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When AI Says Salmon Is Fine with Dr Robert Hoffman
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AI can sound certain while being dangerously incomplete, and we open with a perfect example: a confident answer about methionine that falls apart the moment you compare it to published research and real patient outcomes. From there, we get very specific about cancer metabolism, why many tumors show a strong dependence on the amino acid methionine, and how methionine restriction turns nutrition into a practical part of evidence-based cancer care. We also talk plainly about food myths, including why “healthy” options like salmon can be context-dependent when methionine load becomes the variable that matters.
We then dig into the most exciting clinical takeaway: combination therapy. Dr. Robert Hoffman shares decades of lab and clinical direction showing that creating a low-methionine environment, including the use of methioninase, can make standard treatments work better. We discuss how this interacts with chemotherapy, immunotherapy (including Keytruda), and other tools already used in oncology, plus the real-world hope that improved effectiveness could allow lower doses for frailer patients while preserving results.
From there we get honest about the system: guidelines-based oncology, why large institutions resist personalization, and why patient advocacy is often the difference between a cookie-cutter plan and a plan that fits the person. We also cover advanced detection and follow-up, including methionine PET imaging (MatPET), PSA monitoring, and why “no evidence of disease” should shift your focus toward vigilance, trend data, and early detection rather than a full return to old habits.
If this conversation helps you think more clearly about cancer nutrition, precision oncology, methionine restriction, and smarter follow-up, share it with someone who needs it, subscribe, and leave a review. What part of your care would you challenge first if you had better information?
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Welcome And The AI Problem
SPEAKER_01Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and once again we have with us Dr. Robert Hoffman. Robert, welcome to the show. Glad to be here, Joe. Glad thank you for having me. You know, it's it's always a pleasure spending time with you because you know we you you came with me to Dr. Song's appointment yesterday and just our little conversations. We don't get a whole lot of time to hang out and talk, but the the time that we do get to talk, I think you always bring up points that are so relevant. And we were talking yesterday about you know the distractive nature of today's culture and how you know people are spending their time watching TV and staring at computer screens and social media. This and all the AI. Yeah, and now it's AI, exactly. And in fact, over the weekend, we did another one of our you know, Native American
Salmon Methionine And Cancer Metabolism
SPEAKER_01ceremonies, and one of the elders that comes, he's a really smart guy, and he was talking about sunlight and you know his belief about how it works, you know, with the human body and the importance of it and all these things. And I started talking to him a little bit about my diet because I just talked to everybody about my diet, you know, and he was talking about how important it is to eat salmon. And I said, well, for somebody who doesn't have cancer, it can be really good, but if you do, it's like poison to me.
SPEAKER_00If you don't, you know, as good as it is, as as as healthy as it is, I think if you don't have cancer, it should be eaten in very very occasionally at the most.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And I was trying to explain that to him because you know he had this really strong belief about the you know the the fatty oils and all the good stuff. The good that's the uh given knowledge of of the world, right? And and so I I told him, I said, well, I said, you know, look it up. I go, cancer has an addiction to methionine, and salmon in particular is very high in methionine. So to me, it's well it's it's just very it's a toxic food for me for that particular reason. And I said, maybe it's good for you, but uh just you know take a look at this. And so it was interesting because this morning he sent me over an article that talked about you know the value of these omega-3s and all these, you know, these these elements that are in fatty fish like that. And then I could tell he had an AI-generated report, and it had talked about he had typed in, is there any danger of methionine to the AI doesn't know this? It didn't, it didn't, and it and in fact, it said, no, there's actually no problem. So what I did is I sent over one of your papers, and I I, you know, the one of the ones that I found, you know, cancer's addiction to methionine, just a very, you know, one of the older ones. And then I sent over my uh published report, and I said, just look at this. This is my reality. This is the world I live in. This is for real. I go, I go, Dr. Hoffman's been researching this for over 60 years, and I work with him intimately. We we we spend a lot of time together, and you gotta read this, this is important. And he's he did, and he acknowledged, you know, that you know, he's looking at things on this quantum level and all this new sort of theoretical science that's out there. And I go, well, that's what it is, it's theoretical. And I go, maybe there's some truth to it, we don't know. And I said, you know, let's let's work on testing and proving it because that's that's the world I live in. And I got him to at least consider that the things I told him. I go, look, this is my reality. I go, I don't have cancer today because of what I did. And and a big part of what I did was this diet and you know, the idea of keeping methionine low in my body. And and it worked. You can't argue with that, and he agreed. So, you know, an intelligent person who's got an open mind, if you can be, I don't know, articulate enough and present information in a way that is professional and peer-reviewed, and not AI, you know. I mean, I told him I go, you know, AI is wrong a lot. And I says, and this time it's wrong, it's just straight up wrong. And you know, he didn't he didn't completely reject what I said, and hopefully he's he's gonna consider it and enter that into his paradigm.
