that there can be healthcare approaches beyond simply surviving—there's a path to thriving.
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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 today we have back with us a very special guest, dr Robert Hoffman. Robert, welcome back.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody, Glad to be here, fantastic.
Speaker 1:Well, it's great to be working with you and this journey just keeps getting better all the time, right, yeah, this journey just better all the time, right, yeah. So, um, we've had a lot of progress this last week, but I did want to. Before we go getting too deep into it, I wanted to share with you my experience with the radio oncologist I met with yesterday, and it went pretty much as I expected. But, you know, I prepared a good presentation and you know my goal is twofold Obviously, I'm going to do what I want with my health and I'm going to go forward the way I want, but I'm also trying to make the most good come of this as I can, including educating the doctors along the way and hoping to open some eyes, you know. So, as you know, uci Medical Center is a teaching hospital, so there's a lot of interns that are participating in the process, and so it was an intern that interviewed me initially and he came in and again he was blown away about my progress, and I saw his eyes get big as he saw me and he says wow, you know, you've really made a lot of progress. I says, yeah, yeah, I'd like to talk about that. And so you know I have a pretty well prepared presentation about the things we've done and I talked to him about you know how well everything went, and I reminded him, gently of course, that you know where I'm standing.
Speaker 1:I got a little bit of reticence to just accept what's handed to me because of my experience with, you know, being misdiagnosed initially and then being told by a surgeon that that's the way to go, and then being told by the radio oncologist that you don't want to get surgery, and then on and on and on. We've gone, and I reminded him that you know I was the one that presented the solution that we took to them and I didn't do it in a, you know, arrogant way, just just a way that just let them know that I'm I'm really active in this participation, that I'm really. You know that I'm doing a lot of research. I'm meeting with a lot of people. I told them about that new group I've joined. It's got over 1700 active squamous cell carcinoma patients and that's a lot of people when you're looking at any kind of a study or any kind of a group of people, right, you know, fantastic group, yeah.
Speaker 2:So and I told them to share their experience. What a? I mean no medical school, no hospital in the world could match what you could learn from these people.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. I'm slowly integrating myself into the conversations and I'm starting to talk about my diet and I'm starting to talk about my experience and without just jumping in and, you know, bombarding the place, and these are people from all around the world and the one thing that we have in common is squamous cell carcinoma, and so I'm learning a lot from these people. But one of the biggest things I've learned is that most of these people have gone down the road that they wanted to send me on, which was a very aggressive radiation and chemo five to six weeks, five days a week, not a small load Surgery, too, and surgery. Many of these people have had surgery and I've seen the pictures and we're talking about giant holes and we're talking about, you know, tongues missing. We're talking about, you know, holes in the head and the side of the face and just I mean horrible, something I would not want to endure unless it was the only thing that could save my life. And you know I shared with him my thoughts about that and he says you know, I can appreciate your point of view and I told him about my experience with Dr Nabar and how I had offered a number of tests and she really wasn't interested in any of them and he kind of agreed with her, said well, you know, the NAVDX test really gives us everything we want to see. And I says, all right, I can appreciate that. But I said I'll offer you this, I go, I'm going to go about finding a source of these tests and I'll pay for them myself and when I get them I'll share them with you so you'll be able to see what I'm seeing and maybe we can together come up with a better diagnosis. And he agreed.
Speaker 1:Actually, the next thing he did is he walked me through the imaging of the CT scan. And that was kind of nice. I have a recording of it. I tried to send it to you but it was too big of a file. I'm going to have to put it in my drive and then I'll send it.
Speaker 1:But I recorded him walking me through what he saw. And he showed me the original CT from back in March or whenever it was, and you could see this mass and all the the issues with it. And then it showed the new one and it was almost nothing. But there's still a little shadow of something there. And I said well, we can agree that I still got something here, but we don't know what it is. It could be dead, it could be still be dying, it be, we don't know. And he agreed to that. So as I'm walking along through this process, I'm getting him to look through my eyes and see where I'm getting the information from. So it's legitimate. He's not. I'm not just making this stuff up. And and he all the way along he's agreeing that, yes, they don't know, there's no way for them to know. And I even mentioned Japan and the Met Pet and I could tell it went right through his head.
