Complete Remission with Dr Robert Hoffman

The scariest part of cancer isn’t always the diagnosis, it’s the not knowing if it’s truly gone. After aggressive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and months of brutal chemotherapy, my U.S. PET CT and MRI looked “good,” but nobody could tell me with confidence whether I was in complete remission. So I flew to Japan for a carbon-11 methionine PET scan, a rare imaging tool that demands an onsite cyclotron and a near-immediate scan because the tracer’s half-life is only about 11 to 12 minutes. What I heard next changed everything. 

Dr. Robert Hoffman joins me to unpack the science and the real-world decisions behind my outcome. We talk neoadjuvant chemotherapy as a first move, why standard guidelines often push surgery and radiation early, and how those choices can come with life-altering side effects like swallowing damage and disfigurement. Then we dig into metabolic cancer therapy, including a low methionine diet, oral methioninase, fasting-mimicking, oxygenation strategies, heat therapy, and why “stacking” low-harm supports alongside oncology treatment may matter more than any single tactic. 

We also get specific about imaging and cancer metabolism: why many tumors may be more methionine dependent than glucose dependent, how methionine PET can reveal signals that FDG glucose PET can miss, and why confirmation of remission is a survivorship issue, not just a medical detail. If you’re navigating cancer treatment options, recurrence fear, or follow-up planning, this conversation offers a clear framework for asking better questions and staying proactive. 

If this helps you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs hope and clarity, and leave a review so more patients can find it. What’s the one question you wish your oncology team would answer directly?

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SPEAKER_00 0:13

Well, hello, and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I have today with me a very special guest, Dr. Robert Hoffman. Welcome to the show, Robert. Thank you, Joe. Really glad to be here. Hello to everybody out there. Yeah, yeah. What a what a great day it is today, huh?

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Well, I'm talking to Iran Japan, and I'm the same.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

We're talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm I'm in Narita, Japan. And you know, this has been a long news, Joe. Yeah, yeah. This has been a long time coming, you know. So we've been walking through this journey for over a year now. And you know, a year ago today, I hadn't begun the chemo treatment yet, and I was struggling with this giant tumor and you know the squamous cell carcinoma, which is very aggressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Starting Chemo And Rapid Tumor Shrinkage

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Okay, Mariselle, uh, where are you? What time will you be here? Tomorrow's fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Give me a little and so you know, I had this really aggressive cancer. They called it squamous cell carcinoma. And, you know, it's really known for metastasizing quickly, spreading to the brain and to the lungs, to the lymph nodes, and you know, we were trying to keep it in control with natural techniques and and just really not having the progress we made. I was even on the low methionine diet, taking methioninase, but it wasn't enough. It kept growing, and uh we were able to get the you know, the doctors at UCI to you know give me three big heavy chemo drugs as a neo-adjuvant, you know, pre-surgery, pre-radiation treatment. But meanwhile, you and I were thinking, well, maybe this will knock it out completely, and we won't have to go and do those other things. But we didn't bother mentioning that to those guys. And they agreed, they gave me the drugs, and you know, about I think it was April 29th, I think is when I did my first my first treatment. And we watched almost miraculously over the next three months of of you know the first three rounds of treatment, and you know, the tumor shrunk quickly, and you know, I started getting my strength back, I started being able to sleep. The doctors were all amazed, you know, they were wanting to see, you know, this up close, and they just kept watching it shrink. I showed up on every weekly meeting, you know, the Zoom call, and everybody was like, whoa, you know, it was a pretty amazing couple of months there. And but then they didn't want to give me any more. You know, after three the first three rounds, they says, okay, now it's time to get your radiation. And I was like, Well, I don't know if I want that radiation. You know, it's in some cases, if it's necessary, you know, we do what we have to, but I just didn't feel, you know, the chemo and the the diet and the fasting and the oxygen therapy, all the things I was doing together were working so well. Like, why would you mess with that? You know, you're a scientist, Dr. Huffman. You you know, when you're working on a on a on a journey, you're trying to solve a problem and you see something that works, why would you stop it?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Okay, that uh Joe, uh that's a really good point. So doing experiments are not limited by so-called guidelines, right? So the doctors at the University of California, Irvine, are told by I don't know whom they have to stay within certain guidelines of treatment. You managed to talk them into giving you just chemo in the beginning when they were talking to you about surgery, radi uh surgery, radiation, and then chemo. That that's what they first talked to you about. I think in in that order. And so you persuaded them can I just start with chemo? Right. And actually, Joe, my memory, your tumor was essentially gone before the end of the second cycle of chemo.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

It was probably it was it was before the third, the end of the third cycle. The the second cycle took it down to probably about three-quarters. The third cycle kind of finished it off.