SPEAKER_00The difference in methionine between an apple and an equivalent serving of salmon. Exactly, one of the hundredfold different.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, exactly. And I eat a lot of apples and I eat uh I don't eat salmon, you know. Once in a great while I'll take a bite of salmon and then I'll go and have you know my methioninease 20 minutes later, and that's that's as far as I go. I love salmon, but you know, I'll give myself a bite every four months or something like that, you know. Patience, yeah. So I want to talk about evidence-based knowledge, and I want to talk about more about the experiments that you've
Research Proof For Better Combo Therapy
SPEAKER_01been doing and validating not only cancer's addiction to methionine, but the part that of the work that you've been doing lately that's really impressive to me and exciting is that when you have a low methionine environment or even the addition of methioninease, along with other generally standard of care treatments, that they work so much better, and you're proving it. And I I think it's really, really exciting to think that you know, some of these treatments that you know can work, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, you know, hormone deprivation, even radiotherapy in certain cases, and and different drugs, some of these repurposed drugs, all these different tools that people are using, but when you couple them with the low methionine diet and methioninase, the results are two double, sometimes tenfold, many times more effective. You're we're finding out, and you're proving it. I'd like to hear more about this.
SPEAKER_00So, this is an old story, Joe. Back in the mid-80s, uh when Dr. Stern was in the lab, he did co-cultures of cancer and normal. And he did a protocol of we didn't have methioninase back then, just low methionine or nonothionine medium. So he worked out a protocol with the chemo and the low methionine medium and he could eradicate the cancer cells from the co-culture and ended up with a beautiful culture of normal cells. Nice. That was started, that was published in 1986 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Wow. And 40 years ago. There's a new paper out today. It'll be on PubMed in a couple weeks, uh couple days. Okay. Wow. So that'll hit PubMed probably tomorrow. And that's one of the drugs I was taking. That's for sure. And that you can see the bottom line there, that's the combination. Wow. No tumor growth. Just straight flat across the bottom. Yeah, so it cisplatinum is one of your drugs. You were getting very high dose. Right. It could be since you were on methionine restriction, you could have gotten a lower dose. But I understand I don't care. I got what I got. Yeah. Make that uh risk for you. He exactly 50 years experience of very high dose chemo, and has gotten some great results with it. So he wasn't about to lower your dose, but in the future, think of these things for other people.
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, and I think too that you know the value of this is my body was able to handle the intensity of these drugs. Wasn't fun, wasn't easy, but I I survived it. A lot of people don't. And so, in a case where somebody was more frail or they were more susceptible to these, you know, pretty severe negative side effects, maybe knowing that you could go on a methionine restriction and methioninase and increase the effectiveness of of a lower dose, maybe more people would survive.
SPEAKER_00Of course, more people would survive. You know the cancer treatment
Guidelines Medicine Versus Individual Care
SPEAKER_00is regulated by standard of care. That's the the big big kind of world view, and then within that people at the different clinics or institutions have guidelines. Right. And unless, you know, Dr. Song, as he told us once, I'm a private oncologist, I can do pretty much what I want. Right. But UCI, ECSD, slow gathering, they're not they're not gonna do that. That's again the guidelines. So no employee of those big institutions is going to go beyond the guidelines. So Dr. Castro, I'm not gonna name the doctor, but he's a he's a medical oncologist at UCLA. He his nickname is uh guidelines, blah blah blah blah blah his name, and then before that guidelines.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00And so that's not a compliment. Right. And you know why you need him? You just go on AI and have some nurse give you the chemo. I mean that's you know, to be a guideline oncologist, I mean, seems pretty obsolete to me. Just need AI and that somebody like that, very nice nurse and Dr. Songs, too. Kind and nice. That's all you need if you're just gonna go guidelines. Because everybody gets the same. If you have squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, you're gonna get, you know, you're gonna get your probably your surgery first and chemo and radiation after, and and everything's all mapped out for you. Right. God forbid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, big time. God forbid is right. So one of the things I wanted to talk about, and you know, through our conversation, we talk a lot about the importance of the patient advocate, the importance of the patient responsibility to manage their own health. And you know, it's it's can't do it. They don't do it.
