TV Personality, actress, and activist Maria Menounos has braved her own health battles while caring for her mother and father.She faced a brain tumor, a pancreatic tumor, and the loss of her parents but never gave up. In this episode she talks about the treatments she tried, the role spirituality plays, and why it's so important to tune into what your body is trying to tell you.
This is let's be clear with Shannon Dorny. Hey, let's be clear, family. I'm Mariama Nunos, your guest host here today. I am really excited to be with you guys today. First, I'm just gonna ask God for a little guidance today so I can be as useful as possible and as helpful as possible to all of you, because that is my goal today. I've gone through a lot of stuff health wise in the last seven years along with my mom and previously my entire life with my dad as a Type one diabetics, so I think that there's a lot of stuff that I can probably share that could be helpful. I also host my own health and wellness podcast called Heel Squad that has been a wonderful training ground for me because I have experts from all over the world coming in sharing their insights, sharing their her incredible wisdom and information, and it's you know, saved my life on many occasions, along with my moms and so many others. So hopefully I can do Shannon proud today and all of you proud. I literally cannot believe that I'm on this show right now without Shannon, and that she is no longer with us in the physical I watched her growing up on nine oh two and oh and of course that was my favorite show at the time, and it's just a crazy world, you know. One day we're here, one day we're not. I remember she was getting treatments with my mom's radiologist, doctor Murhatti, and I was just praying for her. But you know, God has a plan for all of us, and obviously this was his plan. So I am happy to be with you guys today. I think first I'll kind of give you a little background on what's gone on with me, so you understand some of the things that I'm going to share with you that will hopefully help you in your healing journeys, because I know a lot of you are on that journey. First, I grew up with my Type one diabetic dad. My parents were immigrants from Greece, and my mom and dad had a lot of jobs, but cleaning nightclubs was the biggest one because they didn't speak the language and it was just the easiest thing that they could do, and they couldn't afford babysitters. So my brother and I used to go and from the time we could hold them up or a broom, we would be working with them and helping to get done, because the faster we would get done, the faster we could go to the next place in the next place, and then that meant the faster we could get home, or the faster we could get to my cousin's house to actually enjoy life. But throughout the process, because my dad did such manual labor, and because of the language barrier, and because of the financial situation and the times at the time, type one diabetes was a lot more life and death. Thirty years ago, there was no CGM monitors, there were no pumps, there were none of that. So my dad, with the manual labor, his blood suggers would drop on the regular NonStop, and if he wasn't with us and didn't show up at home at the time we expected him, my mom would start to fret and start calling hospitals looking for him. She'd call police stations because sometimes when he would have a diabetic episode, people wouldn't be able to interpret that it was that. They would think he was just this wild man who was maybe drunk. So we grew up in a lot of fight or flight. My mom and I really grew up learning how to be in tune. We're both very intuitive. Whether that was cultivated by need or granted by God, I don't know. But we learned learned to be so in touch with him that we knew, whether we were three thousand miles away from him or twenty miles away, that he wasn't okay. It was just how do we find him and then how do we revive him? So I remember one time I was in school and I just felt the tug in my heart and I knew he wasn't okay. I ran home and I found him collapsed in the bathroom and had to bring him back. And that just was a normal thing. We knew the firefighters by first name, and the ambulance burgers. They were always at our house. And you know, it's no coincidence now, knowing what I know, that my mom got a thyroid condition, it's no coincidence that I later got hashimotos. And you know, my parents, you know, ate very healthy, we very healthy, but she did get a thyroid condition, and my dad was Type one diabetic, and you know, those were all these things in the back of my head. But once my career started taking off, I started eating fast food, and you know, working eighteen hour days, seven days a week, and career, career, career and success, success, success, and make money, and all of that kind of took front seat. And you know, I always say, that's kind of how we're trained. We're trained from a young age to get good grades, succeed, go to a great college, succeed, make a lot of money, and then sometimes after that it's like marriage and kids and then health not a peep. No one teaches us how to be healthy. No one teaches us the foundational kind of rules of health that were set out by nature and by God. And so it's it's challenging in this climate to even understand health until it happens to you. And I always say it's only a matter of time. No one really evades the health thing. There's always going to be something. Now what that something's going to be is the question. So in twenty sixteen, my mom that whole year wasn't feeling well. Something was wrong, we didn't know what it was, and she was finally diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in