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
Chemo, Protein, and Russian TV: One Doctor's Mission with Dr Robert Hoffman
What happens when cutting-edge cancer research meets personalized patient care? Dr. Robert Hoffman joins us to share his remarkable dual journey as both cancer researcher and patient, offering a rare perspective that bridges laboratory science with real-world treatment experience.
Dr. Hoffman takes us through his chemotherapy regimen with docetaxel, cisplatin, and 5-fluorouracil, revealing practical strategies for managing side effects that most oncologists never mention. From proper hydration to prevent kidney damage to using aloe vera for mouth lesions, these simple approaches have transformed his treatment experience. The conversation challenges conventional wisdom about protein consumption during cancer treatment, with Dr. Hoffman explaining why popular high-protein diets like keto might actually be counterproductive for many cancer patients.
The most exciting revelation comes as Dr. Hoffman shares breaking news about international interest in his research. A major Russian television network recently interviewed him about combining ivermectin with methioninase for cancer treatment, highlighting how his work is gaining global recognition. With patients now using methioninase in Japan, Finland, Turkey, the UK, Australia, and Russia, we witness how grassroots scientific innovation can spread worldwide despite institutional resistance.
Perhaps most valuable is the discussion of personalized cancer care. Dr. Hoffman praises his oncologist Dr. Song's approach of making treatment decisions based on individual patient needs rather than rigidly following protocols. This personalized strategy allowed him to avoid unnecessary treatments when his body was naturally recovering, demonstrating how patient-centered care can minimize side effects while maintaining treatment efficacy.
Whether you're facing cancer yourself, supporting a loved one through treatment, or simply interested in the future of medicine, this episode offers invaluable insights into how complementary approaches can enhance conventional cancer care. Subscribe now to join our community exploring the frontiers of health and healing.
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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 I'm happy to have again in our studio Dr Robert Hoffman. Robert, welcome back to the show. How are you?
Speaker 2:doing today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, for having me back, joe. I feel like it's been a month since we've talked, but it really has only been a week or two. Excuse me, I was on the. I was on the call last weekend but I had just done an overnight ceremony in a sweat lodge and I was really tired, so I mostly just listened. That's okay. Yeah, since we last talked, um I'd be, I had begun um the chemotherapy with dr song and um just sort of to revisit.
Speaker 1:He was able to um get me another session or another set of rounds with this cocktail of docetaxel, cisplatinin and 5-fluorosil. And these are, you know, heavy hitters, they're not light doses. And he's actually modified the infusion where I get half of the cisplatinin in the beginning, where I get half of the cisplatin in the beginning and then tomorrow when I get the fluoruracil pump taken out, I get the second half of the cisplatin. And, as I mentioned before, dr Song apparently was one of the discoverers of this drug, so he knows it as well as anybody on the planet. And I've also come to learn that cisplatin is the primary chemo agent that they do use with radiation when they're, you know, doing the standard of care that they wanted to give me, which is six weeks, five days a week, of heavy-duty radiation. The chemo that they generally administer with that is cisplatin. So, as you said, dr Hoffman, it's a workhorse. It's a standard drug that's been around for a long time. It can be very effective. Is that right?
Speaker 2:That's absolutely. It's a real workhorse. Taking a workhorses, dosataxel, which is a form of taxol, I'm sorry, dosataxel, which is a form of taxol. Viflururacil is a fantastic workhorse yeah apparently they use that as a topical as well. Decades and decades and they've helped so many cancer patients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard they use the Fluoruracil as a topical as well. They have multiple different ways that it can be.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's right so he's, he's modified the way that I receive um, my chemo, and I believe that I'm handling it better this time and it's. You know it's so hard to say. There's so many variables in this. You know, a lot of times we, we want to make assumptions. You know, just like um, just like coon's, you know ideas and thoughts and, uh, structure, scientific revolution. We, we associate one thing with another, but oftentimes we'll neglect all the different variables that are in in in front of us.
