So Your Oncologist Said “Remission”—Now What? with Dr. Robert Hoffman

A hard truth sits at the center of cancer care: remission isn’t the finish line. We open up about the maintenance mindset—how to manage cancer for the long haul—through a rare blend of lab insight, clinical pragmatism, and real-world patient experience. With Dr. Robert Hoffman, we unpack the “Hoffman effect,” the addiction of many tumors to methionine, and why that metabolic weakness changes how we scan, treat, and monitor disease.

We compare methionine PET with standard glucose PET and MRI, explaining when each tool shines and where they fall short. If you’ve ever stared at a scan report and wondered, “Is this alive or just a shadow?” this breakdown helps you ask sharper questions and make clearer decisions. From there, we move into action: pairing low-methionine nutrition with methioninase, chemo, and immunotherapy; using imaging to confirm metabolic activity; and shifting into a maintenance phase that keeps pressure on residual disease. Think of it as a stack—diet, drugs, data, and vigilance—working together to tip the odds.

You’ll also hear why a weekly patient-science community can feel like having five brilliant AIs on your side, only they’re people with skin in the game. We share how spirits rise and fall during treatment, why motivation matters, and which simple lifestyle rules travel well: avoid ultra-processed foods, choose lower-methionine staples, and use fasting windows wisely with medical guidance. The goal is not perfection—it’s momentum and honesty. No one gets told they’re “done” while risk remains. We keep learning, scanning, adjusting, and living.

If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs a plan beyond “watch and wait,” and leave a review to help others find the show. Then check the show notes and join our Sunday call to bring your questions and your story.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Sunday Zoom Community

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Well, hello, and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I have back with me today Dr. Robert Hoffman. Robert, welcome back. Thank you, Joe. Always glad to be on your podcast. I was thinking about it. Yeah. So I have a topic I want to get into today, but I wanted to also um tap into your research. You know, you're always doing research. And in fact, um the last meeting, you know, we have the four o'clock Zoom call on Sundays, and you know, it's always so informative. And I'm always trying to tell everybody how how important it is to come. And you know, every once in a while a new person comes in, but people just don't they don't get the the value of this thing. And you know, I say to myself, like, imagine if you had like five AIs working for you at the same time, only these were real life people that were sharing real life experiences. And like, who wouldn't want that? You know, but people just don't realize, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Yeah, I tell you, Joe, uh, I think our Zoom meeting is the most important for cancer patients in the whole world. They're not gonna get this from the their oncologist. Oh, they're they're getting the real life experiences of all the different cancer patients, um, and all and and the scientific way of trying to defeat their disease. And um this is doesn't exclude the oncologist at all. That we all have oncologists, but this group is so informative to each other about the science of getting better from cancer, from getting from beating cancer, from staying alive when you have cancer, from getting better. Um the the information that flows to one another, and it's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

It's literally the cutting edge of science.

Why Patient-Led Science Matters

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Like there is science for for combating your your disease, your cancer, getting making progress with it. And um, you're gonna learn a lot from your oncologists, but you're not gonna learn this stuff. Um and and so uh well, you know, we have everyone. It's everyone. And what do you got to lose? You know, it's it's two hours, you can spend a half hour and still get a lot out of it. Uh it's an inconvenient time for some parts of the world. Go take a nap, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah, we have people calling in that from from England, from Israel, from it's midnight for her, and she and she and I tell you, her hers, because of her coming on, her son is now stabilized as brain cancer.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

What can you say?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Exactly, exactly. Well here we are.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Everybody welcome. 4 p.m. Pacific time saying in in in here, it's seven o'clock east coast, it's uh midnight in England, it's 1 p.m. 1 a.m. in Europe, it's nine, it's uh 9 a.m. in Japan. That it's not that's not so bad.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

I don't know. Uh we're all all welcome, and I can almost guarantee we're gonna help anybody that comes on.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, absolutely. And the link is in the show notes of this podcast and every other podcast. So when when you go on to this, you look in the show notes, the link is right there, and you're welcome to hop on. You don't have to share anything. You can be anonymous, you can you can share as much or as little as you like. You can just sit there and listen if you want. You bet. So the thing that I I really uh is so inspiring is that you know, we've got some brilliant minds, you know. We've got you, we've got Dr. Exame, Dr. Fox, we've got all these different, you know, scientists and doctors that are Dr.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Eczeme and Dr. Fox, they're doctors who have cancer. Yes. And they're they're gonna hone their mind, their own mind on their own disease more than any other oncologist will hone their mind on somebody else's disease. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Share everything, just like the open book. It's like it's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