Speaker 2:He never heard of Met Pet.
Speaker 1:He never heard of it yeah, and it's okay, he's a radiologist. I planted the seed in his head and I said you know, maybe he'll look it up, who knows? And then I went and I said you know, in all the research I've done, I've determined that there are other therapies that are available but they're not included in the standard of care, such as immunotherapy, chemotherapy combination. And I said they only do that unless I was fully metastatic and it was in a worse stage or they wouldn't do it. He said yeah, and I said and there's even a new therapy that they've approved for liver tumors and it's an ultrasound therapy and it's called shoot, hang on a second, I have the name of it here.
Speaker 1:Um, shoot, hang on a second, I have the name of it here. It's actually it's called histrotripsy and basically what they're doing with that is they're hitting an ultrasound frequency targeted at the tumor mass and basically it scrambles, it turns it into non-living tissue and, um, you know, when you hit something with ultrasound at the right frequency, it gets warm, it gets really hot and, um, the combination of the heat and the sound waves just disrupt everything and and so when, and what does it do to the surrounding normal tissue?
Speaker 1:Nothing. They're able to target it in a way that is very effective. Okay, so FDA has approved it for certain types of liver tumors and there are certain parameters it's got to be so big and whatnot. This guy I said listen, my hope is that between now and the time that maybe I need to talk to you again or not, that maybe science comes up with something new. You know, we're not, we're not done.
Speaker 1:I says I'm not going to go back to what I was like when I came to them before. I had this giant tumor sticking out of my neck and it was aggressively growing. I says we've gotten to a place where, if I was to watch this thing carefully and get a scan every three months, we could keep our eye on it and if I saw anything happening I'd be ready to make a move. But I'll never be back to where I was when I first came in. And he agreed to where I was when I first came in. And he agreed and finally I said listen, doc, the real doctor came in after a while and we talked and I said, and he was very respectful for the work I did. He says I see, you've really taken an active role in this the senior doc or the intern? No, no, this is the senior doctor. He came back in and we started talking and he came in and he said look, I can see you've done your work, you know you're doing good research, you're getting good sources and you know you're.
Speaker 2:You're getting fantastic results that they never saw before.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, you can't deny that part, you know. And I said listen, doctor. I said I appreciate everything you guys have done and I understand where you're coming from, I understand your standard of care and I understand why you want to do what you want to do. But can you just for a second try to put yourself in my shoes? And he thought for a second I don't think anybody asked him that before and I said just just imagine we are, roles were reversed.
Speaker 1:And he says you know, I don't know that I could do that. I says you're right, you can't do that. It's it's, it's impossible. It's like trying to say what would you do if somebody stuck a gun in your head. You'll never know unless you know and you know, we think we know what we're going to do if somebody does a thing, but you don't, you only know when it happens. I says so just if you can.
Speaker 1:Please just understand that I am doing my very best to do the most good with the least amount of harm, and I respect your opinion and your work and your science and I think that what I offer is to be very vigilant and to you know, let's watch this thing and I'll check it and if I see any change I'll reach right out to you and we can talk and I'll go forward and prepare myself getting my dental stuff cleared. And if it turned out that everything went to shit and I had to go down that road, I've got that as a fallback. And he agreed. He said listen. He said I respect your opinion. He says ultimately, this is your choice. He says we're here to guide you and we're here to offer what we have to offer and I will schedule the scan for three months and we'll review afterward.
Speaker 2:And I said well, I mean that was a big progress. Joey, schedule the scan?
Speaker 1:Yes, so I have a scan scheduled for a third week of October and I even told him. I says you know in this group that I've been in it seems that 12 weeks was a normal time to set a scan after the treatment. And they did mine for three weeks after and I says it's possible, this thing's still dying, you know. And he agreed. He says yeah, we won't know that. And you know, I said I said you know, I think I think we're on track and I'm going to do everything I can. So meanwhile, last week you gave me a call and we came up with some really good progress. Well, I hope so.
Speaker 2:You're scheduled to see Dr Song on Tuesday On Tuesday at 11 o'clock, and I got a little better news for you. I'll be around.
