How To Become the CEO of Your Health w/ Maria Menounos

Key Takeaway

When facing health crises, choose 'wonder over worry' by asking yourself what positive possibilities could emerge rather than assuming the worst. This simple mental shift can redirect your thoughts from fear to hope, opening pathways for healing and resilience that wouldn't exist in a worried state.

Episode Overview

Maria Menounos shares her incredible journey through multiple serious health challenges including Hashimoto's, brain tumors, and pancreatic cancer, revealing how she transformed from Hollywood correspondent to wellness advocate. Together with Dr. Mark Hyman, they explore practical tools for becoming the CEO of your own health, emphasizing mindset, community, and proactive care.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How To Become the CEO of Your Health w/ Maria Menounos from The Dr. Hyman Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

What we're gonna talk about today is how so many of us struggle with various kinds of health issues and challenges and how we deal with them. You had some issues around thyroid and this and that, but you kinda started to get a whole bunch of stuff. So it was a Hashimoto's, And then a few months later, my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor, glioblastoma. I then diagnosed myself with a brain tumor. I end up with a meningioma. Oh, and bonus ball, pancreas cancer. That's not something usually people come out the other side of.

So your story is pretty much a miracle. Maria Munoz is an Emmy award winning television host and actress and producer and a wellness advocate. She's a former correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood Extra, e news, and she co founded After Buzz TV and now hosts Heal Squad, which draws on her own journey after overcoming her own serious health challenges to help others become the CEO of their own health. And I was just like curled up in the fetal position in bed and I just was in such a state of shock.

Can you believe this happened to me? Well, yes. That's life. How are we gonna roll through it? How are we gonna get up? I want to show myself and others that there's another way to go through challenges. That's a big mental shift for people. When something bad happens, life is happening for me not to me. And I just kept saying it just doesn't make It doesn't make sense. And then I thought to myself, well maybe it doesn't make sense. Okay. Why am I thinking about the worst case scenario?

Why can't there be another possibility here? And I remembered having my hypnotherapist on the show one day and she said choose wonder over worry. So part of the toolkit too is like addressing your emotional and spiritual needs. What are you not facing that you need to face? What are the traumas that you haven't dealt with? After all these health challenges, and it's a lot. I mean, it's more than most people should ever have to have in a lifetime. What do you found are the things that are your non negotiables and your go to's every day or on a weekly basis that you lean into to help you stay healthy and thrive.

The only thing that never changes is my faith and my prayer. Hey, it's Doctor. Hyman. I'm so excited to share this episode with you today, but before we dive in, I want to get your help. Please take a minute to hit that subscribe button. Whether you're watching here on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform. It truly means the world to me, and it helps my team and I bring you this podcast every single week. Plus, I don't want you to miss a thing. So thanks so much for being part of this community, and I'm glad you're here.

Maria, welcome to the Doctor. Hyman Show. It's so good to have you here. I know I was on your podcast before talking about longevity, but I'm so happy to have you and talk about your story, which is pretty compelling. I know this morning, as I was getting ready for the podcast, I was kinda reading your bio. I'm like, this whole wrestling thing, and I'm like, I don't quite understand. Like, it it is she was she just, like, being a host of it, or was she and I was like, I went on YouTube, I was like, holy crap.

Like, you were just in the ring to full out, you know, like, WrestleMania and crushing it. And I was like, that was amazing. So I'm very impressed by that. What we're gonna talk about today is is how so many of us struggle with various kinds of health issues and challenges and how how we deal with them. I've had my own. Starting when I was 32, I had back surgery. 36, I got mercury poisoning. In my forties, got mold toxicity, Lyme disease, Babesia. I developed my fifties, another episode of mold exposure.

I got an antibiotic, got colitis. I mean, almost died, lost 30 pounds. I recently had back surgery. I almost died from that. I mean, I've been through it, and you have too. And and, you know, people probably look at you and I and go, wow. You guys look great. You seem great. You have energy. You're living your life, but there's a backstory. Yeah. And I wanna sort of get into that backstory and how how to help people think about navigating their own health challenges and how to think about being proactive and what they can do to kind of deal with the biggest issue, which is mindset.

You know, how do you deal with what's between your ears because that's gonna determine how you navigate things and how you heal and and to give hope where often people feel hopeless. So I'm really excited to talk to you about all this. Now I will maybe start by by kind of sharing your own journey with health challenges. You you had stuff early on when you were in Hollywood, and you were kind of chasing the dream, and you had some issues around thyroid and this and that.

But you kinda kinda kinda started to get a whole bunch of stuff. So maybe you could unpack your own health journey, take us down that exploration of what you've had to deal with, and and kinda then we're gonna talk about how how we all think about this as a way of emerging stronger, better, smarter, healthier, wiser, which is the endgame here. Yeah. I mean, every struggle can be a lesson and kind of catapult you to your next level, I feel like. And I think that that's what I've seen, but it's also the way I kind of approach things.

It doesn't mean that I'm not on my knees when something awful is happening. It just means I think about how long do I wanna stay there, and how am I gonna climb out, and how am I gonna make something out of this useful and positive? And so Yeah. When I kinda look at the journey, I think about you know, you have to look at the whole journey because it's easy to blame toxic work environments, and it's easy to blame, you know, COVID and all these things, but there were things that led up to here that made my body react the way it did.

And that's kind of a new reframing that I've been I've been focusing on. So it's like if I look at my early childhood, my dad was a severe type one diabetic. And the reason he was severe was he was an immigrant. He didn't speak the language, so he didn't really understand what the doctors were saying. He just knew cut out sugar. Well, when you cut out all sugar, which meant for him all carbs, and you're a manual laborer, you can't balance the physical labor and and just eat vegetables.

Like, your blood sugar is just gonna keep plummeting. And for him, that's what would happen. He'd have severe low blood sugar attacks. And it was a very challenging journey for me and my family because we were the ones who had to just constantly save him. And my mom and I really became very tuned into him so that we would know even when we weren't with him Yeah. If he was okay, which means we were in a hypervigilant state at all times. All the time. Fight or flight.

If he didn't come home at the time he was supposed to come home, we were calling every hospital, every police department because his presentation of a low sugar could look like he was drunk. Hypoglycemia makes you kinda out of it. Right? Yeah. And so he was it was really, really challenging. And my mom never slept a night in her life. She was always on her toes. She ended up with glioblastoma. She also had her journey, which is That's a brain tumor. I think about that part of my life living in fight or flight and, a lot of violence, you know, where where we lived and and seeing a lot of really scary things and experiencing a lot of scary things and then making it in Hollywood, and it was so exciting.

And yet you're not really prepared for that kind of schedule and that intensity. And I'm definitely a really, really hard worker. It was extreme, and I didn't know how to handle all of it because it was all new stuff that it's not like going to a regular job. There were all these things you had to account for. And and so I was eating a lot of fast food, going to the hospital, you know, low potassium, dehydrated. And I just remember what my dad did when he went to the hospital.