We we get new information from them, but we also get new information from every one of the other patients, their experience, this worked, this doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

I and the thing is is that every one of these guys has in common is a a burning desire to stay alive, and every we all that's exactly right, you know, and if you got that, then you got a chance, you know, and I've been a good chance, yeah. Yeah, and that's and I think if you don't have that, the people who focus are the ones who get better, exactly. It it's almost without exception, it's it's so true, and and even when like we've had we've had people that have been on there fighting for a long time, something goes wrong, you can tell if they lose their spirit, all of a sudden they they do a tailspin and they get their spirit back up, and all of a sudden they're back fighting again. And it's just it's it's that important. So that that was one of the things I wanted to share. The the but one of the things that that comes up is we're always looking at at research, we're always looking at papers. I'm always finding some article or another, sharing it with you, or looking for the science. Sometimes you go, oh, we've been working on that for 20 years, you know, and then I just heard about it for the first time. Other times, we don't know the science isn't developed yet, but in PubMed, where we consider to be kind of a good great clearinghouse for information and published work, only 42 million scientific publications.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Abstracts are totally free for everyone, and and in a very big percentage of them, the whole paper is free.

PubMed, Papers, And The Hoffman Effect

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Absolutely. And I I realized in going back and forth, how many published papers you're part of. And it's a huge amount. I mean, you know, literally, I think there's like when I the one time I typed in your nut your name, I think almost a thousand papers came up. And and it may be more than that. But it does the point is when I was looking through one of them, they were describing the Hoffman effect. And I thought to myself, well, this guy that I'm friends with, we're we're we're like family. We're we're we talk all the time, we go see each other, we care about each other as human beings, and this guy has been doing this work so long that they're they've named a uh a biological process after him. Why don't you explain what this Hoffman effect is?