Speaker 1:And for me, my first round, my first three rounds, I went from having a giant grapefruit sticking out of my neck to more or less what I am now. So, and I was in a severely weakened state, and so the the way that I dealt with the chemo. It was harder the first time around, I believe, and this time around I'm also more mindful. You know the stuff really. What it does, I think, is it lowers your resistance to stress, in the sense of like, when you get out there and move around, do something, you get tired faster. You don't realize it because you're used to. Just, you know, I go out with my shovel and I dig some holes and I'm used to. I could do that all day long. Well, now I go out there for half an hour and I come in I get a little lightheaded, I lay down, take a nap, and so it a. There's a balancing act, that's for sure, and I think that's really important for people. I know that. You know, initially one of my biggest problems was I didn't want any chemo, I didn't want radiation, I didn't want immunotherapy, I didn't want any of this stuff. I thought I could just handle it with natural solutions and good choices and I just didn't realize what was all in play present with this low methionine diet and the methioninase and oxidative therapies and exercise and things like aloe vera. And you know, there's all these little tools that can really make it to where it's not such a problem, like, for example, I think it's the docetaxel, but it might be the cisplatin as well that can cause kidney damage.
Speaker 1:And if you don't drink a lot of water, if you don't drink enough fluids to keep that flushing through and it's critical, like when you get this stuff in your body, you know you get nausea, you don't feel like doing anything, you don't feel like eating, you don't feel like drinking, you get kind of a lousy taste in your mouth and you know your motivation to put food in there just isn't like what it would be. But you've got to remember. You know there's these pieces to handle, just like the diet. You know you never forget the diet. You never forget. Keep drinking that water, keep drinking that juice. You know, keep yourself flushed. And even like the fluoruracil can cause mouth lesions lesions and I can feel it. You know, trying to get a little sensitive. And I drink that aloe juice and I swish with the saline solution and you know it keeps it in check.
Speaker 1:And I think that's a big part of this whole journey is, you know, for people to remember that. You know it's your job to take care of yourself. It's your job to find these answers. The doctor's going to tell you some. You know they're going to give you a little handout. You know they handed me a little pamphlet that said these are the drugs you're going to be taking and it had some stuff in it.
Speaker 1:But like our calls on Sunday, I think you know that's critical. I thought last Sunday's call was really powerful, with Gabriella and her problems and Dr Exame really drilling home. You know the importance of you know you can't yeah, you can't let your, you can't let your nutrition go down or, as he said, you know, start closing doors. And you know, I think I think that's so critical. You know, with with the diet that you've, you know, discovered and and recommend and and the enzyme and all of this, you know it's a hard road. You know a lot of people can't handle it, just like you know you've always said it's hard to find enough test subjects to validate these things because people just don't want to stick to it. But we got a good group, people that have got the chops to to make this a lifestyle. You got Gene he's been on this for years now and a number of the number of the members of our, of our call have.
Speaker 1:You know I've only got about six months into me, but you know it's a routine. Now I don't. It's not such a big deal, you know I don't. I don't even crave meat like I used to, the way, the way I used to. I still, I still, you know, get a hankering once in a while, especially for fish, which is the one thing that I really probably won't be able to eat.
Speaker 1:But you just get through it. You know what I really have a hankering for waking up the next morning, that's. That's the part that really you know people don't realize. When you get a glimpse of what it might be like not to be able to do that, and then you get a see, a road to where you can do that, maybe for a long, long time, all these little things are no big deal after that, absolutely. Tell me what's been going on over there. I know we were going to try to get you guys to go see Dr Song on Monday and it was a crazy day. Anytime, joe, it's okay, anytime, no, no, no, I know I just it was like the, the gods were saying not this day. I showed up.
Speaker 2:I I got it. So let me tell you a little bit news. Yeah, so I got an email from the main main tv uh in russia on a couple days ago. Okay, so they want to interview me really and they want to come over to the company and their main interest is combining ivermectin and methioninase. That was so they came.