SPEAKER_00Can't, they won't. You know, I I get it, you know, cancer. When you get diagnosed with cancer, I don't need to tell you it's so over and devastating, yeah. What to do? Who you who's gonna challenge that? It takes a very special personality and say, hey, wait a minute, doc. Yeah, uh uh, give me chemo first. Uh you don't radiate me right away, right? And that you know, who's gonna do that beside you? It's it's the rare person that stands up to the medical oncologist and says, No, and so it's tough, Joe. It's so I I say often, you know, maybe I shouldn't say, and maybe it's not so true, but I say it anyway. The biggest enemy of the cancer patient is the oncologist, and you know, I think that's hyperbole, shouldn't say it, but I say it because there's a lot of there's at least some truth in it, right?
SPEAKER_01Agreed, and I mean I went through half a dozen oncologists before I met Dr.
SPEAKER_00Song, and he's he's your ultimate friend, right? Wants to treat Joe, he doesn't care about the guidelines, right? You know, and genuinely concerned about my well-being, and he came back to find and he said, Oh, they won't give me chemo unless they irradiate me. And he got real mad, yeah. And he didn't even know me. No, but that was enough to know you, right? You raised his ire. Um, I don't, you know, I mean, when we were there yesterday, two full rooms of people getting infusions. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how he's how he's it's hard for him to take more patients, I think. I oh absolutely, and just while we were there, has four people, and there were some comings and goings, right? While we were there, he was probably treating 12 patients. Oh, absolutely, insies and outsies.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you know, and each one of them he knows exactly what they need and what they want. He knows it. And he's intimately aware of all the patients. And as you can see, takes you in that little room with the girl at the computer, kind of getting the notes down, yeah, and he closes that door and he starts asking you all kinds of detailed questions about your life and right in the days. Hey, you better take some omega C. And Joe, I'm rethinking the collagen a little bit. Okay. If you look it up, collagen is almost all comprised of pro amino acid proline. It's a very unusual process. Oh, really? Okay. Proline, you can look it up, you can look up the methionine content. It must be very low, but I'm I'm not gonna think about that. You take a look. I'll do some research on it, yeah. This rather unusual amino acid, proline. Okay, and collagen, they're all linked together a bunch of these prolines, and it gives the collagen, it's a structural protein. Okay, your skin, you know, rigid and stuff, and so I don't know. You know, when Dr. Song recommends something, we listen. Absolutely. Absolutely. But we listen. And so anyway, I hope so. Take a look at it. If the methionine content is kind of negligible, it's okay, and it may be, but I yeah, I will I'll do some more, I'll do some further research.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I wanted to get into that a little bit because so just to sort of rewind when I sat with Dr. Song originally, it was about a year ago, and UCI wouldn't give me any more of the three drug combination that we came up with that was so effective. As long as you took radiation along with it, right? Yeah, they would have given yep. I had to I had to agree to 30 30 rounds of radiation, cycle, six, maybe seven cycle, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Radiation because you need radiation. That's the that's the received knowledge. You can't you can't treat squamous head and neck squamous cell carcinoma without radiation. This is the received knowledge. Now, Dr. Ishigoro is writing a new paper and saying, hey, wait a minute, we got a new paradigm. It it's your second paper. We got a new program. You don't need a
Skipping Radiation And Rethinking “Must Do”
SPEAKER_00you don't need radiation. Exactly. Disfiguring surgery. Go for good, good. We will call it neoadjuvant chemo because it's before surgery that'll never happen, but still exactly. And go for good neoadjuvant and and and as and as Dr. Song said, take a good slug of it and combine it with methionine restriction, yeah, you know, and and ivermectin and all the other little things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the fasting and the you know the oxygen therapy and the ivermectin and all that together helped. It doesn't hurt. Right.