Methionine Addiction Explained

Challenging The Warburg Dogma

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Well, I'll just give a little history, Joe. Um, I go back a long time. I started doing science, if you can imagine, in 1965, 61 years ago. And uh I I did I did my PhD work on a of all things on a fungus, and I found this a mutant fungus that was uh uh addicted to oxygen. It used up so much oxygen yet it couldn't form a normal organism. It was it was emaciated, if I could call it that way. It was just going through a huge amount of oxygen that would for any normal organism would help it thrive and grow. It was addicted to oxygen. So, okay, that was a corner of the scientific world that nobody cared too much about. Uh and then I decided after I finished that work, I wanted to go directly into cancer research, and so I was given a project to do to study the metabolism of this amino acid called methionine, and um it was very boring, and um then a paper came out uh that I saw in 1974. Um first author, Helper, and I think it was the husband and wife team, they said, Oh, cancer cells can grow on uh cannot grow without methion without an external source of methionine, and normal cells can. I said, Oh, this is getting interesting, and their conclusion was, oh, the cancer cells can't make methionine, and it was kind of semi-trivial. So I started to study it, and I remembered this study that I did for my PhD where this emaciated organism, you looked at it and you said, Well, it can probably hardly metabolize, but it was metabolizing like crazy, but it couldn't make a normal organism, just emaciated. And then I started to see these cancer cells uh were making a lot of methionine from their precursor called homocysteine, tons of it. But you had to add methionine to the culture medium to make them grow, unlike the normal cells. You didn't have to add any methionine to them. They they thrived on the methionine they made, but the cancer cells made as much, if not more. What the heck is this? Wow, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a secret. It took this work was completed 50 years ago, this initial work, published in, if you can imagine, in May 1976. In a couple of months, it'll be 50 years since that paper came out in the proceedings of the National Academy of Canada of Sciences, showing the cancer cells making tons of methionine, yet you still had to give it to them. It took another 24 plus 19. That's what 30 uh 24 and 19. That's 43 years. Another 43 years, and these guys published a paper uh uh from the from Singapore. They publish a paper in this very prestigious journal, Nature Medicine, and they said, Oh, the stem cells or tumor initiating cells, they call them. They they claim special cells in the cancer that can are tumor initiators. There may be such a thing. There's a lot of arguments that this is so, and so they had these cells that they were identifying as tumor initiating cells or stem cells, and they said, Oh, they're addicted to methionine. And I said, Holy moly, as Batman used to say that's what I found at that time 43 years before. Right, they're addicted. Oh my god, that's the Hoffman effect. Got it, and so the analogy to the Hoffman effect is the Warberg effect, W-A-R-B-U-R-G. This guy from Germany who has a very, very complicated history, claimed cancer cells were addicted to glucose. Right. Well, we're about to publish a paper that shows after 100 years, he's wrong. And yet most doctors today say normal cells are addicted to glucose, too. Right. So here we are. Um, are people gonna believe me? Some will, a lot won't. The big establishment, big shot guys with uh all of them millionaires from their all their consulting and companies and and high profile professorships. Uh, they're all against me. Um, and and that kind of kind of makes me happy, actually. Um uh always kind of like to be that that way. Um brat in school, so I'm now the brat of science. It's it's good. Um, so anyway, that's the Hoffman effect. And it took these guys from Singapore to turn on my light. That's what it is, it's addiction to methionine. Why I didn't say that, why I didn't come up with that word, right? So there it is. It's the addiction of cancer cells to methionine, that's the Hoffman effect, and we're just about to show that Varberg, Nobel Prize winner, and a guy who was so enamored for his cancer research that Hitler made a Jewish guy made him an honorary Arian. I don't think that's the proudest thing in this guy's life. No, I wouldn't imagine that's what happened. Certainly remarkable, yeah. Um uh he he was left alone the whole time of the war and the Holocaust. He was left alone to do his research um because not only the Germans, but everybody else in the world thought this was the cure of cancer, right? And um, and it kind of laid fallow for a while. Then in this century, all the famous institutions at Harvard, Sloan Kettering, etc., got into it. They wanted to be uh basking in the light of Varberg, but they they just missed out, they didn't do simple little tiny experiments that a high school kid would have said, well, compare the cancer cells to the normal cells directly. Exactly. School science. So we've been doing some high school science the last few years comparing all the things that are supposed to be uh specific to cancer that Warburg and and uh and the people who follow him say, but it turns out the normal cells are pretty much the same. Okay, that's where we are, Joe. Um and so you know, we we keep trying to go forward, take advantage of methionine addiction. Um we have an enzyme that depletes methionine, we have a great diet that's low in methionine. But we know we have it for aggressive cancer, we've got to combine it with good chemo. And we're doing that. We haven't perfected it, not not far from it, but we've had some pretty good results. Uh yes, we have clinical claims, but I say we have we have 15 published case reports adding methionine restriction with methioninase in the diet to chemo mostly. And I say go read the papers. It's it's certainly worth reviewing. So um that's what that's all about. Um, you know, um I I guess maybe that's my award in life. Uh and it's that naming. Um I don't have any money, I don't have any prizes, um, I'm not invited anywhere. It's all okay with me. Um after I'm long gone, maybe that name will that effect will prove to be right over the next millennia or whatever. Um that's enough for me. Um, so that's where we are.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

All right. Well, I'm I'm certainly glad you discovered that because I I the way I see it, it's been instrumental in uh me being alive today. So I uh I'm awful happy about that.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

When I worked on this very strange fungus, and I saw this addiction to oxygen, and I it it kind of motivated me to keep showing that these cancer cells that required methionine were making tons of it. Yeah, reflects something so fundamental to the cancer.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

When you culture these cancer cells under very strict methionine restriction, once in a while a cell escapes from that, they become methionine independent. Okay, what they either lose their malignancy or they lose a lot of it, so that shows this methionine addiction and the malignancy are very tight with each other.

unknown 18:53

Right.

Turning Discovery Into Treatment

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Is reflected in its addiction to methionine, and we're still trying to figure out what that is. I don't think we're quite smart enough to get all the way there, but we're little by little we're we're trying to uncover what it is to malignancy itself, right? Related to the addiction of the malignant cells to methione.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Well, I I I'm confident that you're on the right road, and and you know, you just keep looking under different rocks and doing the experiments, and it's it's gonna start to it's gonna start to to reveal itself.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yeah. Now that well, years old, Joe. So I I I keep I ask whoever's up in the sky controlling the universe. Uh, please give me some more time. I need it.