September twenty sixteen. It was called leoblastoma Dudley's cancer, stage four brain cancer shook our whole family, but I was determined to keep her alive. So I threw the ferocity that I had put behind my career into her. And at the same time, I had to make sure I maintained all of my jobs in an even higher level so no one thought I was slipping. So, whether it was e news or serious excem, I was overperforming to make sure that they didn't think that I was not focused. And so I started having symptoms myself. My head's my head was exploding. I was needing multiple coffees to get through the day. I started learning my speech, and then I got this ear pain in my right ear. The finally sent me to the doctor because I thought I must have an ear infection. This is crazy. Thirty eight or whatever. I was thirty eight or thirty nine, and when I went, mind you, this is months after, He's like, you don't have an ear infection. What else are you feeling? So I told him the symptoms that I just laid out to you guys, and he said, I don't think this is oh oh. So I said, uh, I'm feeling you know, headaches, this not the other thing. And I go, oh my god, and he goes what I go. I think I have a brain tumor like my mom. Where that came from, I have no idea, but flash forward to get an MRI and I too have a brain tumor. Months later, I'm having brain surgery at Cedar SINAI, the same room as my mom, by the same doctor, the brilliant doctor Keith Black. Mine was benign and it was a long surgery. It was long, I don't know, at least six and a half hours, and luckily I got through that, and then the rest of the health crises kind of followed after. So two years ago, I was feeling some stuff. I was bloated and not feeling right my stomach, and I kept searching for answers. Now at this point, I've been hosting my own podcast, Heel Squad for a couple of years because when my mom was diagnosed, I wanted to find answers, and then I needed answers, So I started bringing in all these healers and practitioners and people with other thoughts and modalities to help us. And so, you know, my mom because of all of this, I say so first as God. Second was her amazing outlook and positivity. Third was all the alternative things that we did to counter the effects of the treatments on the western side. So I love Eastmeats West. I think that it's too scary to not do the West, and so I mean, I'm learning more and more and more now, but at the time, I was like, we're going to do East meats West, and I know that a body that's ravaged by cancer is already so weak. So my spidey sense said, well, wouldn't you want to counter the negative effects of that with some optimization of the immune system. So I researched this facility in Mexico called Baja Medgate run by Jennifer Mealy who got cancer taking care of her mom with cancer, so she knew that the caretaker needed as much attention as the patient. And my mom went down there and we did two weeks of you know, whether it was high dose vitamin sea drips, clean food while she was there, and coffee and IMA's and they did this whole protocol. All of that really helped her a lot with the chemo fog as well. And we did the ketogenic diet. They kind of laughed at me when I proposed it, and my mom we did a modified ketodiet because I didn't like the idea of a long term, high fat content diet and I wanted my mom to live long term. So I said, Mom, listen, we're going to cut sugar, but you can have cream and cheeses and you know all the fat you want bacon, And so we did that and we did some supplements. I have her whole journey on my show, and if you go into heal squad dot com, you can look up the different health journeys and find all of those interviews I did back twenty sixteen through twenty twenty before she passed. If you guys want more information, that doctor MURHATI funny enough. Going back to Shannon, he pulled me aside once and he said, I one hundred percent believe that your mom's success is due to what you guys have been doing in Mexico, because my mom went back again. And so that made me feel really, really good, and I knew it was helpful. So my mom eventually got COVID, and while she was in the hospital with COVID, I knew mentally I could lose her. So I had an idea where nobody was allowed to visit. As you know, at the time in hospitals. I put her phone on a little phone stand my husband made with a magnet before war, making them, and I gave it to the hospital. I said, plug the sin and let's keep her on FaceTime with me so I can keep talking to her. So what happened was I was able to see that people weren't going to see her. Doctors weren't going to see her. Only nurses. And two days after she was admitted with COVID and was very serious. I said, oh, she's responsive now, and we're you know, what do they say, not dismissing her, but releasing her? And I said, wait, you're releasing a COVID patient with stage four brain cancer. To me, what am I supposed to do? I don't know how to do this. I can't even go into her room to help her. No, No, she's responsive now. I'm like, that's funny because I've never seen her be responsive. I said, and I've never met you, And she's like, excuse me. I go, well, I've been on twenty four hour FaceTime with her. She's been in the shower with me, she's been in the car with me, she's been in bed with me. I've never left her side and I've never met you, and the doctor was in shock. I said, I've met the nurses, I know them all by name, I don't know you. And so at that moment I knew I had to get her out of there. So I transferred her to Cedar Sinai and at that point she was in great hands, great care, and I continued to sing to her, to talk to her. Sometimes it would take hours, guys, to