SPEAKER_00And it might be helpful, and I even say it's probably helpful. Yeah. Certainly ivermectin and chemo, boy, they're good together. There's there's a paper on PubMed already testing ivermectin with a bunch of uh with methionase compared to other drugs combined with methionase, first-line drugs. Ivermectin beats every one of them and is about died with doxorubicin. Holy moly. Yeah. So, anyway, you know, little by little, but what we learned from you, Joe, the most important thing we learn from you is we don't have to get all disfigured and burned out. I mean, poor Craig comes on the on our on our and he's such an intelligent guy, yeah, he's really on his methionine restriction now, but his esophagus barely works. Right, yeah, he had the same as you, he had a tongue cancer.
SPEAKER_01Right. That was the most likely negative side effect for me to deal with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, but I think he's probably recovering. Oh, good. He's very worried that oh, I'm only taking the methionine restriction. I don't know, maybe one of these times I'm gonna tell him to go see Dr. Song.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Remind me that. Yeah, I mean that he could still be seeing Dr. Castro. I have all the respect in the world for Dr. Castro. It's a hurt to have a couple of docs treat you.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Uh but Dr. Castro specifically told me that I should get the radiation, and that's the received knowledge, John. I get it, I get it. And even my gut instinct said I I don't want it unless I have to.
SPEAKER_00So finally he understands, yeah, yeah, you don't need it, but it that that took a lot of convincing, even for him.
SPEAKER_01I get it, I get it, and I respect the heck out of the guy, he's brilliant, you know.
SPEAKER_00You cannot treat head and neck squamous cell carcinoma without radiation. You cannot, but you can but you can. You can, and and you know, and and even if you eventually get it, what the heck is wrong with getting your chemo first and saying how far you can go. Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Start with the least harmful and and work your way out, bring it in, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and maybe some people will need it, Joe. We we don't know that. Exactly. I think there's gonna be a bunch of people that won't need it, right? And and and so that's a that's a point that we can save a lot of people from it. Uh my opinion. Now we have another patient in Japan, and she recurred with neck cancer. Okay. After taking out her germa and getting all the chemo and whatever radiation, whatever. Yeah, as she recurred, she was sent to hospice. But there's nothing more they can do. He ended up with Dr. Sato, and she has a complete response. Immunotherapy. He's got his superimmunotherapy. I don't know if it was a radiation immunotherapy, whatever, but he and and she's good. She's good. She she's got no NED, no valuable disease. So I love it. She was sent to hospice. Yeah, no, and and you know, we have a number of patients now, Japanese patients that were sent to hospice that are complete responders. Wow. So Jesus. But as a patient. You know the story about we?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonno uh were were outright on and on what was the Lone Ranger's horse? I owe silver or something. Silver, yeah. And some hostile Native Americans started coming at him. Uh-huh. The Lone Ranger says to Tonno, what do we do? And Tono says, What do you mean, we, white man? That's my opinion about we. So, you know the docs could say there's nothing more I can do.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Maybe you can find something better. I I'm I'm out. I'm exhausted. This is what I know. This is all I know. But go out and, you know, maybe find a go find Dr. Soto or whatever. But they're not gonna do that. When they end up with what they can do, go to hospice. And what usually happens when people have metastatic cancer, it goes in three or four stages. First, you're given first line therapy. Then there's often for most cancers second line, different chemo or radiation, whatever, and or and then that fails, and then you say, Well, you can go on the this clinical trial. And mostly it doesn't work. Judith is a miracle. I think her she's on a good trial, and there are some good trials, and she's a and then, but let's say that fails, then the next step, hospice. That's where it is. And I would say these these oncologists, the majority, maybe even the vast majority, follow that route. First line, second line, maybe a clinical trial, and then hospice. And that's the way they go.
SPEAKER_01And what an awful job to well, and especially knowing the way I know and the way you know, that there are so many options beyond those things that the doctors just don't know about or aren't willing to risk their whatever, their license or their their standing.
SPEAKER_00Right. You know. Anyway, that's like that.
SPEAKER_01I wanted to touch on the other side of that coin. Oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Yeah is fantastic. A good oncologist. We know in in in Japan, it's Dr. Tsunoda, Dr. Sato. These guys are fantastic.