Remission, Recurrence, And Reality

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Absolutely. I I I'm right there with you. I'll I'll I'll throw those words out too. I think we we need you around for a good long while. I uh yeah, you bet. Well, so this is what I wanted to get into. I'm getting ready to go to Japan to get a a scan done, and there's a lot of different ways. Like when somebody has cancer, it gets identified oftentimes that there are um markers, blood markers that can be tested for that can indicate the either the presence of or the growth of or the you know the progress or or or lack of progress. Um and and some cancers don't have that so much. Um in my case with the squamous cell carcinoma that's HPV driven, they had a blood test that they did to test for the presence of the HPV virus, and initially, you know, it was really high, it was in there, and then after the chemo, they tested again and it was gone. But that didn't tell you that the cancer was gone. And they have a lot of different blood tests, they have the a squamous cell antigen test that can tell you some things, but it none of these things are are um they're not a definite determining factor that says you have or don't have cancer. You can know that you have it by doing a biopsy or or seeing it being there or watching it grow, but you can't necessarily tell that you don't have it because most of the scans or all the scans can only detect cancer when it's grown to a certain size, right? I mean, there's there's limitations to every tool we have. Including the one that you're gonna get in Japan. Exactly. And I I I want to talk about that tool, but I also want you to kind of explain to the listeners what happens when cancer cells get left alone after there's been a treatment. So, for example, many people Get diagnosed with cancer, they go and they find out they've got a breast cancer, they got prostate cancer, they got lymphoma, whatever it is, squamous cell carcinoma, they go through a treatment. Maybe it's a standard of care, maybe it's a combination of things like we're doing. Then they say, Well, you're in remission. That's kind of their turn that says, Well, your cancer is going away. But it it it they never say you're cured. Like I've never heard a doctor say you're cured, you don't have cancer anymore. They say you're in remission, it's it's stabilized, it's under control, it's undetectable. There's all these terms they have, but they'll never tell you you don't have cancer anymore. Is that right? Uh they shouldn't. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you get rid of a tumor, you get rid of maybe you could maybe you surgically remove it, maybe you radiate it, maybe you immunotherapy, chemotherapy, all the different treatments. Now it's it's gone to the point where you can't see it anymore. But we know that there are circulating tumor cells, and we know that your body knows how to make that cancer. So whatever triggered it to begin mutating and and growing the way it did, that propensity somehow is always gonna be with you. Is that right? That's right.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

So and you put it a very good way, your body knows how to make that cancer, that exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

And and it's never gonna forget.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

And and I wish I wish we could use it, very good way to put it.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah, I wish we could give it some forgetting juice, but we we don't seem to know that one. And the problem is though, is cancer is very capable in the sense of it's it's not all that brilliant in in what it makes. It makes these weird, inefficient tumors that do all kinds of weird stuff, but it's really good at growing and it's really good at spreading, and it's really good at adapting. So, whatever it is we use to knock it out, if it comes back, why don't you explain kind of what generally happens if it if it was to come back? And many times it does. I don't have all the answers, far from it.

What A Methionine PET Can Reveal

SPEAKER_01 25:26

But it's one heck of a feat to get rid of all the cancer. How do you get rid of all the cancer cells? Wow. So even the best test, and I think you're gonna go to Japan and get the best test, still probably won't see it. That's a heck of a lot of cells in one or two millimeters or a million, whatever. So uh you're going to get a test in Japan called methionine pet. It's based on methionine addiction. Uh, if there's anything other if there's a growing tumor beyond a millimeter or two, it's gonna tell you this is cancer. The the the resolution of MRI maybe is around the same or CT around the same, but it'll show some piece of something there, but it won't tell you if it's live and metabolizing as methionine pet will, because almost all cancers are addicted to methionine. They're going to take up the radioactive methionine that's going to be injected in you and give a signal. Uh the standard PET, which you got too, is is good. It it's based on Varberg's effect of cancer is taking up more glucose than the surrounding tissue, and that's you know, a little bit that goes on there. So there's a little bit of difference in that signal between the cancer and the normal cell with regard to taking up radioactive glucose or an analog of it. So you're gonna get something uh where um if there's a signal, you've got cancer. And you're gonna have to go back to Dr. Song and say, Dr. Song. We gotta go through the next stage now. Exactly. If you're negative, you've gotta go back to Dr. Song and say, Well, I'm negative by med pet. I'm negative by standard pet. But I still wanna ha ha I still wanna be under observation under some kind of treatment if possible to keep this damn thing from growing back. This is the this is what maybe a lot of people don't can't really put in their mind that even when it they think it's all gone, it's not all gone, and it can come back. Now the body, as you said, knows how to make this cancer. Oh boy, it knows, and as you said, it doesn't forget how to make it. But the body also has an immune system, and perhaps if the number of cancer cells is under a certain amount, the immune system can control it from coming back.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Um they're making a lot of progress with immunotherapy and and exactly I'm going through that right now with the key with the Q truda. So yeah, which I surely think is good.