Why Guidelines Push Radiation

SPEAKER_01 5:15

All right. Anyway, it's it's all recorded in the case report. Exactly. People can read your case report, publish, it's on PubMed, and they can see uh the photographs every couple days you photographed yourself, yeah, and you can see the tumor just going away. Okay. So the treatment is not based on science, it's based on clinical trial data of other people, not you. And it's based in the FDA issues certain limits, and then the each institution has its own guidelines within the limits. So when you when they said to you you wanted a fourth cycle, they said to you, You you can do it, but you have to have radiation because we have to give you chemo radiation. Exactly. And you very wisely refused that. And Dr. Song, in his 50 years experience, he understood that was not right. And he continued your chemo, probably at higher doses, and then eventually added on your immunotherapy Keuda.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

So from your case, well, Joe, why don't you tell the people the results you got in Japan yesterday, and then we'll go from there.

Seven Cycles And Mixed Imaging Signals

Traveling To Japan For MetPET

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Well, so back what back up a little bit. You know, we went found Dr. Song. He agreed to continue the the chemo treatment, the three drugs that we were starting with. And the guidelines showed me that six rounds were generally tolerable. But Dr. Song. The literature, the scientific literature. Exactly. Yeah, I looked up, I mean, I spent a lot of time researching. You taught me about PubMed, and I spent a lot of time in it looking for answers and and and hopeful solutions and all kinds of things. But it it the literature basically said that the human body can tolerate six doses, generally pretty widespread. But Dr. Song, after I took my six doses, he told me to go and get a PET CT scan, but it took me a while because the insurance thought I was still with UCI, and it was a little bit complicated. And it took a while, so I went back there thinking I was going to just get you know a checkup, and he he gave me a seventh dose. I think that you know, maybe the sixth dose would have finished it, but that seventh dose hit me really hard, and it was really difficult to overcome, gave me a lot of side effects, and and it was, but I think that really that's what knocked out whatever residual you know elements might have been left. So then I got a PET CT scan, an MRI, and they both came back looking really good. You know, the the ENT looked at it and said, I don't look, it looks like you just have a little scarring left, but there was still activity, and they it showed something, and it didn't, you know, it didn't tell you definitively what it was. And that was concerning to me because you know, these kind of cancers, if you are not sure they're gone and they're not gone, they can come back with a vengeance, and people get blindsided all the time. We were talking since January about, you know, in Japan they have a methionine PET scan, the MetPet, and it's offered in this one clinic that you happen to have connection with through Sihiro and Kuji and Dr. Sato, who runs the radiology department over there at the at the clinic.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Who's in charge of the clinic?

The Complete Remission Result

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Yeah, exactly. And and just because you know you and I've been working together, and you've been working with Dr. Sato, I was able to get one of eight appointments that they offer in the world. This one clinic in the world has this has this available technology to do a methionine PET scan. And I was able to get an appointment, you know, just two days ago. And so I came out here, I got this, and you know, this is really advanced technology, and it's difficult. Most places will never offer it because you they actually have to have the cyclotron, which is the technology that radiates the tracer. You take some methionine and turns it into a radioactive tracer that they put into you, and then the scan device is able to detect the uptake in your body, but it's only half-life is only 12 minutes. So literally, like they have to make it, inject it, get you in there, and scan you before the thing starts to deplete or or break down and decay to the point where it's not valuable. And I even heard stories about they had a Met Pet somewhere else, and people were were went through the went through it and it came back that they were negative, and then they went and didn't continue treatment, and it ended up that they were not negative, and they found out it was they waited too long. They injected you and waited like two hours or something like that, and then did the scan, and it had already degraded to the point where it wasn't able to read. So, you know, this has to be done right, it has to be done in a way that you know is really timely, and the people need to know what they're doing. So they did all that with me, and then I went back yesterday to the clinic to get my results. And, you know, I've been fairly confident that you know I was clear, you know, I feel strong, I'm I'm recovering from the chemo, I I have no more growth. I check it constantly, I'm always feeling my neck, looking for you know, any abnormal anything. And but that's nothing. Yeah, it doesn't tell you anything. It just tells you, you know, maybe what you want to know. And when I went in there, they called me up from the, you know, from the waiting room down below. They said, okay, time to go up. I'm walking up the stairs, and all of a sudden my heart starts pounding. You know, I was all calm and everything, because you know, you're ready for it, as ready as you can be. But it was almost like getting a jury verdict read to you, you know, like what's what's gonna what what's happening here? So then they call me in, and Dr. Sado's in there, and I'm just like, okay, my heart's kind of pounding in my chest, and I'm like, so and he shows me, you know, he had a printout of the of the skin, and he starts to look over here and over here, and he starts pointing to this and that. And he says, Oh, this is this this is scar tissue. And then he pointed out to this and then to that, and he says, he says, complete remission. And I was just like, Woo! I said, Can I take my mask off? And uh he's like, Yeah, you're okay. And I just was like, oh, what a what you know, to have to have, you know, they couldn't give me that diagnosis from the PET CT in America, in the MRI in America, and ENT, even Dr. Song couldn't tell me that because they didn't know for sure. The blood work, all the markers, everything they checked doesn't tell you that for sure. And, you know, then he went further and he looked and he says, you know, there was a little activity in my prostate and maybe some activity in my bladder that they want to look at, but there's no evidence of metastasis, there's no evidence of a tumor. They're just a little activity. So they, you know, they want to look at it. That's great. I would rather look at something way early. And if there's a problem, discover it long before it turned into a giant tumor that is ready to metastasize. I can take on a new problem if I have to, you know, early on rather than, you know, I don't think I have to, I don't want to. I'm certainly hoping I never have to do this again, but I'll be prepared for it. And, you know, Dr. Sado was very gracious. He walked through the whole scan with me and showed me what he saw, what he thought. And then he did a uh an interview with me, and we talked for about 15 minutes about, you know, his practice, the technology, he talked about his clinic. We talked about, you know, just just the work that he's doing, how important it is that modern medicine, you know, that literally his what he did is the only place in the world they do what he does, the way he does it, and how important maybe it is to get people to understand that and maybe you know to bring more attention to this work. And that's where we are today. I've been celebrating ever since. That's wonderful, Joe.