SPEAKER_01And the difference, I think, is maybe it's the attention to the end game. Like, for example, you know, Dr. Song, I did an MRI, I did a PET CT, I had an ENT evaluated, and they said, well, it looks like there's no active disease. It looks like, it looks like, but there was nothing certain about it in any way, shape, or form. And Dr. Song had gotten me approved for the Ketruda, which is a potentially very very helpful immunotherapy that you know could be a long-term treatment. Oh, it already is. And I and I'm on it, been on it for almost a year now, and no negative side
MatPET Certainty And Why Access Is Limited
SPEAKER_01effects, and and as far as I know, it's working.
SPEAKER_00You're not recurring.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, but the point is, at at where the where the Western United States medicine left it was, that was all there was to do. Like there wasn't anything. Oh, and I even did the liquid biopsy test, the the squamous cell carcinoma antigen test, and it came back negative. But again, it's not conclusive. It's just it's another, it's another tell that says it looks pretty good. But there was no, there was nothing that I could go to sleep saying I don't have an active tumor in my in my med pet. Exactly. So because I knew about it, and because I knew you, and I knew Shahiro, and I was able to access this one clinic in the world, and I was able to make an appointment and and and find my way to be able to get to Japan. And and I had you know Shahiro and and Kuji that helped me, you know, get around and go where I needed to go. And I mean, no, that was seven miracles all stacked on top of each other. And and and because of that, I was able to get this confirmation that said, okay, well, it's not there anymore. There's nothing where it was something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's not, you know, it still has a limit of detection. In my opinion, it's far greater than for most patients than regular FTG pet that we get here. And in my opinion, I think you should consider going back in a year of of the of your original med pet. I think and but the point, you know, we you you can't know what you can't see, exactly.
SPEAKER_01But the point is, is it's the most definitive instrument that we have today to determine if there's active cancer in your body, absolutely, and how many how many people can get it?
SPEAKER_00Exactly, eight people a month, eight people a month, yep. That's that's that's a month in that little clinic there. God bless them. Yeah, uh, eight people a month can get it.
SPEAKER_01That's it. I mean, you know, it's it's a little more than a hundred people, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Eight billion, whatever there is, right? So, you know, Dave and I had a really good talk with the medical oncologist at NCI that's in charge of the alternative therapy, or okay, second in charge, or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Why don't you introduce who Dave is? Because I know some of our listeners have no idea.
SPEAKER_00Gosh, why don't you guys get the MatPet in there? I I'm sure they won't. I'm sure they won't. People don't want to deal with it because you have to make the radioactive methionine right in the you have to have a very expensive cyclotron. Right. Go through all this to make it, and half of it's gone in 11 minutes. Right, yeah. It only works for a bit, yeah. Half, half. So that's why they the minute that thing came out of the cyclotron, you you were right there getting the needle. They pushed it in and ran me over to the machine, yeah. Yeah, and put you in the put you in that that machine. Uh so very quickly, but they don't want the radiologist doesn't want to deal with it. You know, the regular pet, the FTG, the half-life, I don't know, a couple hours, whatever. Right. They're never in a hurry, yeah. Delivered, you don't need a cyclotron. Right. And and it's a piece of cake. Right. And a lot, and they can collect a lot of money. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's like seven, yeah. I know I I I've had to deal with two or three of them. Yeah, it's like seven grand, and that's yeah. I I had to pay like fifteen hundred dollar copay on it.
SPEAKER_00My spine, my stupid spine, and and it was, I could see the charge there for Medicare paid that much. They try to squeeze a little more out of me. I said, no, you ain't getting it.
SPEAKER_01Well, so so when I got these tests, as we talked about before, there was Dr. Sado pointed out that there was some activity in my prostate, which you know, I'm a 60-year-old guy, it's pretty normal that you know something flares up in that region for most men. No surprise. Yeah, exactly. And and it wasn't big hot spot, but he says, hey, you might want to get that looked at. There's something going on there.
SPEAKER_00No question, but it wasn't enough to it wasn't enough to give you a PSA signal. Right. And not only that, the the you go next year, you'll have you'll see if you if if there's more signal or not.
