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What If Beating Cancer Means Outthinking Evolution, Not Finding A Silver Bullet with Dr Robert Hoffman
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The loudest voices in cancer care rarely come with footnotes. We wanted to flip that script and build a conversation anchored in data, lived experience, and strategies patients can actually use. With Dr. Robert Hoffman, a researcher who has spent six decades in oncology, we separate hype from signal and outline a plan that starts with metabolism and ends with smarter treatment choices.
We dig into why methionine restriction is a powerful foundation for many cancers and how to keep your body strong by replacing the other nineteen amino acids. From there, we zoom out to treatment strategy: cancers evolve. Hit a tumor with one pressure for too long and you risk selecting resistant clones that outcompete the sensitive cells. That’s where adaptive therapy comes in. By cycling treatments based on biomarkers, especially in settings like prostate cancer with androgen deprivation, we aim to keep sensitive cells in play so resistance doesn’t take over. It’s not about avoiding standard care; it’s about timing, combination, and mechanism changes that align with how tumors adapt.
Along the way we talk patient agency: reading PubMed, presenting evidence to clinicians, and pushing for care that is personalized and agile. We share stories from our weekly Sunday call where physicians and survivors compare notes, and we get practical about nutrition—think low-methionine shakes and medical formulas—to maintain strength without feeding the disease. The throughline is simple. Hope is highest when it is paired with action, data, and a willingness to adjust.
If you’re ready to trade vague promises for evidence and a plan, hit play. Then join our Sunday 4 p.m. PT Zoom, bring your questions, and be part of a community that learns fast and shares freely. If this episode helps you, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it to someone who needs clarity today.
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Hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine. And today we have back with us very special guest, Dr. Robert Hoffman. Robert, welcome to the show again. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_01:I'm doing fine, Joe. Always happy to be on your show. Well, you know, it's a privilege and a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's a the privilege and pleasure is all mine. I thank you. People, uh, you're you're in no small way responsible for me being here today. All right. You're now Joe 3.0. Exactly. I'll take it. I'll take it all day long. So today I've got a lot of things I want to talk about that have to do with maybe some of our listeners, um, in particular, people that have cancer. And you know, you've have you're the you're the head of a nonprofit organization called Anti-Cancer Incorporated, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh it just anti-Cancer Incorporated is is a is a for-profit organization that doesn't that doesn't make a profit. I got it. Um, but we also have the Robert M. Hoffman Foundation for Cancer Research, which is a true 501c3 nonprofit. All right. I wasn't aware that there was two different anti-cancer is effectively a nonprofit.
SPEAKER_00:I understand. I've got a couple businesses like that myself. But help me break even. That's all we want. Exactly. So you have literally spent the majority of a lifetime 61 years in research, Joe. 61 years. So you you've been more than a lifetime of Joe. Exactly. You've been researching cancer longer than I've been on this planet. Yep. And I I think to myself, all the things I've done in my life and and all the things I've learned and and and experienced, and I think to myself, you focused a huge, huge amount of that 61 years to this one topic. So, in my opinion, you're quite an expert in the field.
SPEAKER_01:And well, I I Joe, uh, and and thank you for saying that. But regarding cancer, in my opinion, nobody's an expert. I get it.
SPEAKER_00:And that's that's important. And that's part of the problem. Exactly. Maybe that is the problem. It's a huge piece of it, and that's part of what I want to share because you have been doing this, nothing but this, for this huge amount of time, and that's your experience is that nobody's an answer, nobody has the answers.
SPEAKER_01:No, but we we have some solutions, yes, indeed. Uh, and we're getting more, and we have some answers, but right uh I I I I can't tell you what we don't know, but I think it's huge, and I think what we know compared to what we don't know is a very small fraction.