Speaker 2:they came over today and, um, wow, the program. I'll send you a link to the channel Nice. That's exciting. It's going to air Moscow time Saturday morning, which I guess is Friday night here I don't know exactly the time I'll find out.
Speaker 2:I have a live link to the channel Beautiful. They asked very good questions. It was a short interview. Somebody intelligent made up the questions. All right.
Speaker 2:Well, why did you use ivermectin? It's an anti-parasite. I said, well, I read some papers on it that it also has potential as an anti-cancer agent. Well, why did you combine it with methioninase? Well, we've combined so many drugs with methioninase with good results. I thought this would be too Makes sense. And they said well, there was a program TV program with Mel Gibson and Joe Rogan and they said they cured a patient with ivermectin. What do you think about that? I said I don't think anything about it. I don't take that kind of information into consideration. I said my only information I take in are published results in peer-reviewed journals. I love it. Then they said well, what do you think will happen if the patients start on this and refuse standard therapy? I said we only use it with standard therapy and if some patient wants to refuse standard therapy, I won't accept that patient, right? So they asked very, very good questions. I like that. And if some patient wants to refuse standard therapy, I won't accept that patient All right.
Speaker 2:So they ask very, very good questions.
Speaker 2:I like that you know nothing, political nothing. They just wanted to get the skinny on combining ivermectin, in our case, with methaninase. I guess somehow in Russia there's been some spark about ivermectin and they found out about us and okay, so that was it about. You know six questions or so, and then they filmed it and then they would. In the film industry I learned there's role A and role B, r-o-l-l. Role A is the interview and role B is going around the lab and seeing stuff. So Dr Han and Dr Kim and Dr Miyashi took them around and showed them around. We have the glowing mice.
Speaker 2:We have purified golden methioninase. We showed them the fermenter, so that's what was going on. I like it. I was very impressed when they said you know, they told me the Mel Gibson Joe Rogan interview said there one of them claimed they cured somebody with ivermectin.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I said I don't accept that kind of information.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:I hope a lot of other people won't either. Right, that you know, that's you know. I said I accept information in peer-reviewed journals. And then the other question is what are you going to do if people start giving up standard therapy? Well, basically not with me. They're not. I don't accept the patient who's going to do that, and I think that's huge.
Speaker 1:I think all of those elements are great. How do you suspect that they became aware of that topic and your and your work?
Speaker 2:uh, easy to pub med um if you, if you these days I guess somehow. You know, ivermectin is a well-known substance. Right Won the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2:It's gotten a lot of airplay lately, a few years ago, as an anti-parasitic People have been publishing here and there about its anti-cancer activity. And then it became very controversial during COVID. A lot of claims and it became political. Covid, right A lot of claims and it became political, unfortunately Right. And so it's out there, right. And so you know, maybe it takes a little longer for things to trickle over to Russia, but it's not surprising. They know about it and if you just Google ivermectin and cancer, we come up. Oh, there you go. All right, there's not that many you know. Or go on PubMed or whatever. So the lady, the kind of overarching producer, her name is Anastasia Lunkova. She knew me. I mean, she knew of me, dear Professor Hoffman, all that kind of stuff. She knew about me. And you know I thought about it. You know I'm totally against Russia. What they're doing to Ukraine, I think it's just totally inhumane. But I said to myself I'm a cancer guy, I want to help everybody with cancer, no matter what country they're from.
Speaker 1:So I decided to do it.
Speaker 2:I thought about it a little bit, so I decided to do it I thought about it a little bit. Yeah, and one of my Russian friends, who doesn't live there anymore, of course, chided me, says you're helping the regime, wow, I said well, it could be looked at that way. I understand that, but I can't refuse to help a cancer patient. That, but I can't refuse to help a cancer patient. And I thought what we, what this interview will help, maybe a whole lot of them. Um, this, the channels ntv, I'm guessing.