He would rip out the IVs and go back to work. So that's what I would do. So then at some point, I remember doing a story for the Today show. I was a correspondent, and I did a story on type one die on diabetes in general. And my dad's endocrinologist was the featured doctor, and she did a blood test on me and basically discovered I had Hashimoto's. And what she explained was that it was almost like a combination of my mom's thyroid issues and my dad's diabetes.

It's an autoimmune thyroid problem. Yeah. Yeah. So then Hashimoto's It's common. It affects one in five women. It's really common. Most standard diabetes. Also a problem, doc, because people look at it and they say, oh, you just you might have to get on medication someday. No big deal. No one's sounding the alarm to say Right. Wait a second. This is the first sign the engine is going bad. And if you don't fix this, then the transmission's gonna go and the engine's gonna go and all this shit's gonna start going awry.

It's kinda like the gateway to what's to come down the road, which eventually will be cancer and things like that. So or could be. So it was a Hashimoto's, and then I was working crazy, crazy, crazy, and definitely dealing with a lot of toxicity. And I just was like this I kind of I was just so confused by it because I'm not somebody who's envious of other people. I admire other people, but I've never looked at anybody else in the race. But they were looking at me, and their energies were toxic and wanting to derail me.

And I was just like, wait. I wanna be everybody's friend. Why does everybody wanna kill me? And Hollywood. That was really challenging, and I had some really insane experiences that were just I mean, people were gaslighting so intensely that I was losing my mind. And then Mhmm. I become of age to start having children, and that's about to go away. And so I'm in my early thirties. People are starting to scare you. So I do what everyone else did. I looked into IVF. Everybody was having normal babies.

So I said, okay. I'm gonna get an insurance policy for myself, get these embryos made so I know I can have kids someday. Yeah. I did it. Nobody talks about the potential risks of this if there's something in your body. Now The effects of the hormones and yeah. So now we get the IVF. I do three rounds. I collect the embryos. At some point in that final round, I called my doctor, and I said, I want to drive my car into a brick wall. My head is going to explode.

And she's like, stop the progesterone. Stop the progesterone. So I stopped it. And then a few months later, my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor, glioblastoma. I'm now thrust into taking care of her. I'm having extreme pains in my head, in my ear. I'm slurring my speech. All these crazy things are happening, and I'm like, oh, it's just because I'm so stressed taking care of my mom. There are so many caretakers that feel like that. I then diagnose myself with a brain tumor. I end up with a meningioma.

Crazy. You know? You know there's no connection between the two. It's just a benign brain tumor, but it causes it can cause a lot of symptoms. That was kind of that. And then at some point And you had brain surgery. I had brain surgery. Same doctor, same hospital, same waiting room, my poor dad, what he's gone through. At some point, I COVID happens, and my mom now is nearing the end of her journey. Like, she's not nearing the end, but she's, like, four years in. She gets COVID.

My dad gets COVID. I know about the two parents in the hospital with COVID. It's a shit show. It's a nightmare. And I'm playing dirty Harry with the hospitals because they all do their calls at 03:00. So I've I'm on the phone with two hospitals, two different doctors for two parents at the same time. And when my mom is released, I realize I have to get vaccinated to protect her and my dad. For COVID. Mean COVID. So we all got vaccinated. We did what we thought was right at the time for the world, for our family, for our things.

And right after that, my dad and I both got the same vaccine. We both got all the same things. He already had type one. So I got type one pernicious anemia, atrophic gastritis, intestinal metaplasia. Oh, and bonus ball, pancreas cancer. Yeah. I I think that's crazy because last time I talked to you, you hadn't had that. Yeah. And that that's not something usually people come out the other side of. So your story is pretty much a miracle. And and also you had all these autoimmune issues.

Right? Type one diabetes, pernicious anemia, Hashimoto's. Your immune system is just kinda going crazy. Yeah. And how do you how did you end up dealing with that? How do you sort of navigate that? How do I navigate which one? That's the thing that's Well, Well, I mean, I mean, they're all connected. Right? So if you try to figure out what the cause is or root cause because a lot of people have all these things, they're not random. If your body is having autoimmune diseases, they're often connected by something like gluten or some heavy metal or toxin or something that your body's not liking.

So I'm just curious if you found in in in your journey something that may have been underlying what's happening for you. I haven't figured out outside of the fact that, you know, the wheels just came off the wagon with all of the stress, you know, because it was just it's just been nonstop fight or flight until kind of all this happened, and then I really started changing my life. And you had a massive ten hour surgery for getting rid of the pancreatic cancer. That was a big deal.

Right? Yeah. Brainstorm. Now you're on insulin. You're on insulin for diabetes? Yeah. So the the crazy part of the smiling. Story Story I know. The crazy part of the story is they diagnosed me with a type one. I'm like, I don't have this. And I really didn't think I had it. I I had this spidey sense in me. This is not real. I saw a naturopath locally. She's like, I don't think so either. Let's let's get to work. And so I started doing circadian function and and focusing on, you know, removing blue light from my life and all these things and all this stuff.

And I remember saying you know, first, I was kinda mad. I was like, f this. I quit sugar two years ago. I don't deserve this. This is crazy. I've been doing everything to never get this, and now I have it. I'm gonna eat everything I want. F it. And then I was like, no, Maria. And so I was like, okay. I'm gonna go the other way. I'm gonna eat as carefully as I can to see if I can reverse this. And I did. So I ate in such a, like, way, a modified keto, Maria's keto, because I don't like the abundance of fat.

I don't think that that's I think that sounds too extreme. So I was like, I'm just gonna eat really, really clean, really, really healthy, and I'm gonna move my body so that I don't need insulin. And, eventually, I got off insulin. So I was diagnosed in June. By October, I was off all insulin. Wow. And I was so excited, doc. I was like, oh my gosh. And I was being careful because I had the show, Heal Squad, and I didn't want to tell people anything because I know that there's a responsibility I carry.

I don't want to do anything dangerous. I just wanted to kinda feel it out and see what happened. Well, then by January, I got diagnosed with pancreas cancer. I was like, really? And they severed the tail of my pancreas, which then only made the diabetes come back. Wow. Wow. That's quite a story. So you journey through all these autoimmune diseases, benign tumors, cancerous tumors in your pancreas, which, you know, you're it's a miracle that you're good, and they were able to catch you early. And you and, you know, one of the things that people don't realize is that, you know, we now have the availability for early screening for cancer that we never had before.

And and one of the reasons you found this is because you did a whole body MRI scan. Yeah. And they found something, and then you went and got it treated at a stage where it was curable. Yep. Whereas most people would not have that. And most people wait until they get symptoms. Most doctors wait, and then there's really very little you can do. And there's, you know, twelve to eighteen month survival for that. And and the fact that you're still kicking and going, it's been cured, which is amazing, through this early preventive screening.

