168: Yes To Life Show with Robin Daly MBE - Episode 168168: Yes To Life Show with Robin Daly MBE - Episode 168
UK Health Radio Podcast
Breast surgeon Dr Jay Harness talks with Robin Daly about decades of research showing exercise can significantly improve cancer outcomes. They discuss the science, the resistance within oncology, and how patients and advocates can help bring exercise into standard cancer care.
46:17•16 Apr 2026
“Exercise Is Literally Medicine”: Cancer Care, Movement and a Grassroots Push for Change
Episode Overview
- Moderate exercise from diagnosis through survivorship is linked with better cancer outcomes, including lower recurrence and higher survival.
- The CHALLENGE trial showed a structured exercise programme could outperform the known benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in colon cancer survival and recurrence.
- Guidelines suggest around 150 minutes a week of moderate activity plus resistance training twice weekly, adapted to the individual’s situation.
- Exercise triggers myokines and boosts immune cells, which may support both general health and the effectiveness of targeted cancer treatments.
- Change in oncology is slow, so informed patients and advocacy groups questioning their doctors about exercise can help push practice forward.
“We need to remember exercise is literally medicine.”
What drives someone to seek a life with better cancer care, not just more treatment? This conversation on the Yes to Life Show brings together veteran breast surgeon Dr Jay Harness and host Robin Daly to talk about one big, underused tool in cancer care: exercise. Aimed at people living with cancer, their families and anyone curious about integrative approaches, the chat blends hard science with plain language.
Dr Harness shares how, after decades in breast surgery and pioneering multidisciplinary breast centres, he was "thunderstruck" to realise there were 30 years of exercise-oncology research he’d never been taught. He outlines how around 3,000 clinical trials and 30,000 papers point in the same direction: moderate exercise can improve outcomes from diagnosis through treatment and long-term survivorship.
They spend time on the landmark CHALLENGE trial in colon cancer, where a structured exercise group showed a 37% improvement in survival and a 28% reduction in recurrence compared with usual care. As Robin points out, "if somebody stood up with a drug that did that… the whole place would fall over to get it." Yet, as both note, most oncologists still don’t routinely mention exercise at all.
You’ll hear about practical guidelines (like 150 minutes a week of moderate activity plus resistance work), but also the biology: myokines released by muscles, effects on the immune system, and how exercise may make new immunotherapies work better. There’s frank talk about why medicine changes so slowly, from professional silos to money and culture, and how pressure from patients and advocacy groups can speed things up.
For anyone feeling sidelined in their own care, this is a reminder that "exercise is literally medicine" and that asking your oncologist about it is part of that grassroots shift. It might leave you wondering: what would happen if every cancer patient was offered structured movement as standard?
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