Speaker 1:Oh right, excellent, Excellent, fantastic. Got a little better news for you.
Speaker 2:I'll be around, all right, excellent, excellent, fantastic, um well, you come by the lab and we'll go out for dinner or lunch, whatever the time is yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:that's fantastic. I will, uh, and I talked to emil. He said he might possibly be able to join too. He was okay, all the better. He said, uh, he had some appointments scheduled but I don't know how long. I might be there for half an hour, it might be there for two hours, it doesn't matter. Anyway, I, I'll be on call, all right, fantastic, fantastic. I'm looking forward to seeing the lab. I'll have my wife with me. It's messy, it's all right. I I I'm well aware of a messy lab. You should see where I manufacture some of my products. Sometimes I get so deep into a thing and you're, like my wife's, like what are you doing? And I was like, well, I need a cleaner.
Speaker 2:But it's all right. Well, I I. I think the goal with dr song is give me some chemo yeah, absolutely now I for you, can let him decide the chemo. Absolutely that's what he does.
Speaker 1:I want chemo, you tell me what you can do for me exactly and what. I don't know if you got, but I sent you an email earlier in the week and it was my whole medical record that I was able to download from the. I think I didn't get it, but okay, okay, I'll send it again, but it's comprehensive from when I went into UCI and I will be able to send that to him as well.
Speaker 2:That's the most important. To send it to him Exactly.
Speaker 1:So that was. I sent it to you just to make sure it would send, and I will have it available to get to him as well, including the I. They said that they they made the images available to me, but I haven't been able to access them. But I have this video that does show the images, with the doctor explaining what they were, so hopefully that will be helpful to him if I'm not able to access it right away. But either way, I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say, his thoughts on the subject. Maybe he knows something we don't know. Maybe he's got a trick up his sleeve that goes outside of he sure knows chemo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, and you know, be, be prepared, he might be. He's not into all this. Uh, smooth politeness, it's okay, I can handle it, just be. It's nothing personal, that's just um. But he, he's 82 years old. Wow, he's been in the business more than 50 years. Wow, um, he knows a lot. And I don't think he's you know, I don't think he's guideline only guy. At least in the old days he was treating people with very high doses. I don't know if that's allowed anymore, or also, but he had that reputation. Anyway, what we want is some. We want to continue chemo. Chemo's done so well.
Speaker 2:Why are we stopping when there looks like there's still a bit of disease?
Speaker 1:left exactly. Yeah, we want to finish this thing off and then and then establish some sort of a maintenance right, exactly, and that's the conversation with him exactly, exactly. So I, I, I hope, um he's open for me to share my story, but either way, I can hand him the records and he can learn from that.
Speaker 2:Whichever way works, and he asked me questions about, unlike your intern and his attending yesterday. Dr Song asked me about the diet Nice, so he's still curious.
Speaker 1:Good, good. Well, I'll share everything with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he can. I think he'll listen Okay good, good.
Speaker 1:Well, this other guy, even when I did, I said, you know, I think my fasting and diet and oxygen therapy impacted the chemo a lot. And I just said it in a sort of off the cuff way and he said, well, tell me about your diet. And I told him, you know low methionine. And I didn't say the methionine is, but I just said you know, I I've, I've, you know, very much fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 2:You tell people about the methionine is just okay. Yeah, oh, I didn't not tell him for a reason you see, it's a dietary supplement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but nonetheless I did tell him about the low methionine and he didn't look sideways at me. He seemed to recognize that. He didn't make any comment or anything. But you know, none of them have said anything.
Speaker 2:He probably heard of something sometime, somewhere Exactly. It's ironic, Joe, that at the very UCI they are planning a clinical trial of lomethionine dye for cancer patients. Wow it seems like the people you see are just kind of walled off or something Exactly Nobody knows anything about it, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, I believe that the dramatic results that we've gotten, that we're going to continue to get and you know, I'm a big, I'm all about visualizing and all the everything, all the things, and so, you know, I see myself being clear and I know that when that happens and I'm going to be able to go in there and say, ok, you know, come back with that med pet scan and say, look, you know, look, what we did.