A New Treatment Paradigm

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Just wonderful. So we're writing up a new case report about you. Oh, yeah. And the theme of the case report is that you have demonstrated a new paradigm for treatment of swimming cell carcinoma head neck. And it's quite different from the standard paradigm. So one is we don't have to do everything at once, we don't have to go in there right in the beginning with disfiguring surgery that'll take out your jaw and put a hole in your neck, and you'll never be the same Joe again. We don't need to begin with radiation, which I just have some experience with our new patient that came the other day. Because of the radiation he had for his squamous cell had neck cancer, he can't swallow. It destroyed his esophagus.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yes, and very common.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

So we can start with what's called neoadjuvant chemo, which means before anything, and just see how it goes. And if you wouldn't have responded so well, we could have instituted radiation surgery, we could have put them all in. We didn't need to. One of the reasons I think we didn't need to is that we were doing methionine restriction, low methionine diet, taking oral methionase after every meal to kill any methionine that you may be taking in. You were doing other things, the uh the oxygenation, all these other things could do no harm and possibly good health.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Exactly.

Why Methionine PET Is More Sensitive

SPEAKER_01 17:04

How many other thousands or millions of people might have had the same result? I think a lot. At least they're uh under the current situation, they're not gonna have that blessing that you had. They're gonna get disfiguring surgery, they're gonna get tissue destroying radiation. All that might not have been necessary if we just started out with chemo, especially chemo under methionine restriction, where all our 53 years in the lab have shown that chemo and methionine restriction are synergist. So there we are there. And then we go another paradigm shift. As you said, when you had your standard pet, which is based on radioactive glucose, even even along with CT, Dr. Song couldn't give you a definitive answer whether you're in complete remission or not. That's correct. You went to Japan where you got a PET scan, you got the same old glucose PET scan, but in addition, you got a PET scan with radioactive methionine. Right. What 99.9999% of everybody out there in the world in the oncology field doesn't understand the real addiction of cancer is for methionine rather than much more than it is for glucose. So that means when you give radioactive methionine to the tumor, you're gonna get a much bigger signal compared to a normal tissue around it to around the tumor compared to when you give it the tumor glucose, the signal is rather modest compared to the surrounding tissue. So you got a carbon-11 methionine pet, and it would have picked up more, it was much more sensitive, in my opinion, than the glucose pet. Well, and also remember is that the methionine pet picked up something going on in your prostate that the glucose pet couldn't see at all.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Right. Well, and the other thing too is remember that for two days prior, I was very, very, I did a fasting mimicking diet, and I was taking four doses of methioninease each day. So I had severely depleted the methionine in my system prior to the scan, so that when they put the radioactive methionine in, that any hunger for that would have really been exacerbated. So much more concentrated, yeah, more sensitive, I think, too. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

So that's where we are. I mean, we've shifted a lot of a number of paradigms here. One is go on methionine restriction. We knew methionine the cancers are addicted to methionine. We knew it since Sugi Moore's experiment in 1959. Everybody, every cancer patient ever since 1959 should have been on a low methionine diet. And there's 2,000 papers since Sugi Moore that says the same thing. Right. The number of oncologists that have read one of them is probably one out of 10,000. Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

I haven't yet found one that I've talked to ahead of time that Dr. Castro. Yeah, Dr. Castro and Dr. Song. Even Dr. Song really didn't understand. Yeah, you're right, you're right. Dr. Castro was really the only one, and now Dr. Sato.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Of course, Dr. Sato understands this completely.