It's kind of amazing because if you look at your story, if you hadn't done that, the the ending might be quite different. And Yeah. And the fact that you took a proactive step for your health is really the message here. You often say, Maria, that you you think people should be the CEO of their own health. That and I say the same thing, and that's kind of why we come out of function was so people can take control and and take back their health in some ways from the health care system that just waits until you have something bad to do something.

So can you talk about, like, your your thinking about how people should be more proactive and more engaged and actually navigate these things? Because I imagine, you know, in your journey along the way, it's it's been pretty depressing, and it's been pretty hard. And you've gone through a lot of bumps, and then you you kind of bounce back. How have you kind of done that, and and what's your kind of internal internal dialogue and your internal framework that allows you to actually lean in and and come back and and be so vibrant and alive?

It's definitely really hard. And I'm not gonna lie. Like, when I got diagnosed with a pancreas tumor, I had a baby on the way via surrogate. And I was like, how could you bless me with a baby finally, god, and now you're gonna take me? And I was just, like, curled up in the fetal position in bed, and I just was in in such a state of shock, and I just kept saying, it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. And then I thought to myself, well, maybe it doesn't make sense.

Okay. Why am I thinking about the worst case scenario? Why can't there be another possibility here? And I remembered having my hypnotherapist on the show one day, and she said, choose wonder over worry. And so I said, okay. That's a good tool. I'm gonna use that right now. Okay. I wonder if the doctor calls me. Yeah. Wonder if the doctor calls me and gives me good news next, and he did. And then I wonder when the I wonder when I get through surgery and I'm good and I'm safe, what that's gonna be like, and then it happened.

And so I just kept choosing wonder over worry. And I always tell people, like, you have to have some good tools in your toolkit, which is why I love what I do with this show because I try to bring people in that will give us tools to handle these challenging moments because there's no handbook for life and the shit you have to go through in life. It's just you get there, and now you're a turtle on your back. So if you have some tools, you can, like, flip over a little quicker.

Yeah. I love quotes. I love inspiring movies. I love things like that. So Rocky has been a constant quote in my life since brain surgery. When I first woke up from brain surgery, I recited the Rocky Balboa quote, which I will share again for anyone listening that doesn't know Rocky Balboa. You should see the movie after you've seen all the other Rockies too. But, anyway, he says, it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take.

And he talks about how the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows. And and it's true. You know? I've had so many people say we are just always constantly surprised when problems arise. And we look to our friends and we say, oh my gosh. Can you believe this happened to me? Well, yes. That's life. How are we gonna roll through it? How are we gonna get up? I would say, what's the story you wanna tell that you fell so deep you couldn't get out and then you you, you know, had another kind of path, another journey?

I wanna tell the story of something beautiful and inspiring, a different way to go through something. So if I'm down, I will go down, and I do. And I was just down this week again. It's just like I feel like I'm in the ring with freaking Mike Tyson all the time. Like, really? You have to hit me again? How much more can one human take? But then I get up, and I'm like, I want to show myself and others that there's another way to go through challenges and that you have to pick yourself up.

You have to find your why to get up. And my why is my daughter now and myself. I want I wanna be my best. I know how quick this goes, and I don't wanna be in that state at all times of depression and victimhood and all of that. I really want I wanna write my own inspiring movie every single day, and that's what I try to do. It isn't easy all the time. It's really, really hard, but I do it. I I think kinda what you're saying is that we all have the opportunity to be the author of our own life and that, you know, we have things happen to us, but we often kinda take it as as something that is in a sense happening to us.

But one of the quotes you often say is life is happening for me, not to me. Yeah. And I think that's a big mental shift for people when something bad happens. And there's a book I read years ago called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. It's like, what the hell is going on But, you know, all of it is sort of it is kind of like compost for for evolving and growing and learning and becoming more whole and complete and meeting life more directly. And I think a a lot of us when we when we get sick, it just it's overwhelming.

It is. And we sort of advocate to the health care system. Yeah. Exactly. I wanna get into that because I think it's important. But a lot of people advocate their to the health care system and to the doctors. And I am a doctor, but I don't like that people do that. And I think I I think people can, you know, be more able to engage with their own well-being in a way that this is using tools that that are available, that you can learn, that are skills, that are frameworks for thinking, that address your both your physical health and also your mental health.

Because no matter how bad things get, you know, if you can stay in touch with your higher self, you can kind of lean into that, then then you can get through almost anything. And and I think you know, I've just had a friend of mine who died of cancer at 45 years old, a beautiful woman with breast cancer. And the way she went was just beautiful. She was she wasn't fighting it. She she she went through, obviously, to try to heal herself, but at a point when she realized she couldn't, she surrendered, and and her mindset let her go free as opposed to screaming and yelling and fighting death at the end.

And I've I've seen people do that, and it's not nice. It's not it's not good for them. But but I think we all have that the power to kind of control our thoughts and to to change our mindset and to not let the negative inner dialogue take over Yeah. And to to reframe things like you have. Life is happening for me, not to me. Well, we're being redirected sometimes. Like, I asked a priest in Greece this past summer because I was kinda like, you know, having a moment.

WTF. WTF. Yeah. And I said, why so many things? Like, I don't ask that often, but I was in a moment. Yeah. And he said, you know, God will redirect you when he doesn't think you're on the right path, and sometimes it hurts. And I was like, okay. And he's like, it's because he loves you so much. I was like, okay. I'll take that because I was kinda thinking he hated me for a minute. Uh-huh. And and I do see that. Like, I wouldn't be here right now on this journey.

I wouldn't be kinda living my purpose. Like, reading teleprompter wasn't living my purpose. Was doing something that was fun and exciting and all of that, but it wasn't feeding my soul. And so what I get to do every day is feeding my soul. Now that's scary to make those shifts, and mine happen naturally. Someone told me recently, like, what you did, you know, shifting your brand was genius. I'm like, this was not anything that planned. This was at a complete necessity for me to find answers for myself and for my mom.

But I'll tell you, like, I I think if you feed your mind good things, you can get into a better place faster. So, like, every day, I will listen to a Carl Jung video, a Wayne Dyer video, something from Napoleon Hill, something that's going to remind me that this is happening for me and that I need to still make changes that maybe are too hard for me to make for me to really be set free and to allow my, you know, true soul's expression to be whatever the things are.

Like, I I listen to all of these things to help me in the journey because the other way is someone's rubbing your shoulder and telling you you got screwed, and that's not really gonna help you. It's gonna, like, soothe you in the moment. Yeah. Thanks. I got screwed. Like, you're right. I mean, listen. I was talking to my best friend the other day as I was in the hospital with vertigo, guttural crying, being like, I I don't know how much more I can take. I'm a good person.

I try. Like, I'm saying the same stuff, and I'm sharing this so you don't think I'm trying to be holier than thou. Like, I'm saying this stuff too, but it's how long do I stay there? I get out fast. I'm like, no. No. No, Maria. And and the other thing is, and this is why I'm not gonna let my daughter watch Disney movies, is these movies teach us that someone is going to come save us. Save us, watch Lassie, and I used to beg to have a dog to come save me.