Speaker 2:And you know, look what we did, and and you know they'll get the curtain. It may show that you still got something left. I think the med PET is really essential. I do too.
Speaker 1:I do too. So that's what my thinking is. We're going to go the three months and hopefully, um hopefully in those three months you'll be getting chemo with Dr Song this is my hope, months you'll be getting chemo with dr song.
Speaker 2:This is exactly my hope yes, mine, mine as well and so he may say oh, I want to wait till the scan. Okay, okay, okay, yeah, he may. Um, but you, you got your three weeks post chemo scan right and there's something in there. We don't know what it is exactly, and so it seems to me I'd hit it hard now. Get some more therapy now, and that'll be a give us a better chance of the scan coming up in october to be negative I agree, I that's, that's.
Speaker 1:That's my hope as well. I think we're you know we need a little more.
Speaker 2:There's some. There's a very good probability that you've got some lymph node tumor left. It's shrunk, that's great, right, why we can't shrink it some more Exactly.
Speaker 1:And that's my goal is to knock this thing out. While I'm still wobbly, just keep going. Let's just knock this thing through and I can recover when I'm done. It's all good. You know, I'm keeping strong, I'm doing remarkably well through all of this and I understand the doses and the chemo I got was pretty aggressive. It wasn't a light, a little dose and I did fine.
Speaker 2:A little dose isn't going to help you.
Speaker 1:No, and I wasn't interested in that. I just want to beat this thing out and be done with it, so I'm excited. Now I'm curious. I know that the third session of this symposium is going to be coming up pretty soon. Have you heard it so?
Speaker 2:it's going to be our time, 630 in the morning and the what day? They're allowing me to present Nice. I got 10 minutes and I sent my slides to the leader. Ok, woman, very good woman, dr, she excites and I thought I worried that she was just going to X me out of there. That you know I shouldn't be presenting clinical data, da-da-da Right, but what she said is just present, only present your published data. Okay, I was very pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 1:You got lots of that. I thought I was going to be censored.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that's what I'm going to be censored. Yeah, yeah, so that's what I'm going to do. I can't present your data, not yet.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2:Dr Asano has sent it to the journal, but it takes time. Sure, unfortunately I can't present your data and I can't present Scott's. Okay, neither of them are published yet, but you have Shahiro. Yeah, I can't present your data and I can't present Scott's. Okay, neither of them are published yet, but you have Shahiro.
Speaker 1:I still have good stuff. Yes, yeah, absolutely, and that's fantastic. And you know, in 10 minutes you can say a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to say, and you know, and leave room for questions, yeah, what day is this, you know, um, I'm gonna, oh, I don't know, I wish instead of me it would be dave and you and maybe they're gonna do a fourth round and they'll and and we'll be able to well, I'm going to tell everybody to please come and watch our zoom please yeah, yeah, no, I'm excited.
Speaker 1:What day is this thing happening?
Speaker 2:the day you go see dr song, but oh, in an ungodly 6 30 in the morning, 9 30 over there, nice, but we don't have access to see it.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:You know they're kind of paranoid over the whole NIH because you know all the arbitrary things that are happening. So they're very scared about communicating things they shouldn't. They're very scared about communicating things.
Speaker 1:They shouldn't?
Speaker 2:somebody may not want them communicating, so they've only allowed about five of our group to get on. Okay, Fair enough. Well, I think you have to get approved and everything but, I don't know. Maybe Dave, everybody's is recording Cindy, I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1:Cindy got the last time she got those slides and was able to share them with us. Well, that nice lady sent her slides.
Speaker 2:Oh, is that what happened? Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dr Gao. She sent a very sweet, very nice email, too Nice, and from the time before Dr Kaiser sent his slides. Of course, all those people could present unpublished data, Of course. But it's okay, I'm just going to keep my big mouth closed. I'm not going to say anything about it, I'd just be so grateful I could get on. Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:No, you're going about it the best possible way, on the highest ground and, frankly, you know you're getting this opportunity to get this out there in a forum.
Speaker 2:And you know, joe, I'm not going to make any claims, because every study, except one that I'm presenting, has other therapies in it. I just say these are the data, these are the results. Yes, these are what we got and we're going to get a lot more of them. Yes, and I'm not going to say, oh, it was all because of methionine AIDS, right, no way, no.