SPEAKER_00:I I agree, and that's one of the things I want to address because I have people, you know, now that I'm the cancer guy, that you sure are. There's no cancer guy like a cancer patient. Well, I I'm glad to be the cancer guy that's alive and kicking and and and still trying to help. Um, but I have people that will send me articles all the time, as you probably do as well, that are like some guy telling me about how he cured cancer. And and and most of the time what I see is some decent diet, but almost always there's some keto element to it where these guys are eating protein and substantial amounts of protein. And I think to myself, it's got to be a specific scenario where your cancer went away for whatever reason, who knows what, and you attributed it to these things that you did. But we know from our experience and your vast experience, my year and a half's worth of experience, that there are certain things that absolutely help cancer rather than hurt it. And one of those things is feeding it a bunch of protein.
SPEAKER_01:And well, Joe, here's my my thinking: these people that report to you unlikely occurrences, not we don't rule them out, but they're unlikely. Right. One-offs, uh there's no science behind it. It doesn't mean it didn't happen, right? Uh I I would say unlikely. And I say this you know, there's a huge amount of noise out there, and not a whole lot of signal. And I think we really need to focus on the signal, the these guys that give you the one-off that seems unlikely to heck with them. And uh I think we need to really just keep focusing on the science and and going from there, and and all this stuff. Well, I read this guy's book, Dr. Dr. John. I read in the book, and Dr. John says, you know, you gotta restrict the glutamine and that kind of stuff is it's quackery. And you know, um, so all these people that write the books and tell you what to do to get better from cancer. Hey, you go read PubMed and and live on PubMed. Not everything on PubMed is right, but there's that's where all the science is. Not every not all science is correct, of course not, but that's where people should should live and forget all these books and these experts and all this they don't know what they're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:And and for those of you listening who don't know what PubMed is, it's a clearinghouse of peer-reviewed published articles, and it includes things like studies, it includes um trials, it includes case studies like mine. My case is on there as a case study, but it has to be published in a peer-reviewed medical journal prior to even being considered for PubMed. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it it the PubMed considers what they put on by journal. Some journals are not qualified yet. Um, so they no paper in those journals goes on. PubMed right now is pushing 42 million papers. It is run by the National Institutes of Health, it's a government website, right? And um it's it's it's a it's a national treasure.
SPEAKER_00:And how many articles from um the best-selling novel, you know, latest cured cancer book are in PubMed? Zero. Oh, that's what I thought. And and I think it's important when you talk about PubMed, and I talk about it, that I use I use articles from PubMed so that I can approach a physician, an MD, a doctor who will not listen to most people about most things. But when I hand him a published article that came from there, they look at it every single time and they consider it. And, you know, like you said, all science isn't right. We learn science is a is a system of trial and error and and of trying to repeat something over and over again and and prove that it's real. And that's what science is. But you look through the history of science, and my god, we've been wrong about everything, at least before we got it right. You can't get it right until you get it wrong first. 100%. So it's just a point of reference. Okay, that was the first point I wanted to make. The second point I wanted to make, and I and I just did an episode on my own about this. I get people that reach out to me now two, three times a week, and they'll either have somebody that they know that has cancer or themselves, and usually it's already progressed to a point where they're you know, stage four, metastasized, their cancer is starting to spread, or it's already spread, which means they're already in a very difficult position. An impossible position, no, but a very difficult position. And they come to me and say, Well, I heard that you know some stuff, and I and I say, Well, okay, I do. I've learned some things. I I I took myself I got better. I yeah, that's it. I'm living proof. I was stage four. I was about to to be off by this cancer, and now look at me, I don't have it anymore. And so I can tell you what I learned about myself, and and I I suspect some of it would apply to you. And and I start there. And when I start to talk about how I approached it, the first thing I get into is the diet. I think it's the most important factor in this. And when I start to talk about it, it's the most important factor in health.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. What you put on your mouth gets in your mouth gets converted into the materials of your body.