SPEAKER_01Right. And and the glucose G C T didn't show it up. So only the only the MetPet did. So no surprise there. But I was able to take that information and bring it to Dr. Song and say, hey, look, you know, it looks like we did it. And you know, he agreed with the with the results. And I said, but look, he's his report says that there's
Prostate Signal PSA And Tracking Over Time
SPEAKER_01some activity going on in the prostate. I I I asked him, I go, can we uh we showed him the image. Yeah, I said, can we order a PSA test and a testosterone? And he's like, Yeah, and and and so it's not just we have this one problem, you know, he calls it problem number one. You know, when he goes through uh the his post-treatment consultation, he goes into his folder for me, and it's only been a year, and that thing's already about three inches thick, and it's all my blood work and all the history of all the infusions I've gotten and all the things. And he has this order of problems, and his his list of problems started out as you know, this malignant mass that I had, and that was problem number one, and then he'd go on to problem number two. And each time we sit down there, he walks through these problems. Well, I don't have the same problem number one anymore. And so that problem number one's been demoted into nothing. He's always worried about recurrence, he's your neck.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you saw him, he felt everything around, and he's and that's why you're on indefinite K Truda. He doesn't want that, he knows it can come back, yeah. And so, and that's his life's experience, and and of course, those patients weren't on methionine restriction, but we don't know methionine restriction is a guarantee. We don't count on anything being a guarantee, so that's kind of where my point is right now. We hope so, but you know, we have to be diligent, we have to be vigilant, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's what I wanted to get to, is because now my mission has shifted. You know, originally my mission was I need to make this tumor go away because I knew it was there, and now that I believe it's not there anymore, I know that my body still has the propensity to make those tumor cells, it knows how to make them now. I think that's right, and it's a very good probability.
SPEAKER_00We don't know because you can't get the chance.
SPEAKER_01I think it would try to make them again. They're there, yeah, you know, below the radar, right? So, because of that, I I see my mission now as to continue to research and always look for new ways to detect if there's a problem. I mean, I I'm aware of this, you know, liquid biopsy that probably six months from now I'll ask for again.
SPEAKER_00On the uh on our Zoom, Dr. Dr. Kishari, whatever. Yeah, he says he's got some new technology for liquid biopsy. Okay. Oh, all right. Come on, let us use it. Yeah, I'm all for it. Uh, and that that technology is really, I think, moving along pretty good. And so it's good. It's there's no question that maybe most cancers put out can cells in the blood, and that's a great way to find them. So, anyway, we're learning a lot. I I like this field very much.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh today I got back the results from my blood work, and so I got my PSA, which will you want to explain to the listeners what that stands for, what it means?
SPEAKER_00PSA is just it's an acronym for prostate-specific antigen. So it's a protein that is especially kind of fluffed off from a prostate cancer, it goes in the blood. And so you can measure it. You can measure it rather easily. Actually, the test, the main test was invented in San Diego about 40 years ago for it. So it's the standard test for prostate cancer patients. There are prostate cancers that don't make it, and there's people that have five PSA that don't have cancer, but it's it's a very good marker, and you and just getting it once is not that informative, but seeing how it goes over time is very informative. And then there's for prostate cancer, on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01I think the good thing was is that unbeknownst to me, I had had PSA test a year ago, yeah. And that's good, and now we see it's just about the same, right?
SPEAKER_00So knowing that there wasn't a big spike, variation, and that's within the variation of the test. We call it the standard deviation. Sure, sure. But but the point was is it didn't spike up. It didn't spike up.
SPEAKER_01That's and that's what we wanted to know more than anything, right? And so to me, that was the good news was that it was flat across anything about it right now, and my testosterone level was in the normal range. It dropped a little bit, but I think the chemo might have been chemo beat the hell out of it, probably. Yeah, yeah, but it it's still in the normal range, right? It's pretty much smack in the middle, yeah. So so the that to me said, okay, well, as far as I know, I'm I'm I'm in the best place I could be right now. Now, what that means though, and and this is so important for these people because I know so many people that they they go through a treatment and then they they get diagnosed as you know uh being resolved, it's not there anymore, and then they go I want to just mention one example, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Diane on our podcast who's a very smart person, yeah. Uh she was going with me. I don't have any more tumor. I mean, we going and going and going. I said, Diane, we don't know that, right? And then she had this big talk. Obviously, she had this big talk with Dr. Castro because she's really into the low methionine diet. Yeah, she understands she had triple negative breast cancer, that is one of the most vicious, horrible cancers there is, and she and it's Dr. Castro did miracles for her, yeah, getting it, you know, to not be detectable, but she knows, she realizes, and and Dr. Castro is agreeing with her, it can come back. Yes,
Remission Is Not The Finish Line
SPEAKER_00so she's now into that diet big time, and that's good.