Maintenance Mindset And Vigilance

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Yeah. So that's where we are. No cancer patient, in my opinion, in this year 2026, where where we stand now is cured. Not cured. I I think that they've won a heck of a lot of the battles and they got a great chance of going forward. Some of these cancers are so tricky, they hide like some of the breast cancers can hide out 25 years or more and come back. It's so weird. Um but that's not limited to breast cancer. No, and especially when you've been on a therapy for a very long time, it gives a chance for the cancer cells that are resistant to that therapy to finally take over. Exactly. They've been fighting for years to take over, and finally they make and the chance of a cancer that has resisted this therapy, this tremendously strong therapy that's killed off 99.9999, whatever percent of the cancer comes back, often they're not only resistant to the drug, but they're more malignant.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

And then there's some of the doctors they talk about active surveillance. Well, they say, you know, that's for some instead of treatment. But we need to use that for after the treatment. We've got to be diligent, vigilant, you name it, forever.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Agreed. I think that was really my point. Is you know, my hope is that, and I and I'm pretty confident that we're gonna find this out, is that uh in Japan, this MetPet's gonna show that I I don't have anything that it can recognize. And that puts me into the next phase of my treatment, which I'm calling the maintenance phase. And and what we're doing is we're managing the cancer cells, making sure they don't get out of control. You know, we all have problems, we all have disease in our body, we all have cells that aren't doing what they're supposed to, and as we get older, we get more of that, we get all kinds of things going off. But that doesn't mean that, like you say, the immune system can't keep it in check, can't keep it from from growing to a point where it causes a problem. People live with cancers for 20, 30 years and don't die from cancer. Yeah, the something else gets you, the pneumonia or whatever else, 97, and yeah, you see that some of that cancer, but by 97, something else got you. Yeah, um, that's where we all want to be. Exactly, and so that's that's really my my message today is that for all of you who have had cancer and believe that maybe your oncologist says, Okay, you're done. And I and I've heard that, you know, we're done. As far as they're concerned, you're done. Yeah, and there's no no more further action, or we don't have anything more for you.

Diet, Fasting, And Longevity

SPEAKER_01 32:49

We we check you let's say you've been on methionine restriction. Well, some people say, How long we're gonna stay on methionine restriction? Well, I hate I don't I I'm reticent to say what I think, which is the rest of your life of your life, exactly. Say, well, it's a healthy lifestyle, exactly. So, I mean, that's one thing I would recommend to every cancer patient. Never, ever go off methionine restriction.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Agreed. And you know, I look at it this way you know, when I when I it may not be sufficient, you're right, exactly. And it we just know that it helps a lot, it helps it helps keep whatever cancer cells you have weakened, and even if maybe they become resistant or they they overcome that, it still doesn't help them, and it it slows them down no matter what. And even if that's the only thing you did, it it it's helpful. But being vigilant, you know, it it adds on to the message we've had about being your own advocate, about you know, having the drive to live, all of those things are layered on top of each other. And I think this is a layer that's really important. And I'm looking at it, you know, it's crazy. It's only been a year ago today, I had a giant tumor sticking out of my neck. I hadn't begun treatment, I was in pain, I couldn't sleep, I was miserable, and I was gonna die if I didn't do something about it. And we were working together, we were working on finding answers, and and ultimately we came up with an answer. But I've only been off of the chemo for a few months now, and I'm chuta, thank God. Yes, yes, but I'm just starting to to recover. But the anemia is almost gone, um, my brain fog's going away, all the the the lingering side effects of the chemo are diminishing. And you know what I find is really strange, and it's it it's actually making it a little difficult, is I almost don't remember the suffering. I think I'm with almost everybody. And it would be easy to think I'm good and and not think about it anymore. And I have to, you know, remind myself multiple times a day, you know, you're you're you're you're still in this. You you've got, you know, yeah, this is your life now. And and I've made I've made a couple of of decisions that, you know, when I get when I get the determination that I'm clear, I'm gonna I'm gonna take a day now and again and and have a have a meat diet, I mean a meat meal, and I'll fast for a few days afterward and get back on my on my thing. You know, and once in a great while I I I'm I'm I'm not gonna be, you know, a miserable slave, but at the same time, my lifestyle is this diet. I mean, this is what I live on. And um I I may end up losing my taste for it, you know, at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

But I know because it's so great of variety, there's so many delicious things that are lower than exactly.