Now my shepherd Max is a savior. I love him. I think that we need to remember that all we need is within us. We have the answers. We just don't wanna listen all the time. We have the knowing. We just don't wanna hear it, and we have to be the CEO of our lives as I wrote in my first book, and now we have to be the CEO of our health. And when you talk about how we farm art our health to the system, you know, when I was there recently, I saw.

I know the system's broken. I know it's a business. They don't have filtered water in hospitals. You're supposed to be about taking care of people, and then you wanna give them contaminated water to drink, or the food is from the eighties. I I feel it's pretty bad. Still there from the eighties. And the big jugs, those fruit cups they give you, I swear are still there from the eighties, doc. It's terrible. I know I've been in the hospital, and I just flabbergasted at the food they serve that's full of high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, all sorts of chemicals, ultra processed garbage, and you're supposed to heal, and you're eating this inflammatory diet.

It's quite shocking, actually. But, you know, you Marie, you talk about how you've overcome all these things, but you also talk about this toolkit. Mhmm. And I'd love you to kinda unpack that because, you know, whether you're just suffering from something minor or you have something more serious, you know, we need tools, and we also need community, which I wanna get into, which is the development of this amazing thing you created called Heal Squad. And and I wanna talk about what are the tools that you found helpful, and what what can people lean on?

Because as a doctor, I know that 80% or more of health is not what the doctor will recommend or do. It's what you do for yourself. It's what you eat. It's how you move your body. It's how you navigate stress. It's your sleep. It's basically your relationships, community connection. These are things that that aren't gonna happen in a hospital or a doctor's office. The tools, I I think it's having accountability partners in your life. So I always say that Heal Squad is your accountability partner. I'm, like, so I hate self promotion.

I hate all of it. Like, it's so awkward for me. So I'm not telling people, let's take my show. I can do it for you. I'm like, listen to my show because I want more downloads. No. I really think that we are your squad. We are your accountability partner to continuously every day remember that you need to be the CEO of your health and that this is the kind of thing the content you wanna feed yourself, the vibration you wanna be in, the betterment that you want for yourself.

And so I think it's it's finding things like that that because a lot of people who are on the journey to get better feel very lonely, and I have felt super lonely at times. And I'm like, where are my people? And first of all, one of the things I always do is I always pray at night, and I say, Lord, please continue to flow an abundance of amazing people, collaborators, and and and and helpers to help me in this journey and always and it's crazy, but it's it's always working.

It's always working. People are always flowing into my life at the right time when I need them for whatever the reason is. So you need you need that. And then like I said, the toolkit also for me is what am I listening to? So I don't watch anything negative. I don't watch any dark movies. I don't watch anything scary anymore. I used to love all that stuff. I used to watch every prison show under the sun. MSNBC lockup was my favorite thing on the planet. So I don't watch anything like that.

I am constantly feeding my mind with things that are gonna expand it, that are gonna get me to question, that are gonna get me to feel better, that are gonna give me the inspiration to get through the next challenge because I wanna be prepared ahead of time. Quotes, the life is happening for me, not to me. Now can you apply that in every circumstance? There are some things I've heard, doc. You cannot apply that. Oh my god. What people have gone through. Sometimes it's just not applicable.

However, I think it's a great tool. And I think that when you're going through something challenging, thinking about it, like I said, how would you wanna write this inspirational movie of you going through this journey? And I think that is like and by the way, you can after. There are so many great books and movies and podcasts based on these things. So so think about it like that. I think community is a big thing. It's a big thing I didn't have, and I've heard you talk about it.

I've heard Dan Dan Bueber talk about it a lot. I was so busy working my whole career that I never really had community, and I thought it was just an LA thing because we were so spread out, and that was a big deal. Yes. It was really sad because whenever I had free time, no one else had free time, and you couldn't plan anything because you knew your schedule wasn't your own. You could fly for the Today Show somewhere here now, the Nightly News over there, Access Hollywood over here.

My schedule was on my own. So now I do a Wednesday happy hour for oysters because I know oysters are really good for you to help absorb more sunlight. I know it sounds silly, but it's something that's really helping me because I know I have something fun that's not work related, that's in my calendar every Wednesday, and and so I'm doing that. And you're doing that with friends? Yeah. Friends and family. I just tell everyone, here's where I am every Wednesday night. You wanna join? Let's go.

And Yeah. It's been really fun, and so community is really important. And I really do try to I I eat well. I I just this week was like, I'm gonna kind of abandon a lot of this for a minute and see what happens because I think sometimes we get so hyper focused, especially as type A like, on doing the infrareds and the red lights and the this and the thats. And I'm just gonna give it up for a minute and just see what happens. Yeah. Give myself a break from the from all of it because sometimes it's like your inner world that needs a little more attention than just the outer.

And so I'm gonna go inward for a little bit and see what happens. That's amazing. You know, there's there's two themes you hit on there that are so so important. One is is, you know, most of us are consuming not just junk food, but junk food for the brain, whether it's social media or the news or television or, you know, things that are are not elevating us. And and it it it basically kinda writes the story in our head even though we're not aware of it.

And I think I think cutting out all that is is really important and and being able to actually be in relationships with something that's elevating you. And when I was in the hospital about eight or nine months ago, I I was just just completely, you know, broken. I mean, I had I had lost 20 pounds. I couldn't get out of bed. I was so weak, and and I had it was in extreme agony and from back pain. And and every day, I would put on these headphones headphones in the hospital, and I would listen to this guy Michael Singer, who I kind of hit upon, who's kind of a spiritual teacher.

He wrote a book called The Surrender Experiment. And it was all about, you know, how our minds work and the beliefs we have, and I I probably listened to hundreds of hours of his talks, and it's kinda what got me through instead of going down into a dark hole. So I I can really relate to that. And I think finding things that inspire you, that elevate you, you mentioned a few that's that elevate you. There's lots of things out there that are elevating and help inspire you and and actually make you feel empowered around your own life and health and help you navigate the dark narrow spaces that often we have to go through.

The other thing you said that's really important I wanna double down on is this idea of community, and and the idea of of not doing it alone and of being in in connection. I I did a a big faith based wellness program with Rick Warren, who's the pastor of Saddleback Church with 30,000 people. And, you know, we had 15,000 people sign up to be part of something called the Daniel Plan, where people work together to get healthy, and they had small groups that they already had in the church to live better lives as Christians.

But we just put the curriculum of healthy living into those groups, and it was amazing what happened. I mean, Rick said, everybody needs a buddy. Mhmm. And I think that's a great line. I also say community is medicine, junk food is medicine. And and also, you know, we talked about having an accountability buddy. So I think these things are really important. And Paul Farmer, whose work inspired me greatly, was an he was like a Mother Teresa in medicine, honestly. He was an extraordinary man. I got to know him during the Haiti earthquake.