SPEAKER_01So I think my message to anybody who has ever been diagnosed with cancer, regardless of if it was treated, if it's if it's if you've been told you you don't have it anymore, you're the rest of your life, you need to address it, you need to do whatever protocols you can.
SPEAKER_00Whether you want to believe it or not, it is, and it's not breast cancer. Breast cancer, there's a whole bunch of data out there, people recurring after 25 years.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. You just can't let go. And and if you think that you can celebrate and go back to doing whatever you were doing before, every day, yeah. And and I just think that you know, take some time, celebrate, but but then go back to your job of making sure it stays gone and and double checking it every chance you get, every way you can. All your life. Now, a lot of people don't want to hear that, they don't want to hear it.
SPEAKER_00Uh my my patient at the sushi shop. No, I don't need methane restriction anymore. I'm good. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So I think the other point that I think is so important, you know. I run into anywhere from two to a dozen people a week that I encounter through the podcast, through just talking to people, or people now recommend people to me. They know what I've done, and they say, hey, go talk to this guy, maybe can help you. 99% of them, I mean, out of maybe 90 95 of them, one or two out of a hundred people will even take what I'm saying seriously enough to consider it and maybe take some action.
SPEAKER_00Part of that, Joe, maybe the biggest part of it, they go back to the doc. Never never heard of it. Exactly. Exactly. Never heard of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Just like all the oncologists that I said. In fact, the guy was telling how come we don't know about exactly we joke, yeah, exactly. You know, and that's the same with a lawyer, you know, you get yourself in legal trouble, and you got a lawyer recommend or representing you. Well, guess what? Something goes wrong, you're the one gonna get hung, not him.
SPEAKER_00The doctor says, I I never heard of it. Yeah. The average person's gonna say, F this, right.
SPEAKER_01And I had every oncologist that I came to, and remember, I had zero experience with this type of doctor in my life. Every every doctor I was talking to, it was brand new world to me. I talked to the surgeon, I never talked to a surgical oncologist before, talked to the radio oncologist, I never talked to one of them before, you know, and they're all telling me different things, and they're all telling me they don't know anything about this. And I was like, Well, maybe I can educate you. They don't want to hear it.
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. Tell the story, you know why God wears a white coat, exactly, because he's a doctor, exactly.
SPEAKER_01No, I get it, I get it, and I I experienced it firsthand.
SPEAKER_00But you know, you know, you see how Dr. Song listens, yeah. He he he's 83 years old, he wants to learn every day something new.
SPEAKER_01Yep, no, 100%. So I guess my final point to this conversation is our Sunday meeting, and I keep talking about the Sunday meeting, but you know, every single time we talk, I there's at least two or three doctors on the call that are doctors that are dealing with or have dealt with cancer themselves personally, so they're treating themselves as well as being treated by both doc doctor whatever the and the prostate cancer par Dr.
SPEAKER_00Fox and Dr. Emile. They're treating themselves. Yes. And and and they know, you know, they these are brilliant guys, you know, and incredible. In fact, you know, this last Emile he's on in his sixth year of past diagnosis with stage four lung cancer.
The Sunday Knowledge Network And Resistance
SPEAKER_00Terminal, yeah. I mean it was probably only him in the world. I don't know. And the doctor said in the beginning, I hope I can see in a year. Exactly. And here it is, six years later.
SPEAKER_01He's in the sixth year. It'll be six years in the spring. Well, even still, five years is beyond anybody's projection for it's it's it's many standard deviations. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you if if if they talk to you about a treatment and they look at the the the percentage of survival, nobody's looking at five years, they're looking at at six months, a year.