The Sunday Cancer Patient Zoom

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Right. So And you know, I think this is something important to consider. And you mentioned it earlier. In in these layers of therapies that we're doing, we're not doing one thing, we're stacking a combination of therapies together to create a tool that will attack the cancer in my body. And each person has a different layer stack of things. But the critical elements of these are to weigh out what's the possible harm could come and what's the possible good that could come. And you know, when you when you have a tumor board, you have this group of doctors that look at your sick your case, and then they look At the standard of care options, and then they come up with some regimen that's supposed to be best for you, right? But I don't think that they consider so much the possible harm that it can do to you. More they look at the possible good that it could do because they're willing to do a lot of harm as side effects when it comes to radiation, surgery, disfiguring, loss of use of physiological systems, you know, crippling things, not being able to talk, not being able to swallow, not being able to consume whole food, not being able to chew, losing teeth, bones, you know, just so many horrible things. And they're willing to accept that as collateral damage pretty easily, based on my experience, anyways. Whereas I think if you look at a considering a treatment, and if you ask yourself, well, if it doesn't work, is it gonna harm me? And when you look at things like oxygen therapy, you look at heat therapy, you look at the the low methionine diet, you look at methioninase, the answer is generally no, they're not gonna hurt you at all. It might be a little uncomfortable, life might be difficult to adapt to, but they're not gonna cause you physical harm. Yeah, I can sit in a sauna every day and it's not gonna hurt me. I can I can take my ozone glycerin every day and it's not gonna hurt me. I can live that low methionine diet and it's not gonna hurt me. It might be a little unpleasant, but I can eat methionine A's every day, four times a day, and it's never gonna hurt me. And is it gonna help? I I don't know. Maybe it it's likely.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

But you're in you're in complete remission, and you didn't do you didn't do radiation, and you didn't do surgery, yep, and there you are. So something is working, and it's probably a combo. We don't know for sure, and at this point, we don't really care.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

No, I I don't care one bit. I what I care about is that I'm I'm alive.

Staying In Remission With Monitoring

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Yes, I think they're gonna get good results. Are every one of them get good results? We can't say that, but I bet a lot of them will. And how many are gonna get that? If one person because the the guidelines and the paradigm are 180 degrees from what you got, exactly. So I think if one person is right now, fortunately, if you go against the paradigm these days, they they don't burn you at the stake like they did years ago, right? Um they might like to, so it's it you know. I feel I don't know, I think patients that are willing to follow you have a special quality about them, yes, high intelligence and willing to take a chance for a good outcome. I think those are the kind of patients now that will follow you. I think the average patient won't because their doctor will say, oh no, no, no, no. You need you need surgery, you need radiation, you listen to me, I'm your doctor. Well, okay. That's what we're up against.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

And you know, Robert, I think that one of the most, and we've talked about this before, but I think the the the biggest factor, if somebody wants to listen to what I did and learn from it, and and maybe I can help them, you know, create a protocol for themselves, is you gotta want to live more than anything in the world. This is this is necessary, but not sufficient. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Without the will to live, you're not gonna go through all that chemo and all that exactly sacrifice, you gotta have that will to live. Not everybody has it, I understand that. And but not only that, to do what you did, to go against the current paradigm, to go against the system, to tell the doctor, no, I'm not gonna have radiation, I just want chemo, even though the doctor said you need a radiation to it takes a special patient, it takes a patient with a a very high intelligence that can understand why, and it also takes a patient who's willing to take a risk to get you took a very significant risk. They told you it wasn't gonna work. You needed to, but okay, for the first three cycles, we'll give you chemo, but it's not gonna work. You need the radiation, and you also need the surgery, and you had the three qualities that made it happen. You had high intelligence, the will to live, and the and the you were willing to take a a very significant risk because you thought in your mind you understood the situation. That's why that helped you to take the risk.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Well, and you know, there were things that I did prior to even meeting you.