And he was able to help solve, you know, really intractable problems of AIDS and TB in Haiti, not through better drugs or surgery or better medicine, but through the power community. And he he basically trained thousands of community health workers, neighbors helping neighbors. And and we know this is sort of from data around the world that, you know, if you are connected and if you belong and if you have somebody who's there, that it your your whole biology shifts into a state of healing and well-being, and and that's something that most people don't invest in.

Like you said, you were running your career. You were doing the nightly news. You were doing Today Show. You were advancing in all these things, but what you left behind was was the things that, you know, when you come to the end of your life, you you couldn't remember. You're not gonna remember the Today show. You can remember those times you spent with your friends or the people who you love or your family. And I think the more we kind of think about that in not only for sick, but just in terms of one of the essential ingredients.

People are taking all kinds of vitamins, supplements, peptides, this, that, you know, influence on us, whatever. Invest in your friends. Invest in your community. Yes. Cultivate that. Even if it's just one or two or three people. And then I'm you know, I think the more community you can have, the more your life is enriched, and and the more actually biological healing occurs. There's this whole framework that I thought of when I was down in Haiti and and understanding that, you know, just as disease was chronic disease, you know, was something that wasn't just happening randomly.

That that your your basically behavior is determined by the people around you and your closest friends. So if all your friends are eating junk food and, you know, drinking lots of soda and not exercising, you're gonna probably turn out one way. But if your friends are all drinking green juices and going to yoga and listening Yeah. Then you're probably gonna turn a different way. And and this is evidenced by Chris Nick Nicholas Christock, his work at Harvard, who found that you're you're more likely about a 170% more likely to be overweight if your friends are overweight than if your family's overweight, which is kind of shocking.

But but it's not the genetics that determine your destiny, it's your it's your social relationships. It's the social connections. And and that's something that in this society we often miss, and and I I think your your heel squad is just a perfect example of what that is. So I would love for you to talk about the inception of that, what it is, and how people can learn more about it, and and and and actually join as a as a way of beginning these connected relationships. So I started with a SiriusXM show, I was interviewing celebrities.

And then my mom got sick, and I slowly started shifting my guests to people that I was desperate to learn from for her. And, yeah, they weren't really you know, it didn't really matter. I guess they weren't really paying attention, so I was, like, bringing in all these healers and stuff like that. And so so the show started kinda morphing, and then I created a Friday podcast called think I it was called Conversations with Maria, shifted into there. Then I changed it to Better Together because I was like, okay.

We're Better Together. Then so many people changed their title to Better Together. And then funny enough, I go into Sephora, Dunkin' Donuts, all these brands, and they literally were even using my same font. They're like, we're better together. That's amazing. So I I was flattered, but I was like, okay. I'm changing that. And it was like, we're the heel squad. So it was born from, like I said, desperation and needing answers for my mom and then myself and then realizing that it's it's definitely hard to do alone.

You don't wanna do all of this alone, and we are better together. And so I figured what was gonna help me was gonna help somebody else. And everything I've done in my my life that I've ever been proud of, whether it's my books or my work on the nightly news and Today Show, is always about helping people and sharing information. And so that's what Heal Squad is. I'm trying to bring in the best of the best to help us on this crazy journey called life and and be a squad together.

And I just did my first Heal Squad retreat in Lenox, Mass, your your old stomping grounds at the Canyon Ranch. That's right. That's right. And it was incredible. We brought in 35 people from all over to to join us in this journey, and it was incredibly inspiring to see people that wanna be better. Like, at the end, I just started crying. I was like, I can't believe we were so blessed to have such great people. I literally loved every single one of them because they're my people.

They wanna be better. And Yeah. And they're willing to invest in themselves, and they all were saying, like, this is the first time I treated myself and I did something for me. Because I keep asking, like, when is it going to be about you? Like, this morning, I listened to this Carl Jung video that really said, like, you have to choose you. And that's what I was saying about the Disney movies before. Like, Cinderella, everybody's waiting for someone to rescue them. I you rescue you. When are you going to matter enough that you're gonna prioritize yourself instead of prioritizing everyone else?

And so that's not being selfish. That is oxygen mask first on the on the plane. And so Yeah. I think that, you know, I don't know where this is all going. I don't have any grand plan. I just try to I I always pray, and I have my whole life, and this is why I know it will always work for me because it has worked so far. I always say, God, I'll be a good person. Take me where I'm supposed to go. Show me the way.

I'll do whatever I'm supposed to do. So I never really know where I'm going. I have all these ideas and all these dreams and all these thoughts and feelings, but I just kinda I go where I'm kinda taken. And this is where I've been taken at this point, and it's been great. And if people wanna be a part of these retreats, I don't know what the next one's gonna look like yet. I'm still waiting for it to come together in my brain, but we have a waiting list on my Instagram.

You can look at the videos from the most recent event. And so that's kind of where I'm at. But I have to say as the ever the interviewer, I'm curious. I didn't know about your struggle eight months ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and was it all back related that you were in so much pain? Yeah. When I was thanks for asking. I mean, I'll share a little bit about it. I've shared it before, but I was 32 when I first ruptured a disc, and it was a bad one.

It wasn't just a little herniation, and I had emergency surgery and ended up having permanent nerve damage and limping for the last thirty years. And that led to all kinds of biomechanical stresses that just led to degeneration up the chain, and I've had five back surgeries. Wow. And yeah. It was like but I kinda navigate through it. I still exercise. I still ride my bike. I still ran for most of my life. Well, you're overpowering and outwilling. Yeah. I mean, I I think, you know, you know, I I I'm gonna say to myself, pain is two parts.

Right? It's it's the physical sensation, and then it's the meaning you give to that. Right? So if you if you if you allow yourself to feel fear or anxiety, you know, that's what you'll feel. But if you understand it's just a sensation and it's not killing you, then you can learn to kind of live with it. And it's it's not what I wanted to do, but ended up, long story short, really needing a a massive back procedure in order to fix all the generation. And I had developed an infection, and I got really sick, and I lost a ton of weight.

And and and in that process, I really have learned how powerful the mind is, one number one, and how my mindset was really what took me out of that dark tunnel. And two, you know, at 65, I was not sure if I could recover. I wasn't sure. And I built back 25 pounds of muscle. I've been probably spent over three hundred hours in the gym. And last weekend, I was in Aspen, and I rode my bike straight up a mountain at about 3,000 feet of elevation that I climbed and to 9,600 feet of elevation in 11 miles, and then zoomed down the hill.

And it was like nine months later, like having a baby. I'm back. It taught me a lot about, you know, resilience and the power to create health even after really catastrophic problems. And, you know, people probably, I'm sure, look at you, Marie, go, you look super healthy. You're glowing. Yeah. You're you're light. You're happy. Your energy's good. And you've been through so much. You had so many diseases, so many autoimmune issues, and cancer, and brain tumors, and more than anybody should have to deal with in a lifetime.