get her to respond back. But my whole goal was keep her brain fresh. And eventually she was discharged to me in LA and we got a brain scan and we saw that in the time she had COVID. Yes, we got her out. She survived COVID. The brain tumor without the treatment's quadrupled in size. And this was it. So a new friend I just met, I'm incidentally at lunch with him, and I said, yeah, I got a research into some kind of flight to get my mom back because she's bedridden and I need to get her home so she can have safe passage with her family. And he was like, well, why don't you just take my plane me And while guys, I had no idea he even had a plane. This is just God, and I go what and go I can't do that. So then later the next that next day, my friend calls me. She's like, are you going to do it? Are you going to take him up on it? And I go, no, I can't do that. Are you crazy? I don't even know him, like I just did his podcast once and she's like, Marie, he's serious. His name is Edma led Guys, he's a wonderful person. And he gave me his plane and I flew my mom home safely. And that was January, oh gosh, twenty twenty one, and I learned so much in the caretaking journey because I think it was later that month her primary care physician out here was like she came to visit her and she loved her, so she was, you know, I think just kind of jumping into conclusion. She's like, your mother is an organ failure, multiple organ failure. She's dying. Let her die. Just let her die. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa? Who do you think you are telling me to let her die? I'm not in charge here, God's in charge. I'm going to do everything I can and make her journey comfortable and heal whatever I can heal in the interim. If she's got anything going on, I'm fixing it, and then God will take her when it's time. So I had to. I was like, you know, why don't we just get some evidence of this. Let's get some blood work. By the way, he learned a lot about hospice. They apparently get budgets and whatever they don't spend they get to keep, so they didn't want to spend on getting blood work done from my mom. I'm grateful that I was able to do it on my own. And what did it reveal. Oh, my mom's blood was like a twenty five healthy year old person, So I guess she wasn't a multiple organ failure and I wasn't gonna morpho out. So it was a long journey and I just kept saying to everybody, we don't know how this is going to end. We don't know if God's going to give her a miracle and she's going to walk out. I'm going to keep on keeping on with her everything that I can. It was hard, it was long, and I learned a lot of things like, oh my gosh, if you have anybody in hospice listened to my episodes on that because there's a company called Purewic for women. It's an external female catheter that was life saving because the problem when you have someone in bed is bed sores, and so the ear mattresses will only do so much if you're wedding diapers and not changing them fast enough. So this was a game changer. But there's so many other things that I learned along the way too that I've shared there. So I just kept saying, Mom, you're a miracle, and you've been a miracle. My mom lived five years with stage four brain cancer, and I just think at the end of the day, I just kept saying, I want to believe in possibility, and I've led my life like that. I'd rather believe in possibility than subscribe to any diagnosis statistics or any Google and interpretation or even doctor's interpretations. I want to believe in possibility because I know miracles happen every single day. You read the book Radical Remission, you see examples of it all the time. Why can't you be that example? Why can't you be that story? So I would say it to my mom, we don't know how the story is going to end. So eventually on Greek Easter, God took her on his holiest day in the most peaceful ways, surrounded by all of us. We felt our heart was going slow, brought family in, we all hugged her. We all literally were hanging over her bed. And she passed, and that's what was meant to be, and so ugh it was obviously really hard, but I knew that we did everything that we could, and we did give her a safe passage. And now she was with God and she was safe. And I learned a tremendous amount about caretaking. I learned so much about healing that helped me on my journey. Because thereafter I'd gotten the COVID vaccines for my mom and dad to protect them, I didn't want to. I could feel my body screaming no, but I didn't listen. And then soon after I got diagnosed with a pancreas tumor called neuroendercontumor. Before that, I got diagnosed to type one diabetes, which if you start to do the research, you'll see that a lot of people after COVID got type one or diabetes in general. Now we're hearing all about the turboive cancers and so many other things, and so I've had the brain tumor, the pancreas cancer, the type one diabetes, a bunch of other things. Spots here, spots there. Last year, they thought I had liver cancer. So I went to the Equator and I did a whole healing journey there. I have been learning so much on my show that has saved my life. And Doctor Allison, my natural path here in Connecticut, has been incredibly powerful in my healing journey because she's really taught me about nature and all of the elements of healing that we ignore. Whether it's the sun, whether it's grounding, those things can be really really powerful. And so everything I've been studying about blue light, Like right now, I'm wearing my blue light glasses. I see every sunrise and every sunset, and I make sure that I'm grounding and all of those things. And I'll tell you when they thought I had liver cancer, I was