Gratitude Community And Closing

SPEAKER_01 29:07

But it's the will to live, the artificial intelligence to understand what's going on, and willingness to take a very significant risk to get better. So that's what it is, and unfortunately, I don't know. Not a whole lot of people are gonna do it, Joe. And well, you know, I think I hope so. We're here to help. I'm on your podcast every time you want me. We have our cancer patient zoom every Sunday with patients who have done exactly what you've done and they're doing well, and really they share what they've done. But it's just hard to get the patient even to come on the Zoom. Uh what I don't know. This is the human nature. The paradigm leaders, they don't want to hear any of this. They're the ones that know it all, and they're the ones whose fame and fortune depends on the current paradigm continuing. And they don't want the people who want to shift the paradigm. They they can't burn them at the stake anymore, right? They can do a lot of other things. So here's where we are, and and I want to comment about Dr. Sato. Here's a man who's setting his own paradigm. He's got a clinic that offers methionine PET as well as glucose PET. Right. And he understands methionine addiction of cancer. He and that's why we have quite a lot of patients from Japan. We have more patients from Japan than we do from the United States or the rest of the world put together. The main reason for that is Dr. Soto. He knows he's the paradigm is shifted for him, and he's got the machinery to show that this new paradigm works. He's got methionine pet. And having methionine pet also is a big risk. He had to find a very big investor to buy all the millions of dollars uh for uh cyclotron and other things, and the and very sensitive pet machine. So he took a big, big financial risk, and here he is. The nice thing is, you know, you and Scott could go out there, some folks from China come over. Most of the patients, of course, are from Japan. But the word is gonna go out. I think your interview with Dr. Sado is tremendous. That's gonna go around. People can see. It's wonderful to go there, not only to confirm a complete response like you had, it's also great to show that your cancer is very methionine dependent. It's accumulating tons of carbon-11 methionine, and you better get on methionine restriction right now. Exactly. And that's so that's another great thing about methionine pet that you cannot get in the United States or Europe or any other place. There's a couple places that sort of kind of do methionine pet of the brain. But methionine pet is is tricky. You got, I mean, in 11 minutes after it comes out of that cyclotron, half of it is gone. Right, right. And after another 11 minutes, another half is gone. So after 22 minutes, you're down to one quarter, right? So you saw that nurse pumping that radio.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

They went fast once they put it in me. They had me and they had the great cooking.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Oh boy. So people don't want that, they don't they don't want to be bothered with it. First of all, they don't know anything about methionine addiction to cancer. So why should we have methionine pet, even if they know a little bit about it? Are you kidding me? Am I gonna buy a am I gonna put out three million dollars for a cyclotron and get all the special pet machines that are very sensitive and hire people that know how to do all this? Who's gonna be the patients? Because the doctors aren't gonna refer anybody because they don't know anything about methionine pet. So methionine available in America in the next foreseeable future? No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

But you know, his idea with the with the clinic servicing stage four cancer patients is going to be a tremendous asset, not only to those people that otherwise wouldn't have any options, right? When they tell you your terminal they've been told to go to hospice and they've walked out of the they've walked out of the hospital or walked out of the hospice and living normal lives, some of them. Yeah, I mean, even if uh if if a small percentage, that's these are people that are alive today that wouldn't be alive if left to the normal, you know, paradigm.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

So, right now, as you say, Joe, because of the the constraint of the very short half-life of carbon-11 methionine, they can only take two people at a time. Right. Every Tuesday they run, they will uh they have two patients. Right. Thank God for that. Hopefully, they can find a way to expand to do more MetPet. I think they will, especially if more patients come from the United States.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

They use that that cyclotron to make five different tracers, and they have one for Parkinson's, they have one for it's an amyloid thing for Alzheimer's for Alzheimer's, they have one for a PSMA, they have one that is the methionine pet, and then I guess the glucose. I I don't know what the other the fifth one got the glucose, yeah. You got the glucose pet, Joe. I know so I I mean I know that they're using that cyclotron all the time.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

But it's only the carbon-11 methionine that has the 11-minute half-life.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

The other things have half-life. If you're he said two of them were like an hour, he said more.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

The glucose fed is more, not the glucose, the other ones.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

The the one of the other ones he said was only an hour, but still 12 minutes in 11 minutes, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

So, you know, so that's what you know. If you're gonna people have due pet and they don't even have a glucose pet, they don't even need to have a cyclotron, they can get they can get it delivered. Exactly. Yep. So is there gonna be Met Pet in the United States in the near future? No way. No.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