You know, you found a way to navigate through it just like I did that allows you to be, you know, empowered and and not a victim. And I think a lot of people don't know where to go. They don't know the tools. They don't know how to navigate those things. And I think your your work and your your inspirational story and the and the Hill Squad is really all about coming together to learn how to do that together and to take back your health and to be the CEO of your own health.

So I think that's what I learned I had to do. I mean, what it wasn't my doctors that told me how to recover. They did the surgery Yeah. But then I had to figure out what to do for myself. And I, you know, I I I've been through the same thing as you. Like, why is this happening? Like, oh my god. Do I have to deal with another thing and another problem, another health issue? And, you know, it's just made me better. It's just made me smarter, stronger.

It's made me a better doctor. And How did it make better? I'm curious. Because I can imagine, like, even just chatting with your team before, like, you are everywhere. You're so busy. You have so many company news. When someone like you gets taken out, you're not just taken out. It's everyone now is in jeopardy. A whole structure Yeah. Is Yeah. Is, you know, hanging in the balance. So that's a lot of pressure on you. How did you Yeah. Deal with that pressure and not let it get the best of you, and then how did it make you better?

What what's changed in you since? Great questions. Well, I think, you know, for many months, I was just out of commission. And thank God I had a great team, and I've I've been doing this for thirty years, and so there's tons of content. So they just kind of repurposed old podcasts and repurposed content and kept the the the the energy going in terms of my teachings and communication. I mean, I mean, I listened to Alan Watts. He's been dead for a long time, and I'm still inspired by him.

There's a lot of stuff out there. And so that was kind of what happened. I wasn't engaged at all. And then, you know, slowly, I was able to get back to work and and get back engaged. And I think for me, and I think it's the same for you, you you've been guided on this mission to to tell your story, to to invite people into that journey with you, to help inspire them to change the way they think about their life and their health. And and the same thing for me.

I mean, this is this is my life, and I've really am advocating for a world in which people can take back their health, can be the sea of their own health, can be engaged in a way that actually learns how to create health. And and the tools are there. The the knowledge is there. It's not like the science isn't there. I mean, that's what what I do with functional medicine is essentially the science of creating health rather than treating disease. And sometimes, yes, you need to treat disease.

I needed surgery. You need pancreatic surgery. Then you need that. And that's thank God we have that. I mean, thank God. But the other side of it is, you know, when you're done with the surgery, what do you do? They send you home. Right? How do you recover? What do you need to do to take care of yourself? How do you build back your health? How do you get strong again? How do you become vibrant? These are all things that that are not something you're gonna learn in a doctor's office unless you come to see me.

Yeah. I'll help you with that. But but there's there's other doctors out there, of course, who do this kind of work. But for me, it's it's really made me realize how resilient we are and how much our mindset plays a role. Mhmm. Because, you know, when I was sick, I mean, I was on antibiotics for three months. I was on high dose of narcotics. I was taking all kinds of drugs, and my my hormones were in the toilet. I was just physiologically depressed. I was I was really neurotransmitters were not freaking out.

I had to kind of reach in and deep to my soul and my higher self and go, okay. Like, I no matter how bad I feel, no matter how difficult this is, I have to get up every morning and do the little things, like putting, like, one pebble at a time on to build a giant wall. You know? It's like that's kinda how it went. And it and I I did the math the other day, and I think I spent over three hundred hours in the gym, you know, just working on building myself back up, and and it paid off.

And I I was in the gym with my trainer yesterday, and they were they were we were just commenting on how the things that he had me doing early on, I I I could barely do, and now I can do them with ease. And now he's adding more heavier weights and all kinds of stuff. So it's it's just it taught me how that if you just make little investments, little steps every day in your health with the basic building blocks of what you eat and sleep and exercise and managing the navigating stress and obviously community and the heel squad, think, is a great example of that, that that that we can come back from really bad situations.

And and and it's just, you know, it's it's inspired me to just keep wanting to tell the story and to go out there and to empower other people. That's why I co founded Functional Health was I I think our health care system is so broken, and we need to empower people with their own health data, their own information, with education, knowledge, and skills, and tools, and resources to actually take back their health. So that's kind of I'm I'm the same as you. Like, you know, we could have been kind of whining, complaining, you know, just at home, getting care, and, you know, checking out.

But I I think for whatever reason, you and I both have taken our hardships, and we've turned it into something good. Right? It's like you take you take, you know, something like a diamond. You know? It's like it's it's only it's only becomes this incredibly beautiful valuable thing under incredible pressure and long stresses of being, you know, under a lot of force, and and that that's kind of a miracle. And and, you know, I think people can recover in ways that allow them to move forward in their life and have a sense of empowerment engagement and then give back.

I mean, I I I wanna give back. That's kind of my whole life, and I think that's what you're doing. I mean, you you know, the the Hollywood culture, you you you kinda got into a minute for a minute, but you realize that it was it wasn't feeding your soul. And now you're in you're in a place in your life where you're in service and just as I am. And that ultimately is is I think what is the most powerful tool for healing is stop thinking about yourself.

I heard Tony Robbins, who I know inspires you. He said that the other day. I heard him say, okay. Minute The you start thinking about yourself, you're getting in trouble. When you start thinking about others and you start serving, it's life becomes more meaningful, more connected, more alive, and you get out of your own way. Yes. Oh my god. You get out of your own way. We're so in our own way sometimes. But, like, I'm hearing you talk, and I kept thinking like, okay. So you're the doctor for everybody else.

Who's your doctor? Like, who helps you when because all I kept thinking of, you're on all these narcotics. You're on all these things. Like, a lot of times when I'm in that vulnerable situation, I'm like, I wish there was a me for me right now. I wish because, like, I help people all the time. I always call myself a fake doctor because I'll always help people in the ways that I can. And and I'm like, where is the me to help me right now to, like, pay attention to, you know Yeah.

The drug interactions? Like, is this gonna interact with this? Like, am I I you have to pay attention to these things because in a hospital, unfortunately, sometimes they're just too overwhelmed, and they don't. So were you ever nervous? I was actually it was one night where I was at home. I got discharged from the hospital. I was still on maxillocautics. I had one surgery. It didn't work, and they were they were saying I was inoperable and basically left me for dead, which was crazy. Wow. When I think about that.

And I had a, you know, home health aide who was not really well trained, and I and I had to take pain medicine around the clock. And he he you know, I was supposed to take like four milligrams of this very strong narcotic, and it's called Dilaudid. And he thought I was supposed to take four pills. So it was, like, two in the morning, and he gave me the medicine, and I was groggy, and I was about to take it. I was like, wait. Like, four pills?

That's gonna kill me. Literally, it's gonna make me die of an overdose if I took those. So you have to kind of be alert even if you're, you know, in the system. I think, you know, the question of who's taking care of me. I I for most of my life, I'm embarrassed to say I've been sort of navigating my own health because I didn't really feel like there was anybody out there who I could trust and and help guide me. But thank god I have a really good friend who I've known for a long time who's a brilliant physician, Jordan Schlain, and he runs something called private medical.

