Eating to Beat Cancer: What to Know | Dr. Urvi Shah
The Exam Room by the Physicians Committee
Physicians Committee
4.9 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if food could help you fight cancer? New research suggests that diet can play a role in improving outcomes for cancer patients, even slowing the progression of the disease. And Dr. Urvi Shah is leading the charge.
Dr. Shah was training to be an oncologist when she was diagnosed with cancer herself. This diagnosis sent her down a rabbit hole of cancer diet research, and today she's contributed to six dietary trials examining whether and how nutrition can play a role in improving outcomes for cancer patients.
In this episode of The Exam Room Dr. Shah and Chuck Carroll discuss:
- How diet could improve outcomes for cancer patients
- The best foods for cancer patients
- The role your gut health plays in recovery
- How to join a cancer diet trial
Dr. Shah's research can be found here: https://bit.ly/DrUrviShahResearch
Information on cancer clinical trials can be found here: https://bit.ly/ClinicalTrialsDrShah
If you feel like you’ve raised your health IQ, please leave a 5-star rating and nice review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Today on the exam room. |
| 0:04.0 | In cancer, what we know about the gut microbiome is that higher diversity, so more variety, |
| 0:12.0 | like think about a rainforest compared to a plantation, is associated with better response, |
| 0:18.0 | better progression-free survival and overall survival in cancer. |
| 0:22.6 | So is it possible that this could be modifiable with diet to improve diversity? |
| 0:28.6 | What we showed in our study is that we were actually able to improve diversity from baseline to 12 weeks, |
| 0:35.6 | but what's better was this was even sustained one year out. The changes |
| 0:39.7 | that they made have helped maintain diversity long term. |
| 0:45.9 | Welcome to the exam room podcast, brought to you by the Physicians Committee. Hi, I'm the champion |
| 0:51.1 | Chuck Carroll, raising health IQs coast to coast and around the world. |
| 0:55.6 | Hi to the exam room, he's listening in Chesapeake, Virginia, Modesto, California, and San Jose, Costa Rica. |
| 1:02.9 | Wherever you are, we appreciate you, helping to make the world a healthier place. |
| 1:07.2 | This is episode 77 of season 8, number 676 overall. |
| 1:12.6 | And today we are going to be diving into a very powerful and hopeful conversation, |
| 1:18.6 | one that has to do with cancer and your diet. |
| 1:22.6 | How does what we eat influence whether cancer progresses or even responds to treatment or shows up in the |
| 1:29.3 | first place. Well, joining me to talk about all of that is Dr. Irvi Shaw from Memorial Sloan |
| 1:35.2 | Kettering Cancer Center. And not only is she a leading researcher, but Dr. Shaw is also a cancer |
| 1:41.9 | survivor. Her personal journey actually inspired her to launch multiple |
| 1:47.0 | clinical trials that explore the impact of a high fiber plant-based diet on cancer prevention |
| 1:53.9 | and survivorship. So we're going to be talking about how making simple dietary changes can actually |
| 2:00.6 | improve insulin resistance, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Physicians Committee, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Physicians Committee and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.