No. Well, at least at least what we figured out is, you know, if if somebody's interested in in learning what we're talking about, I would say just, you know, the show notes have the link. Every single episode has the link to the Sunday at 4 p.m. Pacific time. Our Zoom call is something that, in my opinion, it's it brings me to tears. The value of between 15 and 30 people coming together from all around the world who have a common experience of having cancer and having treated the cancer using any number of tools, but the one thing we all have in common is the understanding and the use of the low methionine diet and the use of the methioninase. And I learned a lot from Shahiro about the actual power of this methioninase. You know, I take it, I've been taking it for a year, you know, and for me, I don't have any money, and I've spent money I don't have to make this available for me, believing that it works. But when she told me about the testing, the blood testing that she did, you know, after eating a big hamburger and and then taking two doses of it and really just watching, watching how how this stuff works and stripping it away from you when you when you consumed it, you know. I said, you know, I've always believed it works. I know that it works, I take it knowing that it works. But to actually have somebody that, you know, has done that blood work and watched it work, you know, it's a different thing. It's like looking through a microscope at a at a bacteria, you know, doing its work, as opposed to being told, oh, you know, this does that, and just believing it. And I got a different understanding of that even just this weekend. So every day I'm learning, every day I'm experiencing more, every day. It doesn't stop, you know. People go, oh, you you know all this stuff. I don't know shit. I I just know what I did for me that worked, and I can do it again if I have to. But what I know is that we keep learning, we keep sharing, we keep saying things over and over again and and looking at them differently, and sometimes it absorbs in a little better way. You know, I'm still limited by the chemo effect on my brain and my memory and all this stuff, but it still got it together enough to where I was able to come to this place. And I I I gotta tell you, for any single person who's going through cancer, you know, for for over 30 years, I've helped cancer patients. And I believed that I had some kind of sympathy for them. And and I believe that I understood a little bit of what they were going through, but I didn't until I got diagnosed. And once I got diagnosed and I've been through this, I now understand what I didn't before. And so for anybody who's been diagnosed, anybody, no matter what they told you, no matter if they told you there's nothing more we can do, or you need to do this, you know, really difficult treatment and it will maybe work, or you'll have some, you know, projected survival rate of whatever percent, whatever many years. Throw all that in the trash and give yourself a chance. And, you know, come and listen to this call, listen to these podcasts where we talk about real life experience. We have people that were diagnosed terminal on this call that have been alive for many, many years, people that have reversed metastasized stage four cancer, are living 15, 16 years beyond what they were given over and over and over again, these these stories. And yeah, sometimes people succumb, sometimes things happen, sometimes, you know, we still don't understand cancer. You know, you told me before, and I and I I get it. They don't know anything about cancer, really. We're trying to understand it. We're trying to, you know, see how it works, but it's it's it's multifaceted, it's got so many layers, it it can change, it can adapt, it can, it there's so many things we don't know. We're able to take the things we do know and put them on the table and start looking at this anecdotal evidence the way we have it, and draw some reasonable conclusions that are replicable and at least in most cases are helpful. So I just don't know why anybody wouldn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

I still say, Joe, it it takes a high level of intelligence to go against the paradigm, and it takes courage and it takes willingness to take a risk. It's not for everybody. I'm sorry, but it isn't.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Well, I certainly hope that we're attracting a courageous audience here in the podcast, and certainly an intelligent audience, and you know, one willing to take a risk.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

You know, I would think that something people watching this podcast, I think indicates a high level of intelligence, just to know that it's good to listen to this.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

If they're willing to go against the paradigm, we're not saying we're not saying don't use standard therapy, we just say use it right, right. Use it to the most benefit. Yes, you need very heavy duty chemo. Oh, yeah. All these people say, Oh, you just eat fruit and you won't really need any chemo. You know, that's all that's just quacksm. Yeah, um you went through very heavy duty Dr. Song type chemo. Yes, that that's not for the frail. No, here we are, Joe. Dr. Sado told you you're a CR. Well, I am celebrating, and you know, people put after their name MD, you put after your name CR.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Exactly. I gotta I have a new title.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

I mean, it's it's just fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Well, Robert, I gotta tell you, you know, and I I I told this to Shahiro and Kuji, and and you know, this is as much about community as it is about science and courage and all and intelligence and all these things. There's a human element to this, and if it wasn't no national borders, no ethnic differences, no nothing.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

So our community is cancer patients, that's what it is, and we're one community, whether we come from the North Pole, the South Pole, we don't care where you come from, none of it matters. Uh we're the community of cancer patients. Let me put it this way of surviving cancer patients. We're that community.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Yes, and and you know, if you find that you get diagnosed or you've been over there, Kooji and Chiro picked you up, took you there, took you around because they know you do that for them.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

That's just being part of it. Community.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

I I told you so natural for them to do that because we're we're all in the community.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Exactly. No, it's just been amazing this experience.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

National boundaries, no nothing. When we went on Russian TV after you and showed our cancer research, some people criticize me. Sorry, I don't care what country the cancer patients are from. If I can help out, I'm gonna help out.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Exactly. This is this is about human beings and and and and humanity, you know. It's a it it's a real thing, believe it or not.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

We have cancer survivors and people who want to keep surviving and want to get better. And I think your case is is historic. It's a paradigm changer, paradigm shifter, whatever you want to call it. We're gonna use your example over and over and over. It won't work every time, but it's gonna work a lot of times, my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Well, you know, there's another chapter to this now. So, you know, this is the part where people mess up, you know, they get they get they get diagnosed as you know, complete remission, and then they go, okay, I'm good. And then they go back to their life. And the truth is CR is not a lifetime guarantee. No, it's a moment, it's a it's a moment in time. Refer to the duration of the CR.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

How durable is the CR? Yeah, some people have been in CR and they're gone in a week. Yes, they don't have a MetPEC to show the extent of the CR that you did. Now, even can't see all the cancer, right? So you're gonna my advice to you is every April 14th, you sign up for another MetPet.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