And he called me, actually. He said, I heard you're sick. What's going on? I don't know what's happening. Like, can I help? And I was I was in the ICU at the time, and I told him, and he says, oh, let me help you. I'm gonna get you to get a second opinion. I'm gonna get you to see someone who's the best in the world, and let's see what we can do. And, you know, he wasn't doing it as a doctor. He was doing it a friend, and then he kept helping, helping, helping.

And I'm like, this is your job. I said, let me hire you as my doctor. And it was the first time I really hired, somebody and and trusted them and then help have helped helped build a team to guide me on what I need to do. Like, I had to taper off of really high dose of narcotics, and I had to taper off other drugs. And so I didn't know how to do that, and I think, you know, I got help. And and I I I surrendered to actually getting help from people.

And, yeah, I still you know, I'm an advocate for myself, and I still, you know, am in a dialogue with him a lot about what to do or not to do, and, you know, we kind of debate, some guys have different opinions. But, you know, at least I know someone's there watching out for me, and it it's, it's amazing. So I think everybody, you know, should try to find some doctor who they can work with, who they can have a relationship with, who who at least is is is in a partnership with them and is not dismissive of things that they wanna do.

That was that was a first for me, and I'm I've surrendered. I'm like, okay. If if I'm treating myself, I have an idiot for a patient. You know? Yeah. Well, no. I think it's really important. Like, I I tell people all the time, you need a good health collaborator. And sometimes it's just somebody who's really smart that's gonna challenge your ideas, challenge your thoughts, and and help you to have a better kind of, you know, better line of thinking. Like, sometimes we Yeah. We have something in our head.

And so I like to have different health collaborators that I can call on and be like, what do you think about this? This is my gut feeling. Because I go a lot off of my gut and my instincts, and I think, okay. Well and I am always investigating. And so and the hard thing with me is it's like a lot of whack a mole going on because there's like, well, these generally, side effects are the same for everything. It's like, oh, you're on this. Well, here are the side effects, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, whatever.

So you can apply it to anything. So a good health collaborator is always, I think, important because, you know, even if we're advocating to be the CEO of your health, you're still like, I always look at it like you're the you're the coach of the New England Patriots. Right? So Belichick knows who he's gonna use in each instance. He knows he's not gonna put his kicker in offense. He knows he's not gonna put his quarterback on defense. So, like, you know who you're using at what point, and you you make it a collaboration.

Takes a village. Team. It does. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're better. That's, like, so scary. Yeah. Was scary. It was scary, but thank you. I wanna ask you about your your your routine and your tools that you use at home. Like, what are the practices and habits that keep you grounded, that help you be resilient, that that support your health? Like, after all these health challenges, and it's a lot. I mean, it's more than most people should ever have to have in a lifetime. What have you found are the things that are your nonnegotiables and your go to's every day or on a weekly basis that you lean into to help you stay healthy and thrive?

At different times, I have different nonnegotiables, to be honest. I feel like my my routine will shift and change depending on where I am, what's happening. And as I'm sitting here realizing the only thing that never changes is my faith and my prayer. I always pray. Every morning, I thank God for the ability to be able to get up out of bed, to be able to walk, to be able to go hug my baby, to be able to, like, smell the fresh air. And I I say thank you for a beautiful night's rest even if it wasn't because, you know Yeah.

I'm just gonna be grateful for what I got. And so I start with that, and then I definitely end my night with my prayers thanking God for the strength. I pray for continued strength and continued resilience. I pray for my family. I pray for the world. I pray for everybody, but I I think I've never thought about it till right now, but that's the only thing that's always been consistent. And I'll tell you, the other the gift of that is that I've built such a strong connection that I ask for messages, and I receive them.

I ask for things, and I get them. And sometimes I don't even realize I've gotten them until I've been praying again, and I'm like, oh my god. I'm asking for the same shit, and I already got it. Oh my gosh. Or, like, I'll wish for something, and I'm like, oh, I already have that. Okay. Wow. God just continues to bless me. So I focus on the blessings, and and I think that's why I'm able to, like you said, smile through it. You know, my mom, when she was interviewed about me back in the day when I first started in in LA and I was on Entertainment Tonight, they said, you know, what was Maria like as a kid?

And then she said, Maria was always smiling. And people see that all the time. They're like, someone just punched you in the face and you're still smiling. I don't know how else to be. I like to smile. I like to be happy. And so I think that's the only thing that's super nonnegotiable. Now are there other tools in the kit? I love to do I love to use my trampoline at least for a minute a day now. I've been in and out of that cycle, but I do that.

I love my infrared sauna and my red light. I do love walking and exercising. I do, you know, two or three times a week, some some resistance training and stuff. I'm sure there's a few other things that I'm forgetting right now. I take my supplements. I make sure I'm hydrated. But like I said, I realized that some oh, and I get an abundance of sun. Sun. Sun. Sun. Sun. Sun. I really have omitted as much blue light as possible except for when I do this stuff, and so I wear my blue light glasses.

I'm outside in nature. I'm grounding all the time to the point where my daughter now is, let's ground. She's two. So she does her cute. Her yoga poses, her fascia poses with me. She grounds. We get our hands in the dirt, and and we're getting our sun. And so I'm doing all those things, but like I said, I think I'm realizing now that there's a shift that needs to happen, And I'm in the very, very beginning, like, two days in where I'm like, you know what?

I think I have to see what my body is like off supplements for a minute. Because, you know, if you if you study Ayurvedic medicine, they say you're only supposed to take things for, like, a short time, and your body's supposed to recalibrate. I haven't given my body a chance to see if it could recalibrate on its own. So many things have happened, but I I'm realizing I need to go inward. So part of the toolkit too is, like, addressing your your emotional and spiritual needs.

What what are you not facing that you need to face? What are the traumas that you haven't dealt with yet? Like, I remember doing a lot of that work when my mom was ill Yeah. And then after she passed. And then I got to a good place, and I was like, I don't wanna feel bad anymore. I need to ride the good for a minute. So I rode the good, and now I think it's time to to go deep again. So I'm doing a little EMDR, and I'm gonna start kind of focusing on the inward part because my husband says to me a lot of the time, he's like, Marie, you can do all the green juices and all this shit you want.

He's like, if you don't deal with what's inside that's hurting you, you're never gonna get better. So I think I'm gonna finally listen to him. No. I'm kidding. That's good, Marie. I mean, the truth is that the the most powerful pharmacy in the world is between your ears. And it's incredible what can happen if you get your mind straight. Yeah. And a lot of people focus on what's wrong instead of what's right. What I heard you say is you're nonnegotiable is you're you're actually I don't know if you realize this, but you're you're doing a prayer that is essentially a a Buddhist prayer of loving kindness that wants goodness and health and well-being for all sentient beings.