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. It's everything. And and I I have people that are, you know, stage four metastasized cancer, and they're drinking fruit juice and eating candy bars and just eating cheeseburgers and just doing things that make no sense to me. But when I start talking about, I've got hope for you. I think to myself, if somebody came to me with hope, kind of the way you did and the and the group did, I stopped what I was doing and listened. I stopped what I was doing and took copious notes. I stopped what I was doing and did my own investigating over the top of what they told me. And and then I went and took action. And I took it to the doctor, and I took it to the other doctor, and then I found a doctor that would do what I needed. But most of the people that I run into after five, 10, 20 minutes, or usually they'll spend an hour telling me their story, and when I start to tell them mine, I can sense them kind of glazing out. And there's something about when I tell them, like, you have to take agency of your health, you change your lifestyle. Exactly. And and and most of them I don't ever hear from again. And every one of them I invite to the call on Sunday, and we talk about this call over and over again, but I want to keep talking about it because I think it's one of the most important tools we have. Every Sunday at 4 p.m., a group of anywhere between 15 and 40 or more individuals get on a call, a Zoom call, and these are people from around the world. There's almost there's always at least a couple of physicians on there, Dr. Fox, Dr. Exame, and there's another of other number of other doctors that are cancer survivors that are currently dealing with cancer, but alive. And these are not, these are these are incredibly intelligent people that have a wealth of experience of their own, and they're researchers on top of it. These are people that know the human body, like blow me away when Dr. Exeme starts talking about mechanisms and and things that I'm just like, whoa, you know, uh, these are brilliant people. And then we have people like Gene and Shahiro and Scott and Lee and all these other people who have survived cancer for years and are still here and they're they're managing it. And people don't realize you don't cure cancer, you manage it. You you get it under control, you get it to not be a problem, and then you keep it that way. But you don't disappear it. We don't know what that even means. And these are people that have tried every kind of remedy. Yeah, people doing ivermectin and herbs and oxygen therapy and all these different things. And we agree that certain things work for different people. They're all on methionine restriction, Joe. Correct. But what else they try, they're all on MR. Exactly. And so so this one factor of restricting your diet of methionine, and most of them, if not all, are on methioninase, which removes the little methionine that you end up putting in your body with even eating the good foods. And then they stack on top of that a number of different various things. It might be chemotherapy, it might be immunotherapy, it might be radiation, it might be um hormone therapy, it might mean, you know, there's all these different other, generally, they would be considered um first-line um standard of care actions that a lot of people go, oh, I don't want that, I don't want that. I was one of them. But when you combine the diet, fasting, oxygen therapy, all these different things together and the chemo, or and the uh radiation in certain cases, or and the the the hormone therapies and all these other things, you're finding these dramatic results. And people that were diagnosed terminal, Dr. Exume was diagnosed terminal four or five years ago, and he's still out there wailing away on it. We've had a number of people that have reversed, you know, metastatic. Scott was metastatic throughout his body.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they postponed their trip to the hospice.
SPEAKER_00:And and literally they're at the point where where the doctor's like, well, there's nothing more we can do for you. And it's true, nothing more they can do, exactly. And and most can mean nothing more can be done, but they they reach their limit. Okay, right, and and I think most people, like we've talked about, when they hear that from the doctor, they throw in the tell. The doctor says you got three months to live. Well, he's probably right because you bought it. And in order for me to help somebody, in order for you to help somebody, in order for even this group to help somebody, the thing that people need is the will to not just survive but to thrive, the will to overcome this obstacle. And it has to be the most powerful will, it needs to be the same drive as a teenager's sex drive. It needs to be that powerful where it's the only thing you think about and you do what it takes to get what you want. And I think if anybody can get anything from this podcast, it's my plea to you look inside yourself and summon that will. Think about your kids, your grandkids, your husband, your wife, somebody who you love and care about. Don't you want to be there for them? Don't you want to be there? And and find some reason to dig in hard and do the hard work. And and without it, you're not gonna, there's not a chance. So that was kind of my little spiel, but I just really want to remind everybody the link is in the show notes of this podcast, every episode. You can join us at four o'clock Sunday Pacific time every week. I'm there every week, and it doesn't matter what else is going on, unless physically I'm not able to come. It's that important. And if you want to tell your story, you can be anonymous, you can be open public, however you want, but there's such a vast wealth of experience and knowledge on this platform. I think it is one of the most incredible tools that not enough people use. Your thoughts?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I'm totally in agreement, Joe. Um you know, I don't I guess I haven't been involved with patients long enough. Uh I just it's very hard for me to understand why everybody's not like you.