SPEAKER_00Look at the new drug for for uh pancreatic cancer that everybody's oh we got 13 months. Ooh, right and and if you look at disease-vree survival, you got right one year zero, no change.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I mean, when you're when you're when I keep talking about this meeting and the importance of it, I was telling somebody that was at our uh our you know ceremony this weekend. I was telling them about these things, you know. I talk about this stuff all the time to everybody I meet, you know. I'm I'm like the the apostle preaching the gospel, you know. I'm this is what I learned. I go and this is the truth. I gotta share it with everybody, and maybe somebody will listen. But I I was the thing that I was telling him was about our meeting, I said, you know, I have access to a database that is the most up-to-date. It's more valuable than any doctor has access to. I mean, except for the ones that come under the call. I said, this these are researchers that are actively researching.
SPEAKER_00Not only the researchers and the doctors on the call, but the patients, everybody's getting so great information from each other. And you can read all the books in the world, and you can da-da-da, but learning from a cancer patient. Well, and and we're sharing real-time data.
SPEAKER_01Ultimate teacher, yeah, 100%, 100%. And you know, sometimes there's twists and turns, you know, somebody goes, Oh, I'm going along good, I'm doing my everything's right, and then all like Shahiro, you know, she was doing great, and then all of a sudden, boom, she started spiking again.
SPEAKER_00So those little resistant guys were growing and growing and growing, and finally it took off. Right. But then and not only that were they resistant, they were more malignant. Right. Big problem with resistance. The resistance cells acquire uh often, maybe most of the time, I don't know, but that they can um acquire greater malignancy, so it's real bad when you recur, right? Yeah, you don't want it, and that's where I I'm I'm so clear what on, on, on, on, on. Eventually, the bad guys overcome the less bad guys, right? And and and that ain't good, and that's why this Gattenby, you go treat, let it come out, cancer grow a little bit, treat. Yeah, the the worst guys can't take over, the less fast guys, less bad, less worse guys keep the guys under control, exactly. And then you give a little drug and you never acquire resistance. So, this adaptive therapy, whether it's for a general thing or not, we don't know yet, but it sure isn't promising.
SPEAKER_01Well, and in that arena, one of the things that you've learned that really make me happy is that you know, I'm always concerned that you know, what if my cancer cells become resistant to my low methionine diet and say, well, let me just tell you this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll tell you what happened, what's we've seen in the lab for 50 years, right? So when the the cancer cells can become more res can become resistant to methion restriction, right? What happens to them is the opposite of when cells become resistant to chema, right? Lose their malignancy, yes. So becoming resistant to coming becoming resistant to uh methionine restriction is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01I agree, and that was my point, was I wanted to to bring that up.
SPEAKER_00If it happens in the clinic, we don't know, but we've seen time and time again in the lab experiments over years. There was about a 45-year hiatus, but hey, what's 45 years among friends?
SPEAKER_01So well, Dr. Hoffman, as always, this has been an enlightening conversation, and I know sometimes we talk about similar things, but it's that important, you know. I I really feel strongly that each time we cancer.
SPEAKER_00What's more important than this world? Nothing. Exactly. The most important thing in the whole world is cancer, and uh treat it right, help people, you know, all the wars and all that stuff, and they're no match for what cancer can do to you. It's so true, it's so true. So there's nothing more important than cancer. Nothing. This is it's the the ultimate equal opportunity disease, and uh every one of us in this world can get it, and so we we need to focus on it, and if we repeat stuff, we never repeat it exactly, but we want to get the point across.
SPEAKER_01So exactly what we want to do. Yeah, yeah. Well, I thank you so much for your commitment, you know, to working towards finding these answers. I I respect your work tremendously, and I respect your work ethic and your commitment even more. So I for me, there's no choice. Well, and that's that's kind of my point. I I I'm just you know, that's where I am now, too.
SPEAKER_00So we're we're a great team. So I I agree hoping a lot of people are gonna listen to this podcast and get a few grains of knowledge from it. Whatever you get, good, it's good. If you learn something, it's good. The more you learn, the better. And you know, all of you any contact Joe anytime. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01I'm I'm always willing to help and into a better world, exactly. And you know what? We can come and talk about your story on the show. I love bringing in guests of patients that that uh you know are are in their journey, and and we can have a conversation about the road to healing, you know. And so, all right, well, Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure. I look forward to talking to you again soon. Me too. Thank you, you bet this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I want to thank all of our listeners for making this show possible. And of course, want to thank Dr. Hoffman for joining us once again, and we will see you next time.