like, I don't have this. I'm like, I think this is just my body is not filtering things out easily enough. So I'm going to go to the Equator. From everything I've learned from this other doctor Cruz and doctor Allison, I'm going to go create my own protocol. And I did so for two and a half weeks, I grounded, never wore shoes grounded. And we're only the We're the only primates that have sweat glands in our hands and feet. So when you ground you take in negative electrons that go into your body and neutralize the positive electrons. The positive is illness. So knowing that, I was like, Okay, I'll try it. Let's see if it works. I don't know. I got every sunrise, I got that sun on my skin, I got the sunset. I sweat so I could help detalks. And grounding in the ocean is really really powerful. It helps. So if you go to the edge of the water and you put your hands and feet there, you sit on your butt and you put your hands and feet down, that's like supercharged. So I did that and in two and a half weeks, all the lesions in my liver shrunk and I was like, holy shit, this works. So it's been a journey, and it's been a journey of like lessening the toxin load, which has helped me tremendously, helped me with fatigue, with pains, with headaches and so many things. I really gone baby stepping into the clean world where it's like clean skin products, clean hair. I mean, if you think about it, your skin is your largest organ Anything you put on your skin goes in. So if you want to transition, they give you like estrogen patches or whatever, and it helps change that. So why would shampoo or anything else be any different. Now, we're not going to be perfect. There are going to be things that we're just not gonna want to change. I get it, but we have to lessen our loads a little bit. And so I've tried to clean out my food, my products, my beauty products, and it's made a big difference. I do my non negotiables in the morning is I get my sun rise, I get my Fascia release work done. So I have this whole fashion release program that Lauren Russbroo taught me on Heel Squad that has also been on my Instagram. You can check it out. The Fascia stores everything and and it's really really powerful and there's a whole list of what it does there. I'll do ice face baths at times. That's not just for vanity, it's actually really healing. I do red light and meditation. So if you are wanting to heal, who and you want to use your brain in your mind. I've had mind blowing results with doctor Joe Despenza's program. So he has a program called the Formula, and it's of course you can take online. Within three days, my anxiety completely went away. And I never thought I could go to a meditation event. I thought I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out, and I'm not like I never could really figure out the meditation thing. But with his program, oh my, it was life changing. He teaches you that in order to heal, you have to change you. Your personality creates your reality, and he teaches you all of this, and it's unbelievable, scientifically backed, scientifically studied and tested. He healed his spine with his mind after a car wreck. And so basically, when I'm doing these meditations, I create this movie in my mind of what I want. I want doctor Black to tell me the tumor is gone. I want doctor Allison to tell me my A and C went from a ten point six to a five point three. And I will celebrate the victory of her telling me this as if it's happening in real time and your body and your brain don't know the difference between perception and reality. So whatever you tell yourself is what your body and your brain thinks is real. So I'm telling myself that I'm healed, and guys, it would actually happen. I'd be in the middle of my meditation, playing my movie and I'd hear and see doctor Allison tell me your A and C is a five point three. Holy shit. And then I was like, oh my god, you told me that today. Oh, oh my god, you told me that yesterday. And that just kept happening. I had an allsion in my breast. I was shrinking that that trunk. There's been so many amazing health recoveries just by doing Doctor Joe. So I always highly recommend that to people because it's a very very accessible thing to do. If you're looking for something. By the way, relaxing yoga Nidra is amazing. I love yoga Nidra. You can go on YouTube, just YouTube Yoga Nidra if you want something that's going to relax you and recharge you in fifteen or twenty minutes. It's freaking amazing. But this meditation thing is more than meditation. With Doctor Joe, it changes your whole life. So he says at some point, you'll feel like there's so much joy coming out of you for no good reason. And I remember walking into my kitchen like two months after doing this, and I looked at Kevin, my husband, and I said, honey, I could lift a car with my joy. I didn't even know this joy existed. So that was really powerful in my journey as well. And I think being open, you know, what do you have to lose by trying a high dose vitamin C drip? Obviously you have to do it with somebody that you trust, who's going to test your blood levels and make sure you're good. You know what is I don't like hyper bearer chambers. It didn't feel right to me. But there's a lot of stuff out there that you can do. But definitely cutting sugar has been a game changer, I think, and some of the treatments that we did in Mexico, and so I guess my goal today was just to kind of share what we've done, what we've gone through, and to help you believe impossibility and in those moments when life strikes, like when they told me I had paint Grace cancer, I was on my knees. I had just found out that we were pregnant maybe two months