Speaker 1:People can make their own conclusion Exactly, exactly. And these are smart people that are attending this and it's going to be certain.
Speaker 2:Let's see, you know, it's a giant step to have this symposium. It's an amazing step that they let me in on it. Heck, yeah. So what the heck?
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Well, I feel like we're starting to gain a little momentum. You know, when we first started talking, it was what? March, something like that. And you know, I didn't know anything about your work. I didn't know anything about any of this, I was just trying to find answers and we began this conversation and I feel like we've come a long way.
Speaker 2:I feel like we've come a long way and you're living proof of it, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:And you know what's great, I tell you, everywhere I go, anybody who sees me that saw me previously, it's not just that this thing's gone, it's that they say, wow, you just seem vibrant, you seem alive, you seem healthy. And I says, yeah, that's a that's, that's a big piece. You know, I've talked to a lot of people that have survived cancer. You know, you hear that term survivor. Right, that's a pretty weak word. I mean, it's a word that says I made it, I lived. It doesn't say anything else, right?
Speaker 2:Weak and it's strong. It depends on how you look at it. That's true when you think about a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. And then, uh, you know, a cancer survivor. You know, I'm a cancer survivor too. I had a tumor in my ear. Who the heck cares? That's a nothing. But when you have a serious cancer like you, right, being a survivor, it means a lot exactly it does.
Speaker 1:But I look at it this way I go. Surviving is like the baseline, like that's the lowest possible acceptable outcome. It makes everything possible. It does Exactly, exactly. Without that I couldn't thrive, I couldn't testify, I couldn't do all the things that we're going to be able to do Just be fertilizing the ground.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, and I'm not ready for that one yet. Oh no, no At all. I got a lot to do. So anyways, I'm excited. I feel like you know, we're making progress on numerous fronts and you know part of this is obviously my first and foremost is stay alive and beat this thing, but quickly. Right behind it is, you know, teach people and share. So last week we had a lady that I interviewed on my podcast. She came and joined the show, or the the um the call, and she was impressed. She said you guys were very gracious and um welcomed her and she'll not be on this week, but she will. She'll be attending in the future and she has a lot of contacts up in Canada and she works with a lot of physicians and practitioners and she's learning as we're going.
Speaker 1:I have two other cancer patients that I've been working with, guiding and helping them, and I've invited them to the call as well and I think within the next few weeks, I think one or both of them will be attending, and these are people that were. Anytime, you're all welcome, yeah, and I just think that what's happening is this information is starting to reach out a little bit. It's like a lighthouse. I think we put a new bulb in and it's shining a little brighter now. New bulb in and it's shining a little brighter now. Yeah, it's shining a lot brighter, so I'm happy to be a part of that. It's exciting that.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe this you know these people in this group. I can't impress to the listeners how important connecting with the community is and finding people that have shared experiences, like this other group that I've, that I've joined with, all that have the same type that other group is so amazing. Yes, and I'm just slowly putting myself into the conversations, but so far everybody's been welcoming and you know it's a, it's a, it's a social media group, so we're not actually talking, but there's chats and things like that and I'm going to um, probably in the next week or so. Mention that this call and I'll put the link up there so maybe we'll get a bunch of people join um. But it, it.
Speaker 1:It would be great to plug in this information and I'm trying to do it gently, so it's not like somebody trying to sell their product or how people come in and invade and I don't want to do that. No, we sure don't want to do that. Yeah, so, anyways, I'm taking my time through that and I'm excited. I'm looking forward to meeting you in person. Me, too, instrumental in this journey, and I can't share my gratitude enough with all the work you've done and willingness. Thank you, joe.
Speaker 2:And you're a great example.
Speaker 1:Well, I think together we're going to continue to make changes and make this world. We already are Exactly All right, Robert. Well, we're going to wrap up a little early, Okay.
Speaker 2:Joe, see you Sunday on Zoom I look forward to it. And see you Tuesday at the lab and dinner, exactly.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to both of those things. All right, robert, we'll see you next time. And to all the listeners, thanks for.
