Maria Menounos is opening up about how her podcast “Heal Squad” helped her heal during her health struggles.
The television personality exclusively sat down with Access Hollywood’s Kit Hoover at her new home studio and broke down all of her recent health battles, including getting diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a brain tumor, and pancreatic cancer.
While chatting with Access, she admitted applying skills she learned on her “Heal Squad” show helped her cope.
“I used a lot of the tools that I learned here, which was choose wonder over worry,” she said. “When I started to apply it, it started working. Once I started applying a lot of these techniques, things started getting easier to handle and things started just happening in the way I was wondering rather than worrying.”
Not only did her show help her cope with her health struggles, but it also saved her.
“This show has saved my life,” she said. “People before me were telling me that it was saving or changing their life through the comments but now it’s saved mine.”
While the television personality is currently cancer free, she broke down her cancer diagnosis while talking to Access.
“I had been trying to figure out the source of some weird pains and throbbing and feelings I was having,” she said. “It never made sense to me that I was diagnosed with Diabetes either. At 43 years old, someone who had cut sugar for two years and was eating so well and doing all the right things. That didn’t make sense to me.”
But after having several abdominal pains she went to the hospital to get it all checked out again.
Maria Menounos Through The Years
View Gallery“I went to the hospital, and they did a CT scan. They literally list all the organs: spleen unremarkable, pancreas unremarkable, stomach unremarkable, but when we look back this pancreas was not unremarkable. The pancreas had a two-centimeter mass on it.”
Two months after that doctor’s visit, the tumor doubled in size. A friend told her to get a Prenuvo test and after undergoing the proactive whole-body MRI screening and talking to her doctor, it was confirmed it was pancreatic cancer.
“I was in shock. I was numb, I was terrified. I was like this is a cruel joke, like how much more can I take,” she emotionally told Access.
The news came as Maria was expecting her first child via surrogate with her husband Keven Undergaro.
“The morning after they confirmed it at UCLA with the MRI, I was guttural crying,” she said. “Keven and I couldn’t get out of bed. I just kept looking at my mantel, I have all my church icons where I pray, and I was like how could you finally bless me with a baby and now I’m not going to get meet her. How is this possible?”
While talking to Access, Maria admitted she is still “wrapping her head around” her diagnosis.
“One of the things that was hard is I had to keep it quiet, and I had to get to the other side first. I didn’t want all of that energy coming in,” she said adding she also hid it from her surrogate. “I did. I was not going to let her be worried, she’s carrying my baby. I wasn’t going to let her worry if I was going to be there or not. So I just told her two days before the news broke.”
Thankfully, the 44-year-old is cancer free.
“When he told me I had clear pathology, I was like ‘Oh my God, thank you God.’”
New episode of Maria’s show “Heal Squad” come out Monday through Friday. You can watch or listen on her YouTube channel or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
-Emely Navarro