before. I was carrying with the surrogate, not me, because the brain tumor prohibited me from getting pregnant. Just found out we had a baby after ten years of trying, and I was like, how could God finally bless me with a baby, and now he's going to take me. This doesn't make any sense. And the next morning after being diagnosed, I was just in the fetal position and I was looking at my church icons and I was like, this doesn't make sense. And then finally I thought of something I'd learned on my show and with my hypnotherapist, and she said, choose wonder over worry. So I said, I wonder what it's going to be like when the doctor calls me next with good news, And guys, did I wonder what it's going to be like when I get through surgery and I'm safe. I wonder what it's going to be like my first pet scan comes back and I'm safe and I'm clear. It all kept happening, and so I think we have choices in life, right, doesn't mean we're not going to get knocked down. I was on the floor. I was like, holy shit, I can't even believe this is happening. Oh my god, Oh my god, pancreast cancer after a brain tumor crazy. But I remembered that it's not my story to write. My story's in someone else's hands. So all I can do is control how I react, how I act, and my kind of belief system. And so choosing wonder over worry was really helpful. And believing impossibility and realizing that I don't want to create the ending to the story because we are really powerful and I know that. And so if I keep thinking I'm going to die, and I keep thinking the worst is going to happen, maybe I'll contribute that to that. I don't know. But what's going to help me get through this easier, what's gonna help me get through this easier is believing in possibility and believing that I could be a miracle. And so I chose that again. It takes a minute, and I'm really grateful to be here with you guys right now to be able to say that I feel vibrant and healthy and doesn't mean that everything's perfect under the hood. In fact, whenever I go to the doctor and a new tech is looking up my records, they're like this, isn't you right, And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's me. But I'm thriving despite and I'm learning how to heal, and I'm learning how to use what God has provided, that red light from the sun in the morning, the grounding from the earth, and so much more to heal and to get back to nature. The problem is is we've created our environment rather than living in the real environment. And so I think that we have to start focusing on that and realizing that the answers are within us if we listen to ourselves, if we listen to our inner guidance, And that's something that you really have to cultivate, and I cultivated that. When my mom was sick, I would ask God for help, and you can ask whoever it is. You can ask Buddha, you can ask whoever the universe. You know, God. I would go ahead be like God, I don't know what to do next with her, this is what's happening. I don't know what to do, and the answer would come in the craziest of ways. Asking for signs is something that I was inadvertently doing. But then doctor Joe really taught me in his courses to ask for signs and it's so rewarding when you do it. But the answers always came. I was never abandoned. I was always always guided and assisted through the journey. And Saint Nctarios is our healing saint, and Saint Nctarios will heal anybody of any faith that believes in him. And by the way, there's an amazing movie called Man of God that was made about his journey and how slandered he was and the jealousy that people had because he was so pure, and like you're watching priests and patriarchs and bishops and stuff be jealous of him. It's a really good movie. It's not just like a church movie or anything. But I highly recommend it. And I think I think that you know, we have to believe, and so I will leave you with that. I know the journeys are really really hard and really really painful, but we have to believe in something greater. And I hope that I hope that this was helpful, and you know, just know that you're loved and you are being guided and that your journey is yours for a reason. And I always have believed the life is happening for me not to me, and so when these things happen, I say, Okay, well, maybe this is meant to happen to me because I'm strong enough to handle it. Maybe it's happening to me because I can communicate to other people and I can share, and I'm a problem solver and I can figure it out, and so I feel like that's what I'm trying to do with it all is be able to share. But it's not just me, it's you too. And if you can affect one person with your journey and your story, you've done your job and helped somebody else. So I tell people all the time, share your stories and share your journey because people need to hear it, and everyone's going to have a different way, and everyone's going to have something that resonates with them and doesn't resonate with them. So you got to listen to you. You know yourself better than any doctor is ever going to know you. And the second you start to farm out your power outside of you, that's when you start to lose. So listen to yourselves, listen, ask for guidance, and at the end of the day, go with what you feel is right for you. Don't be afraid everything you want is on the other side of fear is a great quote from Georgia Dare and so ah with that, guys, I hope you have a wonderful, blessed day, and I hope you guys will tune into my new holiday movie get a good escape. It's called Christmas at Plumb Hill, Manor, and they'll share all the details for that, and then come join the Heel Squad if you want to go on the healing journey with us. That's a leve