SPEAKER_02:Um crazy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um and you know, I get these in many inquiries. I get one or two a week. Oh, send me methine and A. I say, well, we need to talk first. Right. About your cancer, this and that. Most of them that's the end. When I asked that, let's set up a Zoom or a phone call, I don't hear from them again.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And the rest of do it. Maybe one out of ten will okay, come aboard if I can use that kind of term. Sure. That's it. It's so rare. Um now one of the reasons probably is methionine restriction is not unfortunately, and it should be, but it's not mainstream. No. Uh we knew we needed to re restrict our methionine intake if we have cancer since 1959 when Sugi Mura just did his simple experiment with the rats. You take out methionine, you slow the tumor. You take out the other amino acids, you don't slow the tumor. I mean it was we we knew this since 1959. And here we are. Um it's not it's not a conspiracy. It's just some things just don't get into the mainstream very easily. Um some things may don't ever get into it, even if they're right.
SPEAKER_00:Not one doctor I have talked to and that I mentioned what I was doing knew about it. Except Dr. Castro. Yes, Dr. Castro is the one exception, you're correct. And when I told him that, he smiled and says, All right, that's good. He supported he supported he referred, he just referred a patient to me last night.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and I immediately responded to the patient. He's in the UK. I said, I'm free this this morning for a Zoom, I'm free tomorrow morning as a Zoom. I haven't heard from him. Oh man, the guy has uh very malignant glioblastoma, he's all of 23 years old. Oh man, I don't know. I mean, if I were him, I would have responded to me in 40 seconds. But uh, you know, Castro refers him, and uh we still may hear. Um but even that's the whole thing. I would say a a fairly good portion of Dr. Castro's patients get on board, but a a larger portion that are referred to me and and encouraged by him don't.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I think it's that same thing. I think people are looking for a doctor to tell them what to do, that is something that they can just follow along. The second a doctor gives you an outdoor assignment, says, go talk to this guy and go do this thing. Well, now you're on your own. You you you have to manage yourself. When you come to the doctor to get some kind of a treatment or a prescription, that's just you know, brainless stuff. And you just you literally, I think people they take the responsibility of their health out of their own hands and put it in this doctor. And it's just it's it's a fool's errand. Well, I want to get into some of the stuff that we've been learning. We've been talking about a lot of interesting things in the group, and one of the things that we've talked about is modulating a treatment, and in particular, they were talking about testosterone with respect to uh prostate cancer and um hormone therapy and hormone-resistant tumor cells. And what happens, I guess, is they'll give you a therapy if you got prostate cancer, and it'll work for a while. It might work for a good long while, it might work almost all the way, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the levels will rise up again, and all of a sudden it doesn't work. And they talk about the correlation of testosterone to the prostate cancer, and we don't know what causes what we don't know, we don't know, but but they observe and they they make you know speculations, and so there's a a theory that says well, if you introduce testosterone or allow the levels to rise and then take a pause on the hormone therapy for a while, and then cycle back and Give it the hormone therapy, they're finding some positive results with that. Why don't you um get into that a little better? You can explain this a lot better.