Maria Menounos believes stress caused her pancreatic cancer and brain tumor.
The former E! News host appeared on Dear Media’s “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast Tuesday and said a holistic psychologist made her have the “breakthrough” about her hormonal tumors after “trying to get to the bottom” of her health issues.
“Now I know. It’s stress,” she said.
Menounos, 45 — who sought out a holistic expert in order to get an explanation instead of only a diagnosis — said “can’t change” that she once lived in “fight or flight [mode] every single day,” however she has made “incredible strides” to become more tranquil.
The entertainment journalist credited a meditation program called The Formula for erasing her “crippling” anxiety that she had intended to treat with medication within just three days.
“[The anxiety] was gone and has not come back,” Menounos shared.
“It was so life-changing.”
She added, “I’m still working on everything but that mack truck is hard to slow it down once it’s coming.”
Menounos was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor in 2017, while her mom was battling brain cancer that eventually took her life.
Six years later, she was diagnosed with stage two pancreatic cancer just months after she and her husband, Keven Undergaro, found out they were expecting their first child via surrogate.
The WWE alum told Hirsch that she had symptoms of the cancer, but her physicians told her she was “fine” and overlooked the tumor.
By the time they found it a couple months later, it had doubled in size.
“When they found the tumor in the MRI, they said, ‘Can we go back and get the records and look at the November scan? I bet it was there,’” she explained.
“And it was. At that point it was two centimeters (0.79 inches) and by the time they had found it was almost four centimeters (1.5 inches), it had doubled in size in two months.”
The TV presenter said she’s “still getting to the bottom” of how her doctors missed the tumor.
“What I’ve learned since is… different scans have the ability to see different things better,” she explained.
“For this, an MRI was what’s really going to see it, for other things CAT scans are better, for others things an ultrasound’s better.
“It’s a really complicated process….” she added.