Speaker 1:they have tens of millions of viewers I would imagine they don't have a lot of channels out of those tens of millions.
Speaker 2:They don't have that many channels. Right out of those tens of millions we can catch a few to help out one way. I have one patient in russia. I was gonna ask you it's not easy to send methionine ace there you have to send it to somebody in this country who hand carries it and you can't fly directly there. You go through armenia or turkey or whatever. Wow and but we, we got it there in in two or three days, um and uh it handles the, the not being frozen, okay for that, oh, yeah, oh yeah, you know when it was purified.
Speaker 2:one of the first steps in purification is a heat step. Okay, so you know what happens when you boil an egg, right? Sure, All the proteins solidify. It's a hard-boiled egg. Oh yeah, the E coli that is producing the methioninase. The huge majority of the proteins precipitate Methioninase. Hey, no problem for me, says methioninase. It stays in solution. We're talking about 50 degrees centigrade, which is I don't know 122 or something. Yeah, yeah, Fahrenheit. So that's no problem. I don't like it sitting around a long time because it's in a saline solution and it's not been sterilized so something can grow in there. Um, so I don't like that, but but a few days, the ice melts nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the reason I asked is because on the box that I get it on it says store at negative 54 centigrade.
Speaker 2:Yeah, minus 20.
Speaker 1:Best practices Minus 20.
Speaker 2:No, it's minus 20 centigrade. Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:There you go. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2:My brain is a little off and you know that's just for general safety.
Speaker 1:Yeah, best practices, that's good. Yeah, generally I keep it in the freezer and then I'll take out two little vials a day and I put them on my dresser and I'll take them, you know, after my meal.
Speaker 2:That's perfect. You can also even put them in the fridge. They'll be melted overnight in time for you.
Speaker 1:Either way, so that's good. Well, I was curious about clients that you have in Russia and even other countries. You know you've been making.
Speaker 2:We have a regular in Finland and delivery there is very smooth. We have a regular in Turkey. Delivery there is only by courier, by carrier. We have in England, australia. Sometimes we get a hard time but we get it through. Uk is really good.
Speaker 1:I was going to say is there any countries where you're having a diff? I mean, this is treated as a supplement, so it doesn't really.
Speaker 2:A lot of countries don't care it's. For them it's heroin or something.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I know like I mean. My Turkish patient says no way we can get it through, so they find travelers. I love it. I got to go underground, yeah, or in the air or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one way or another yeah.
Speaker 2:It goes country by country. The smoothest country is Japan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We ship there almost every day, nice.
Speaker 1:How many clients do you think you have in Japan? Easily 50. Nice, nice, that's awesome. Well, that is. You know, it's been what? About six months we've been working together and I'm just I get more and more impressed with you. Know how the knowledge it seems to be seeping out. You know. First the.
Speaker 2:Little by little. Now it's even made it to Russia.
Speaker 1:I know exactly and you didn't solicit them. They came and found you.
Speaker 2:They sure did. And this, this program.
Speaker 1:I don't know how much people will learn from it, but it's going to go to millions and millions well and that's, you know, that's the big reason why I keep coming back and talking about this, because I'm confident, in fact I'm. I know that you know this element of the methionine-restricted diet and the methionine is are instrumental in my healing and you know all the. You know we've told this story all the crazy roads I've gone up and down and in and out of and you know still navigating. But I know that once I came into this line of thinking and understanding and I still every day I talk to people then and you hear the whole sugar story and the whole, you know the keto and and I just cringe and I'm just like or you hear the people that say we don't need.
Speaker 2:We don't need standard therapy, we're just gonna do the keto diet, or I mean it's sad, well, and a lot of quacks out there, joe, preying on these. They're predators that prey on these poor people.
Speaker 1:The most vulnerable people in the world are the cancer patient when the crazy thing is is you know you get every once in a while a cancer will go away and sometimes the cancer goes away.