Well, and and and not only that, but the the cancer that I had, there was two elements to it. One, because it was HPV virus driven, it had a particularly high cure rate, which meant that if you caught it in time, these treatments were likely to work better, much better, than if it was not HPV driven. But the second element to this is that you know, I'm a member of another group that's uh squamous cell carcinoma group, which is specifically the cancer that I have. And there's hundreds and hundreds of people in this group, and I keep seeing over and over again these people, very little, if any, mention of this diet and methioninase, and it's it's not paid for them, yeah. They've already done what they did. But out of these people, out of a hundred people that I've seen posting about their experience, maybe one or two will have gone through the radiation chemo surgery combination and been okay with quotes on it with my minor enough side effects that they weren't damaged, you know, to a horrible way. 98% of the people that I've seen post here, not only if they survived, had terrible side effects from, like I said, miss you know, disfigurement to inability to swallow, inability to eat solid food, inability to speak, inability to, you know, just just horrible things. But most importantly, within two to six months, most of them have a recurrence. And that's after 36 rounds of radiation, after, you know, the the the chemo treatment, that's after the surgery, and it comes back and metastasizes into the lymph nodes, into the brain, into the lungs, and people die. And I said, Well, why would you go through all these things if the likelihood, and frankly, what I see in front of me is a likelihood that you're gonna end up getting it back and dying. And so I look at this and say to myself that's why, Joe. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Who are you to contract, you know, contradict that?

SPEAKER_00 50:00

Right. Exactly. I know, I know, and so I I just I just think that you know, from what I know, the next round that I want to prove is that continuing on this diet, continuing with the methioninase, continuing with some of the uh the oxygen therapy, the exercise, the heat therapy, the things that I'm doing, I'm gonna show that this doesn't come back. I'm gonna show that I'm in all things, Joe.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

You're gonna really, really, really reduce the probability of it coming back, but it still can. And that's why it's important to get that PET scan every year.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

But that's the other piece is that if it does come back, I'm gonna catch it right away. Exactly. And that's what I didn't do before. That was where my big mistake was, is I waited because that doctor said, Ah, you probably don't have cancer. And I said, Great, that's what I want to hear. Thank you, doctor. And I waited, and I waited until this thing got so big that I couldn't wait anymore, and I had to go and figure it out. And that's what a lot of people do. I was fortunate that my cancer was visible. You know, most people, if that was in my pancreas or my liver, or my kidneys, or my prostate, I would have not paid attention to it.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

I got a cultural wife or the husband, stage four pancreatic cancer metastasis in the liver. Right. Diagnosed, I said, two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

Yeah. Two weeks ago. Exactly, because you can't see it, you don't necessarily feel it. And people aren't getting, you know, preemptory blood work. They're not, they're not getting a scan just to see how you're doing. You know, most people don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

They're not gonna pay for the insurance is not gonna pay for uh you know, just people scanning.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

Oh yeah, but see, now that I now that I have an oncologist, I'm able to get that scan ordered because it's part of a follow-up.

SPEAKER_01 52:20

Well, I think probably the greatest oncologist in the United States, Dr. Song. Yes, I think we're so fortunate to have him.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Not only is he great on the oncology side, he knows how to approach the insurance companies with evidence and data that they can't refuse you.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

He's masterful, yeah. He was able to get things done, you know, through different programs, not just the insurance, but there's these subsidy programs that he knows. And and you know, I literally walked in last appointment and I paid$25 for my quietruda, and that key truda is$12,000 every time I get an infusion, and I paid$25 out of pocket because of what he did to make it so. Yeah. So, you know, these are all things that that you know we can help. We we've learned, you know, doctors that are helpful, we've learned techniques that are helpful, we've learned where to look, where not to look. We've learned, you know, if you can just bypass all the things not to do, you know, Robert, if I could tell you all the things I tried before I even met you and and and discovered that didn't work, that didn't work. I injected my under my skin subcutaneous cannabis oil to see if maybe I could inject that into that tumor. I was gonna do it myself, but it it it had a negative reaction. So luckily I just did a little bit on my arm just to see what it would do, and it didn't respond well. So I go, I'm not doing it. But I was considering it, I was willing to do things that were way outside the box. And you know, that's that's that's that was you know where I was at. I I I wanted to live, but we can help you avoid all a lot of that stuff that says, you know, if you're willing, well, we that because you had the will to live and you were willing to take a risk, right?