Right? It's it's actually a it's called the loving kindness meditation. And it's it's it's kind of putting back out into the world love and beauty and healing and forgiveness. And, you know, that's an incredible thing for everybody to kind of glom onto. I think if nothing else from this podcast that you get, the idea that focusing on yourself only is a good idea, it's just not. And focusing on others and what you can do, not not to your detriment, but in terms of how you how you kind of think about your life.

And I think that anchor every day that you have a prayer, and it can come in many different forms. It could be meditation. It can be prayer. It can be, you know, kind of forgiveness. It's beautiful. There's the the prayer from the from Hawaiian Hawaiians, which is beautiful, which is more or less something like, I'm sorry. I love you. Please forgive me. Like, I'm seeing like, I and it's like it's just this beautiful it's this beautiful way of actually framing your life. And and and I think that to me, you know, you can eat whatever and all that actually, all that's great, you have to do all that, but it's really this mindset.

And that's I think what you said before is really key that the traumas and the things that we have, whether it's, like, the big t trauma that Deborah Monte talks about, which, you know, things like incest or little traumas, which is maybe your parents neglected you or, you know, or just your latchkey child or whatever. Those little traumas or big traumas shape our thinking, they shape our beliefs, they shape our way we see the world. They shape the lenses. They shape our behaviors. They shape our relationships.

And and the fact that you're doing something like EMDR EMDR is a a technique that helps you repattern your brain to help relive and then release the traumas. It's it's a very cool technique that people should with trauma should look at. But when we look at disease and when we look at illness, what happens in your mind is so important. There's there's a questionnaire that people go online and check. It's called the ACE questionnaire, adverse childhood events. And that is more predictive than almost anything of your risk of all sorts of things, from obesity to diabetes to cancer, to heart disease, to mortality early mortality.

And these are things that happen to us when we're kids that they get imprinted on us. So I I I really love that you're talking about how to set a next step in your journey is to even dig deeper because it never ends. I mean, I'm still at 65 still uncovering things about now my fathers and my my stepfather and my father, and how do I how they shaped how I do interact with the world and think about the world. And I I wanna become more sovereign and and not and not have those things govern how I think and act and believe and behave.

So I I think this message is so beautiful, and it's kind of funny that both of us have had these many, many health challenges, and yet we've come out, you you know, on the other side understanding that that the the way through is through is through, yes, taking care of ourselves, but also being in service and helping others. So your your work is really incredible. I I want people to know more about how they how they can join HealthSquad. Tell us a little bit more about it, where they can find it, and and what it what would do for you.

Because I think I think this is important. Because people are out there listening, they're, like, maybe isolated. They don't have a community. They don't have a connection. Mhmm. But there's something you're offering that's really powerful that I want want people to know about. Yeah. Thank you. It's called Heal Squad. You can get it wherever podcasts are, whether it's Spotify or Apple. And then we do have our monthly group meetings where we get together. It could be a cooking class. It could be a healer. It could be a psychic.

It could be anything in the Patreon. So if you become a member of Heal Squad on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, in the description, you can join the Patreon. It's, like, $10 a month or something. But I think the biggest thing that you should know is that I I always say, like, God loves me because people are like, how are you still here? I'm like, God loves me. And it's not that he doesn't love the people that are gone because he everyone has a different mission. I always just say, God loves me, but he loves you too.

So just connect and and talk. And whatever it sounds like, like, my prayers, I've just formed on my own. I don't know how other people pray. I just say, you know Yeah. But one of the key things that I do love is continue to flow is a very key thing. I would say, God, continue to flow an abundance of miraculous healing, love, safety, wealth for me, my family, and my loved ones. Continue to flow amazing people to help me on this journey, to help my family on this journey.

And then on the other part at the end when I pray for everyone else, and I'm just giving you a road map to help. It's like you can say, you know, God, please, you know, help the homeless, the hungry, the trafficked, the kids who are held against their will, the elderly who are alone in hospitals or in their homes who don't have love and support. Send them someone to help them, to heal them, to feed them, to house them. Send them love. Send them endurance and send them strength and resilience to get through this intense journey.

You can say whatever it is, but I do think I didn't think about it like you said, but it is important to pray for other people. And I have usually a laundry list of the ill people that I pray for. Some people, they just they don't even know I'm praying for them, but I pray to our healing saint, Saint Nicktario's, to heal them. So, yeah, I thank you for that little little thing because it's just gonna make me feel even better when I'm doing it at night because I I never thought about it like that, but it is.

We're it's bigger than just us. We're all connected. We're all one, and we all are here to help each other. And that's why my show, your show, we're helping people, but everyone's helping us back too. I every time I give, I get so much more back. Every time I help someone with their health, with the things that I've learned along the way, generally, doc, it's a message I needed to hear in that moment myself. I don't know if you found that, but I'm always shocked. Absolutely.

I mean, I think, you know, I studied Buddhism in college, and there's something called the the meta meditation, which is the loving kindness meditation. It's really about warmth, friendliness, compassion, and goodwill toward yourself and toward others. And it's something that is is a pretty good anchor for life. And and and if you can stay in that mindset, I think your your biology responds. Mhmm. So I always say your thoughts are things. They get translated into biological signals that control your immune system, your microbiome. Pretty much everything in your body is regulated or controlled by your thoughts.

And your thoughts then generate feelings and emotions, but it all starts with your thinking. And and I think challenging your thinking is important. Challenging your beliefs is important. And and actually having that as a sort of an anchor where you're kind of starting is important because you can do the right thing in the wrong with the wrong intent and not get the benefit. And and there's an amazing story that I'll close with, which is from Rosetta, Pennsylvania, where a group of Italian immigrants came. This whole town from Italy just came almost en masse, but they had all varying levels of income and wealth.

And but they all actually had a deep sense of connection to community, and they were each other's birthdays and weddings and celebrations and holidays. And they adopted the American way of life. I mean, they adopted the crappy American diet, but they didn't have the same rates of heart disease or diabetes or cancer as the rest of Americans. And and, you know, the the the take home message is that it was because they had this deep sense of connection and community and belonging. And and I think that's just a beautiful beautiful framework.

So I encourage everybody to check out Heal Squad Thank you. And check out Maria's work. Where can they find you, and how do they learn more about what you're doing? You can just go to my Instagram at Maria Menounos. My friend in elementary school helped me spell that out easily for people. It's me noun OS. Oh, me noun OS. Yeah. That's good. That's good. That's check out my WWE work on YouTube. I definitely am proud of my four and o record and my WrestleMania appearance at WrestleMania twenty eight is a highlight of life for sure.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Maria. Thanks for being on the Thank you. Luck with all you're doing and and hope we get to connect and hang out more. Keep doing what you're doing because it's inspiring so many and and that's what the world needs right now. A little more of love, little more inspiration. Thank you. Connection. What an episode. I love to hear from you. What's one step you're inspired to take to become the CEO of your health? Share with me in the comments below. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one.

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