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, Joe, it's not rocket science at all. So a cancer is not all one kind of cell. It's not all one kind of cancer cell. So by the time a cancer is detectable, we're probably talking about some billions of cells using billions, if not trillions. Billions. So among those cells in the cancer, there's all kinds of different vari variants, variations, among which are cells which are naturally resistant to whatever therapy. Some are resistant to X and some are resistant to Y. That's just the way they evolve by themselves. But usually there are those kind of resistance cells are in the minority because in order for a cancer cell to become resistant, it has to make a number of extra things every time it divides to fend off whatever, to be a resistant cell. And so they don't grow as fast as the sensitive cells who don't make these extra factors on their cell membrane or whatever to fend off drugs. So the resistant cells in an untreated person are almost always in the minority because they can't compete with the sensitive cells, which need less energy and therefore can outgrow these the resistance cells. Okay. So then let's say you're a prostate cancer patient and you're taking ADT, androgen deprivation therapy, which is basically zapping your testosterone. Okay. So all the sensitive cells they can't hack it, they're gonna die. They need the testosterone, they ain't getting the testosterone. So what do you have left? The cells that can grow without testosterone. These are very bad guys. And maybe, you know, it takes a long time to get kind of a sufficient amount of them that where they can kind of take over, but they're gonna take over. It's almost inevitable whether it's you're taking antitestosterone for prostate cancer or toxic chemotherapy for breast cancer, head and neck cancer, and colon cancer, you're eventually going to knock out not always, but usually the sensitive cells. So that leaves the resistant cells free without competition, they're gonna they're gonna grow. When they're competing with the sensitive cells, they can't grow very well because every time they divide, they need a lot more energy than the sensitive cells, so they're slow. But without the sensitive cells, they can take over. And either those cells themselves are naturally more malignant, the resistant ones, or become more malignant. So it's two bad things, two different bad things happen in resistance. The cells that resist the drugs are growing, and they're often, if not mostly, more malignant. Bad, bad, bad. So this doctor in Florida by the name of Dr. Gatinby says, Okay, we're not gonna let the uh resistant cells take over. We're gonna go to a certain extent, depending on the blood marker. We're gonna treat, and then when the blood marker goes down a good to some point, we stop the treatment. And it in their case, they even add back some testosterone. So the sensitive cells start taking over again. And the resistant cells are kind of overwhelmed by all the sensitive cells. And then he he says, Well, we'll do this in cycles, and he claims, and I give him a good chance of being right, we don't know yet. We won't know for a long time, but he said, Well, if you do this, prostate cancer will no longer be a lethal disease. He could be right, but as we said on the Zoom the other day, we don't have enough data. Okay, so this is this is called adaptive therapy. Kind of you adapt your therapy so the resistant, the drug resistant cells, whatever they may be, don't take over. And Chihiro's case is a good example with breast cancer. She was taking a uh targeted uh drug as maintenance therapy, and she was cancer free for about three years. Unbelievable. These enormous axillary metast uh lymph node metastases, all gone even by methionine pet. Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, after three years, within about a month or two, these resistance cells break out, they spread to her liver, they spread to her bone, her blood numbers go up, they double, triple within weeks. Um so here's a case in point. Uh I think we learned a tremendous amount from that. Don't if you're on a don't keep on the same drug for very long periods of time. You're just gonna select the bad guys. So we either have to go off the drug for a while and come back, or go off the drug and come back with a one with a different mechanism. We gotta outsmart this cancer like day by day. So this is you know, some uh we it's it's an intellectual challenge to stay ahead of the cancer, and we always have to be thinking what the cancer may be doing.