Processed Foods And Risk

Motivation, Evolution, And Showing Up

SPEAKER_00 36:19

And and that's it, you know, the rest of it is you know, fasting and this diet is is just so critical to the maintenance and and what do you mean? Yeah, and and it's a long, it's a longevity fountain of youth. It is, it it absolutely is. You know, I have people everywhere, people that have known me for years before I developed this growth on my neck, and I have people tell me that I look younger than I did five years ago. Yeah, and I I am confident that the diet that I'm on has uh which is very, you know, it's really part of the diet. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm I'm I'm I really just it's it's a difficult process, a difficult diet, and yet I wouldn't trade it for anything. I I I would never consider um disconnecting from that that lifestyle. It's not really a diet anymore, Joe. It's a lifestyle, it's a lifestyle, it's absolutely a lifestyle. You know, and and uh you know, as much as I looked at labels before, I look at them even more now. And and uh, you know, I mean and we get creative, we're always looking, we're always finding new new ways to make things, you know, and um you know, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and and there's there's there's infinite there's things that we can do so much with in place of you know the meat and fish and the dairy and all the stuff that we you know have which is really our natural food. Exactly. And and and that's really as important. I think, you know, for me, um, I don't eat processed food at all. Um, I don't I've I don't eat it, I haven't eaten any kind of fast food in probably two years now. And and um, you know, it's just you you don't know what it is, and I I think most of the time it's not even food. It's it's it's got you know carcinogenic things. And and you know, you look as the science is developing, even things like um um processed meat is considered uh a what is it a class A carcinogen? I mean it's a it's who the heck needs it. It's an it's a known cause of cancer. And and if you're eating the the you know the meat sticks and the the sausages and all the stuff that tastes so darn good, but you know what it does to you, why would you do it? You know, why would you do it? Good, yeah, exactly. Well, Robert, I really think that um this has been an important conversation. I appreciate um and and and respect your understanding of cancer in ways that man many people don't. And you know, you've been working with a lot of people for a lot of years and working in the lab for a lot of years, and you just you're you have an understanding of how these cells work in a way that I don't know, a lot of people, including a lot of doctors, a lot of oncologists, don't. And I I really uh value your opinion and your thoughts about all this. I'm here to share, um, and I'm here to learn. Exactly, exactly. And I I think that's a beautiful thing. That's what this podcast is all um about. This, you know, people come to me and say, Oh, you're so inspiring, you're so this, you're so that. I go, I'm just alive and I'm happy to be that way.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

And and you know, Joe, you're you're you're the living proof of what you're talking about, exactly, exactly. More sincere about cancer than a cancer patient.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Nobody, exactly, exactly, and that's why you know it it kind of breaks my heart when people come to me and I tell them about what they need to do, and I know you can tell in the tone of somebody's voice when they're just not willing to do it, and I think to myself, wow, I I tell you, sometimes I tell my students a kind of silly analogy.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

I said, Well, think about that monkey 50 million years ago try to walk on his back on his hind legs, right? And all the other monkeys said, Get down on all fours like the rest of us, you idiot. Exactly. It's something like that. Yeah, um, not everybody can contemplate, can agree to do something that they've never even thought about before. Right. It's just taking themselves into an alternate universe that's so strange they can't get in it. I get it, and that's all part of evolution. Um they can't do it, they can't do it, and um I understand it. We're here, we're opening ourselves compl widely to everybody. Um, and I'm not thinking about the people who don't come, I'm thinking about the people who come in, and exactly um um those are the folks I want to work with.

Closing Thoughts And Sunday Invite

SPEAKER_00 42:07

I a hundred percent. Well Robert, thank you for all the work you do, and and thank you all for the inspiration to lots and lots and lots of people, and we're making progress. Exactly. All right, folks, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grombine. I want to thank you all for making the show possible, and thank you, Robert, for joining us again. And we will see you anytime. Anytime. Yes, we all we'll see you all next time. All right, and we'll hopefully see a lot of you on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it. All right, take care.