SPEAKER_01 54:28

A lot of stuff that didn't work, but if you didn't have that, if you weren't the type of person to do that, you wouldn't be here today.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Exactly, exactly. But I can teach people what I've learned on my own without them having to try everything either. And that's part of you know what this group offers, you know, Dr. Exame and all of the research and the experience he has, and and you know, it's cancer. Oh boy, yeah, it's it's it's it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

And Dave and Scott and Gene and on himself and learned himself and shared with everybody. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

Dr. Fox and all of his vitamin C infusions. I mean, they've got so many, so many people that have been willing to take those risks and and and and run the test. They're not just you know putting stuff in their bodies, they're doing the blood work, they're doing the follow-up, they're watching the markers. You know, Shahiro, she showed me her her graph of all of the blood work she's done. And she was able to show me when when her treatment stopped working and when she had a spike, and then she was able to rail it back down. The doctors don't have that. They're not looking at a scan at a at a at a graph like that of months and months of blood work, they don't have it.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

You know, and we we we you know, Joe, and another thing that maybe goes without saying nobody cares about you like you.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

Exactly. Even a good doctor, there they can only give you so much attention.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

But the doc is not you. And when the doctor is sick, oh wow. And another thing I learned 40 years ago, which was very disturbing to me, I was just developing a test where you would test the drugs on patients' tumor specimens after the surgery and in culture, uh that never really caught on. But some of the patients in Japan are getting it after 40 something years, right? But I can tell you, when one doc came down with cancer back in those days, oh boy, test with the other patients, they oh no, no, no, it doesn't work, or we don't need it. But when the one doc came down, yeah, that's when everything changes, they were circling the wagons and trying everything for him. You know, it's he was a special human being because he was a doctor, right? And but you know what? Every cancer patient is a very special human being, exactly. That's the way we treat him.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

That's it. Well, Robert, this is just uh an amazing day. I'm gonna continue to celebrate, and you know, but the thing that I'm really celebrating right now is that I'm gonna be able to bring my mind into a new place. I've had to spend so much mental energy focused on getting this cancer to this point of complete remission. It's taken 60 to 80 percent of all my resources just to think about it, to make sure I'm doing not doing all the things, and now I'm gonna be able to take some of that energy and put it to other things and and you know get back to my life a little bit. And you know, I I celebrate that, and I certainly I have a deep empathy for anybody going through this, and I I've committed my life to helping people solve this problem. So I will always do whatever I can. You know, that's what this podcast is about. I encourage anybody who you find value in this episode, go back. There's dozens of episodes where we talk about various elements. Myself and Dr. Hoffman, I I've told the story of my journey through many episodes. I've had other patients on talking about theirs. We have Dr. Soto, we have other doctors that that I've been working with. And you know, let's learn together, let's let's let's help each other, and you know, let's let's find a way to live a healthy life.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

You bet, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

All right, Robert. Well, as always, I I am so grateful that you have joined me here and shared this. I I gotta tell you, and I'll keep giving you an honor, it's a privilege.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

And any cancer patient that wants to join us, we're here with open arms, ready to help out.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

Well, and I gotta tell you, Robert, I I I'll I'll keep telling you. I've probably told you a dozen times, but you know, I I I am so deeply grateful for you and the work that you did. You stopped and took your time to talk to me when I sent you that email, and I was just barely researching, trying to figure out, you know, what's this methioninase all about? And you responded to me right away and personally, and you gave me your phone number. And when I called you, you answered, and you talked to me as a human being, and you listened to me. You invited me to that group, and when I showed up on the group, they they welcomed me. I I can honestly say I don't believe that I would be here today had I not met you and and and that we didn't work together the way we did. I don't think I would be here today the way I am. Thank you. I thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

I sure appreciate that. And let me tell you, everything I did was as natural to me as just breathing the air. You wrote to me asking for help. How could I not write back to you? How you rang my phone, how can I not answer the phone? You know, all that to me was just natural as breathing the air. And I'm very lucky to meet you because you're such a special person and such a special cancer patient that's gonna help out a lot of them in forever. You're you're we our case reports about you are in the literature forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

You got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

Some teacher 40 years from now is gonna say, Well, I want you all to study this paper from this classic paper. I want you to see how we're gonna this is how we cure squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. You go back 50 years back to 2025, and I want you to read this paper. I hope it comes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

I couldn't agree more, and and you know, it's it's it's I I I'm proud that this is gonna be part of my legacy on the on the planet.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:04

That it's in there we're we're writing a new one. Yes, the theme of the new one is paradigm shift.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:12

I love it. Oh, I'm so happy. All right, Robert. Well, our work is uh just beginning.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

Yes, and come back safe, see you in a couple of days.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

Yeah, I'll be back on Friday. And enjoy your day. What what are you you have a whole day? Enjoy it. Yeah, I'm gonna go do a little more sightseeing with Shahiro. We went and saw the a temple, a shell show, a shogun temple, and we went to a waterfall and uh wonderful, beautiful lake, and it was really, really saw some beautiful sights. We're gonna we're gonna go do and she's getting a a medical shot today, but when she comes back around noon, we're gonna spend the afternoon together.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:01

So fantastic, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

Yeah, yeah. So and then I head out tomorrow. Yeah, I'll be back Friday, and you know, we'll get back to it. Okay, you know, you're coming back, you go back in time. I company my wife said that, she goes, You're gonna get in a time machine. That's wild. Well, Robert, it's always a pleasure to have you and uh to all of our listeners. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I want to thank you all for making this show possible, and we will see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

You bet.