SPEAKER_00:But it makes sense if you think about it. The human body adapts to just about anything. You know, if you take a drug, uh, a pain-relieving drug or most drugs, uh, even a um an antibiotic, if you take the same medicine too long, eventually your body gets used to it. If you take well, you you start selecting for bacteria that are resistant.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. They may have existed before, right? They get overwhelmed by the sensitive cells, and then after a while, you wipe out all the sensitive cells for a long enough time. There they are. The typical cases, this CDP seal that patients die left and right from in the hospital under under constant antibiotic therapy. Right. It's just dumb. So the same principle staying ahead of the bacteria and staying ahead of the cancer cells, because both the bacteria and the cancer cells are very plastic. They they can change really easy. And so we gotta stay ahead. I I my friend who owns a sushi restaurant, he went on just line in restriction. His PSA came down two times. Two points from 12 something to 10 something. And he has a lease in nine tumors, nasty, prostate. But all his friends, and many of them are doctors that come to his restaurant and stuff. Oh no, no, no, you gotta, you know, you gotta get on this uh ADT antigen deprivation therapy at least, bla da da. So he went on it. Okay. His PSA now is 0.73. And I sent him, I sent him Net and B Gat and B's video. I said, watch this, please. I don't get any response. And all his friends, I'm sure, are telling him, stay on the ADT, stay on the ADT. Well, as sure as you and I are here, the cancer is gonna break out. And in prostate cancer, once the majority of the cells become resistant or able to grow in the absence of testosterone, they are real bad, and you're gonna die. Wow. So uh, but you know, that's the standard. You got ADT, you stay on it for X years, and then whatever. Um it it it uh the light the the lights are doing what they do here. Hang on. Okay, um, so um, you know, it Gattenby's video is very telling. I don't completely agree with him. I wouldn't add back the testosterone, I would just go off the drug and let the natural testosterone uh nurture the sensitive cells that were not growing in the presence of the deprivation of testosterone, the ADD. But that's all, you know, we don't know. We we think we have a good hypothesis and a good principle that Dr. Gattenby came up with, and um and we we got a lot to learn, but I think it has a lot of promise in the principle of staying on the same drug, no way, but that's not in the guidelines. Oh, the drug is working. No, you're not gonna go off the drug, it's working. Uh okay. Um, and and Chihiro is such a good example. She three years. I mean, there wasn't even anything on MedPed. Then all of a sudden it's in her liver, it's in her bones, and and and and and the blood markers are going doubling every week. And it's strictly that. The the the resistant cells just found themselves without competition and finally got themselves a critical mass and grew and spread.
SPEAKER_00:And that was in spite of she was still on the low methionine diet, and it still took up Joe with very bad cancer, low methionine diet needs help.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Agreed, just like with you. Exactly. It's not if we could if we could lower the methionine in the body like we lower it in the culture dish in the lab, that's all you'd need. Right. But you can't, right? So we can only do it to a certain extent and get a certain good benefit, and for some people it's enough. Um, Dave has done really well now. He's starting to break out a bit. Dave did good just on methionine restriction for three years. Um you know the methionine restriction that we do by taking methionase and the low diet, it ain't enough. Um we need other treatment. Okay, I want to say something before I it gets out of my mind. So there's a company called Faith Therapeutics, F-A-E-T-H. And they claim oh, all the cancers, you have to deprive them of serine and glycine. Well, we're we're we're gonna do that experiment very soon. Um, and too bad for them. Um, they've they've gotten 90 million dollars out of investors so far. But one thing they're doing is so they have this kind of secret sauce, a diet that is either low or free of serine and glycine, two other amino acids that they claim that's a thing. And the idea I caught from them is what they do with that diet, they make a shake. And I said to myself, why can't we make a shake out of Homex Home and X or that other famous HCY and add chocolate or add some other what we like? Vanilla, strawberry. Why we can't do that? Why can't we make our own shake? No reason. So something to talk about not only here, but on Sunday to all the folks on Home X or HCY, why not make a shake?
SPEAKER_00:I agree. I think it's an easy way to take it down and add some more.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and add the flavors that you like. I mean, it's by itself, it's kind of uh eating chalk or something, but uh you put in what you like. I don't think there's much methionine and chocolate or whatever vanilla.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no. It's it's it's I mean, it's whatever sugar's in there, that's it. But it's just like putting it in a smoothie, yeah, right. And then I've talked about it.
SPEAKER_01:So I think there's a way to get people uh, you know, to to go on the you know, to I mean, you know, I mean, the most efficient way to have a low methionine diet is to have it at Homan X or the other Park Davis stuff is as a significant part of your caloric intake. Um so maybe a shake can kind of get people going on.
SPEAKER_00:Because any of these other aminos, like we've we already talked about the cysteine restriction and your experiment that that dispelled that. We're gonna talk next.