Speaker 2:Joe exactly nothing. It's called spontaneous remission, exactly.
Speaker 1:But the point is is that these people are doing a thing and they attribute the cancer going away to that thing, and then they turn around and say see, look what I did.
Speaker 2:You can do it too, and you know what it's like the guy who falls out from the seventh floor and survives. Exactly. Uh, you know everybody will just jump and see how you do. You know these people that they smoke, uh, three packs a day and they say I know somebody that smoked three packs a day and he's 101. Yeah, there's maybe one in a million.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you got the genetic lottery.
Speaker 2:There's always some outlier Right. We're trying to find things that are relevant to a lot of people, not some extreme outlier.
Speaker 1:Well, when it comes down to it, we're looking for the most likely solution to your problem.
Speaker 2:Which is to help the standard therapy. Standard therapy has gone through billions of dollars of clinical trials and development and research. Of course it has effectiveness. Effectiveness, but it needs more in maybe most instances, especially in metastatic cancer. So we're trying to make it work better.
Speaker 1:That makes sense to me Exactly, and that's really to me maybe the most frustrating part is that the paradigm hasn't shifted, where the doctors they won't go past their standard care well, part of it is they.
Speaker 2:They don't want to take the risk right, and they can. Dr song has been doing it for 40 years.
Speaker 2:He's still around, so it can be done it can be done um and uh, but it's always hard to go out of the box. But it's always hard to go out of the box and you know they've been brainwashed with all this. They take a fellowship in oncology, medical oncology, so they get a paradigm leader there and they get brainwashed and they get their, their guidelines and it's really hard to move from that, as you can, as thomas coon says, up and down. Um so, and you saw how rigid they were at irvine, so rigid.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, dr song talks about their uh moving up the ladder in, you know, in inside the health care system.
Speaker 2:Well, in the university, that's, that's the number one priority Move, don't, and don't get kicked out.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Move up the ladder and don't get denied tenure and get funding. That's what it's all about the patient is way low on the priority list so that that brings me to um.
Speaker 1:You know, and I don't know, I don't think you mentioned you didn't have a whole lot of um experience with the immunotherapy drug. Uh, the the, the patent name, I think, is Keytruda, and it has another name.
Speaker 1:Keytruda is the number one yeah, that's the one they've got me on and so far I've taken one round. And the thing about Dr Song that I really like is he doesn't just follow that standard protocol. So like after I took these chemo drugs at uci, when they took the pump out of me, they gave me an injection that is supposed to stimulate white blood cell production and that's to just keep you from getting leukopenia. But dr song said you what you don't need that unless you need it.
Speaker 2:Well, I agree with that, because you never know I mean, you do enough of those injections you might induce a leukemia. So if you don't need it, you don't need it.
Speaker 1:Well, and the thing that I like about Dr Sung is he's testing my blood.
Speaker 1:Every time I go there he yanks blood out and he's doing these tests and he's looking at them and he goes over the tests with me and he's looking at the hemoglobin and the white blood cell count and all these things that are indicators that you know my immune system is functioning or not. And after I got the first round of chemo, before I started the Keytruda, he took blood and he, while I was still there because, remember, I go in there, I get the pump out, then they give me the last infusion, which takes a couple hours, and so he's got time to run the blood test and he gets his results back right away. He came back and sat there with me and says well, your white blood cell counts down, but let's give it a couple of days and see if it comes back and then we'll see where we go. And he had me come back on Monday or no. I called him Monday and I called him Monday morning. Now, who does that? Who gets to call their doctor at nine o'clock on Monday morning?
Speaker 1:and talk to the doctor, and I did. I called him Monday morning. Now who does that? Who gets to call their doctor at nine o'clock on Monday morning and talk to the doctor? And I did. I called him back Monday morning. He says well, your blood cell count came back up and you're going to be OK and you don't need the injection antibiotic. For me, just in case it kept going down and I had gotten some kind of an infection or a fever or something, he had a precautionary backup said well, if you feel cold chills, fever, call me and I'll tell you what to do, but otherwise just keep that on the shelf. Sure enough, everything was okay. I didn't need to take that injection. Everything was okay. I didn't need to take that injection. My immune system returned back to normal and I upped my intake of that hominix and my protein and albumin levels raised back up and we were able to manage without me having to eat a bunch of meat.