SPEAKER_01:There's no no cancer-specific vulnerability to restricting cysteine or glutamine, and we're I'm pretty sure we're gonna show that for serine and glycine, and even we've already shown it for glucose.
SPEAKER_00:So these are all things we're gonna talk about in future episodes, but the whole idea that I'm getting to is that the low methionine diet is primarily low in all those amino acids.
SPEAKER_01:It is, and and that's not the best thing. Um, and we get around that with diets, the medical diets, right?
SPEAKER_00:Full of all the other aminos. Exactly. And that's that's kind of my point, is you know, the the way that we've gotten around and solved, at least that I it's been instrumental in my journey, is because I work hard and and I need I need to be able to build the proteins back. But if I eliminate all of the aminos, then you know it makes it difficult to do that.
SPEAKER_01:But we're you're you're not you're not eliminating all of them, and you're not going below normal on the protein level in the blood, but it seems to me potentially more optimal with something that's purposely supplemented with the other 19 amino acids, yeah, other relatively high caloric foods, no methionine. How can you go wrong?
SPEAKER_00:Agreed, agreed. Well, Robert, I I am really glad that we had this discussion. I think the need of cycling um treatments is worthy of further discussion because even things like exercise, you don't exercise your arms every day, you don't exercise hard vigorously every day. You gotta cycle, you gotta give yourself time to rest. You don't stay awake 24 hours a day. You cycle, you sleep, and you'll be awake. Everything in your body is operates on a cycle. Your hormones are are secreted in cycles. Your body lets go of melatonin at certain times, other times, your body will let go of gremelin at different times, and all these different cycles that happen, whether it's related to food or or sunlight or or stress or whatever, but there isn't anything in your body that goes nonstop except for your heart and your lungs. Well, even your heart slows down probably during the night. Oh, absolutely. Breathing slows down. Yeah. Well, everything's a cycle. Exactly. So for us to think that you get on a drug and you just stay on it, whatever the drug, whatever the reason, whatever the purpose, to me seems like it's it's got a built-in bomb attached to it. At one point, something's gonna go wrong. Yeah, I think it's great for us to consider these things as we're looking at the whole scope of how we're gonna treat ourselves and and realizing that just because a doctor says we're gonna do this because whatever, you got to realize the doctor's not giving that to himself, he's giving it to you. And if it doesn't go right, it's gonna be you that it doesn't let me tell you a story, Joe.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Long ago, 40 years ago, and at that point, the this R in vitro test called HDRA, where we culture the tumors and try to find a better drug. Well, almost none of the doctors in San Diego wanted to use it. Okay, whatever. Then one of the doctors got cancer. Oh boy, did I get the phone calls? Make sure you do that test for doctors. Oh boy, yeah, we'll get you all the tumor you want uh from his surgery. Don't worry, we're gonna do blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah when one of them got sick. Cancer. Yep, so I always remember that. Yeah, um, these guys are in business and they're doing their business and making a ton of money, and they try to insulate themselves because most of their you want to call them customers are gonna die, and whatever. Um, and they stick with the guidelines because they're not gonna get sued, and they're and they prescribe the drugs that may give them the most money because they get their kickback, and it's a legal kickback, so that's your typical oncologist. Um you know it the the the very atypical is Dr. Song, who's not only brilliant in the way he treats the patient, but his compassion as well. He's definitely the exception.