Speaker 1:I did take on a little bit more beans than I normally did, but just a little bit, and I took a little extra enzyme and and I have had no noticeable side effect from the Keytruda. It's hard to tell, you know, cause the the chemo, just really. You know it knocks you for a loop. But here's the kicker last week so I do the chemo and then I do two weeks of not and then I do it again and the first week after, you know, you're still kind of recovering, building your strength and whatnot. Plus, I just took the immunotherapy. But the second week I really got stronger, a lot stronger, and I was able to eat. I put on I don't know six or seven pounds during the week and I do the fast prior to the chemo and that's a three day fastday fast, you know, two days before, one day after. And it's hard, you know, when you're trying to keep your weight on and you're fasting and balancing all of that. And that's why it was real important for me to get that extra weight, so that I had something to lose. And uh, and it worked. I was able to pull it off and, um I I only lost. I think I gained seven and lost five, so a terrific plus two. Yeah, yeah, I ended up plus two and I'm already pretty much back to where I left off. So I'm, I'm managing my weight in spite of the nausea, in spite of the nausea, in spite of the chemo mouth.
Speaker 1:And, you know, I think it's really just important for listeners to know that there are answers, there are. You know, I deal with this Facebook group of squamous cell carcinoma survivors and it's just story after story of I just got through seven weeks of radiation, I just got through six weeks of chemo radiation. I have a feeding tube I can't swallow, I have a pasty saliva, I have all these. You know, my jawbone broke. I had to get my jaw replaced. I had massive surgery. I've got, you know, my nose is gone, my throat has got a giant hole in it. All these just horror stories. And, little by little, I'm getting through to a couple of people here and there, and I just say well, you know, I did this. If you want to learn more, I can tell you. I've, little by little, I'm getting a couple people asking questions.
Speaker 1:I'm mostly it's very supportive people are, you know, being supportive of each other, but I just think that these very same people are talking about their keto diet. They're talking about, you know, eating all this protein and you know I want to yell and scream brainwashed to dope, yeah, yeah. And you know I understand your immune system needs protein. You know your body needs protein. But, jesus, if you look at the, the store, you look at at restaurants, we are just bombarded with protein. Like everywhere you look, it's protein. It's like raining protein wherever you go. And I never even thought about it until you know I became aware of this till that light turned on and I realized that you know we really easy to get plenty of protein. You know you don't need all the protein that people are eating.
Speaker 2:You need maybe 10 times or 20 times less.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And it's all marketing, it's all these fads, diets and all this stuff, and I just can't help but think that this work we're doing, these conversations we're having, if one person, each time we put out at one of these shows, says maybe I should do a little research, even if that's all that happens, it makes this time well worth it. What do you think?
Speaker 2:You bet.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, Robert, I don't. I'm going to see if I can stop by. I don't know what your day is like tomorrow, but I want to at least maybe pop by tomorrow after I'm done. Give me a call. I think I'm good. Give me a call. Just swing by to say hi.
Speaker 2:I'd love to see you, Joe. All right, let's try to work it out.
Speaker 1:I'm around as always, beautiful. I appreciate everything you've done. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with everybody and, most important, goes without sayinge goes without saying. I appreciate all the work you've done, spent your whole life doing this, and you've uh been part of the salvation of my uh, of my body here. So thank you so much. Well, joe, it's, it's my honor, all right. Well, this has been another episode of the healthy living podcast. I'm your host, joe grumbine. Robert, as always, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, pleasure, joe, looking forward to the next one All right, we'll see you guys next time.
Speaker 1:My pleasure, all right.