SPEAKER_00:I will continue talking about Dr. Song until my last breath. The guy is I've never experienced a doctor that was so meticulous about every aspect of what he does. And and you know, even make sure you send him that nature medicine paper, Joe. Oh, you bet I will. I've already got it printed out. I'm I'm uh I'm I I can't wait to show it to him. I don't know, I'm gonna show him I'll I'll email him the nature medicine one, and then you'll bring him your own case. I'm gonna bring him my put it in his hot little hand. You bet, you bet. And but you know, just the way like this last appointment where I had the immunotherapy, and he after the infusion, he says, I want to see you afterward. And more often than not, he wants to see me afterward. And usually when we're while I'm sitting in the infusion chair, look him up, and I always have a question for him. I always try to ask him about his opinion about something because I only get so many minutes to spend with the guy. So I'm like, Well, each time I see him, I I come up with something I've I've learned or researched, I go, hey. Hey, doc, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And either he'll say, Don't waste your time, or he'll say, Show me the paper. And when somebody says, Show me the paper, it tells me that they have a very critical mind. You know, that's what you would say. That's what Dr. Exame would say. That's what most of the people in our as Dr. Eczeme would say, XMA would say the level of evidence, evidence. Exactly. And so, unless he knows it and says, Oh, yeah, that's good, because he knows it, he he doesn't, he, he doesn't throw it out. He just says, Show me some proof, show me some evidence. And to me, I go, Wow, that that increases my respect of your opinion exponentially. Because most doctors I talk to when I bring my thoughts to, they just say, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:They don't, they don't what they mean when they say I don't know is I don't know and I don't care.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. There's no no place for further discussion. There's no nothing. And I go, Wow, okay, fair enough. I walk away. I'm not gonna, I can't force you to think like that. Dr. Song, this last time, it was a you know, had my regular infusion. I asked him a couple of questions, and afterward, oh, he asked me. Um, he went, he goes, he went through my whole chart from the very beginning, and he approaches the chart with problems. Problem number one, and problem number one was my giant tumor, and then he went to problem number two, problem number three, goes through all these problems. Over the time of the chemo treatment, I told him as things were going on, hey, I'm feeling some brain fog, I've got a little coldness in my feet, whatever the issue was. I just tell him about it, and he would either offer a suggestion or prescribe something or whatever he would do. This time he goes all the way back, he's looking through my blood work. He went through last January 12th, is the last time I was there. He went through the whole blood report, and he looked at you know, my iron levels and all the issues I was dealing with, the anemia, and asking me questions. And then he says, How's the brain fog? Like he goes back, how was the brain fog? And I said, It's getting a lot better. I I every day goes by, the chemo's leaving my body, I feel clearer. And he says, Okay, good, you know, but no, no other doctor I've ever dealt with has ever gone back to something that we talked about previously that was not critical to my survival or whatever the the problem of the moment was. I've never had a doctor come back and ask me about some little ancillary issue that was going by and and know that they actually care about it. This guy is one in a million, there's no question. Yeah, he is. Well, Robert, we have uh gone on a little bit long today, but it's been a great but another thing, Joe, just Danny was he asked you about the methionate.
SPEAKER_01:What about that enzyme?
SPEAKER_00:I know he did. He brought it up to me, and that was in the beginning of the conversation. And that was like usually the first thing goes, Ha, how are you doing? You know, any problems? Everything's good. Then he punches me with the with the needle. And this time he was like, What was that enzyme again? And and I was like, Oh, he's thinking about it. Well, you bring him your case report. I know exactly. I can't wait. Robert, as always, we have a fantastic conversation. Next week, I want to talk about your glutamine experiment, you bet. And um, you know, get into some of this stuff because we just have so many people making these claims, and they don't do the the work. And it's not just it's not just a bad premise, it's not just a a um wrong uh assumption, it's downright dangerous. And you're gonna explain to us how, and I think it's really worth listening to. If you can't find some good science that backs it up, stay away because you can hurt yourself, even if it's a natural thing, like avoiding uh an ingredient or or taking a supplement that blocks out an ingredient or something like that. It can be harmful. And when you have cancer, you cannot afford to harm your healthy body. And I'm just saying, take it from me. I I I've been there, done it, and I just want to help the people that are healthy and and the people that are fighting their their disease. All right, Robert. Well, I wish you the very best evening. Thank you, Joe. It was a pleasure as always. Absolutely. All right, folks. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumba, and I want to thank all of our listeners for making this show possible, and we will see you next week.
SPEAKER_01:Looking forward to it.
