Maria Menounos has faced numerous serious health issues with courage and resolve over the years.
Maria stunned her fans in 2017 when she stepped down from her job as E! News co-anchor after being diagnosed with a brain tumor at the same time as her mother, Litsa Menounos, was battling brain cancer. Six years later, Maria fought for her life once again when a battery of tests showed she had a rare form of pancreatic cancer.
While Dancing With the Stars alum made a full recovery in both instances, she disclosed another ongoing health challenge in March 2026 after learning that she has pernicious anemia. (Per the Mayo Clinic, pernicious anemia is the result of having too few healthy red blood cells and can cause tiredness, shortness of breath and dizziness.)
“After everything I’ve been through on my healing journey… this has been one of the BIGGEST lessons: Sometimes it’s not about doing more, it’s about giving your body something different,” she shared via Instagram in March 2026.
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Keep scrolling for more about Maria’s health challenges over the years:
Maria Menounos Developed a Brain Tumor in 2017
In July 2017, Maria Menounos confirmed that she’d been diagnosed with a slow-growing benign brain tumor at the same time as her mother, Litsa, was battling stage 4 brain cancer.
“This February I thought I had an ear infection so I went to a doctor, and he said, ‘Your ears are the cleanest things I’ve ever seen. What else are you feeling?’ I’d been getting light-headed on-set and having headaches. My speech had gotten slurred, and I was having difficulty reading the teleprompter. I said, ‘I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I think I have a brain tumor like my mom,” she told People at the time. “He said, ‘I don’t think you’re crazy. Let’s just get an MRI.’ The next week I started feeling better, so I was like, ‘I’m clearly paranoid.’ So I kept pushing the MRI.”
When the MRI ultimately proved that Maria’s intuition was correct, she underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor. Maria subsequently stepped down from cohosting E! News in order to focus on her health.
Litsa Menounos and Maria Menounos in 2018. Michael Tullberg/Getty Images“I am so grateful for the past three years at E!, I had such an amazing time co-hosting with Jason Kennedy and working every day with the wonderful roster of talent on the show, including producers, staff and crew,” Maria said in a statement at the time.
She went on, “It was such a special, good-hearted group and one I’ll always consider family. A special thank you to Frances Berwick and Adam Stotsky for all the support they have shown me through the years, especially during these tough times. I will truly miss everyone and looking forward to this next chapter in my life.”
During a 2023 appearance on Hoda Kotb‘s podcast, “Making Space,” Maria credited her intuition with potentially saving her life.
“I diagnosed myself,” she said.
Maria’s mom, Litsa, died at age 66 following a long battle with stage 4 brain cancer in May 2021.
Maria Menounos Experienced Difficulties With Fertility
The “Conversations with Maria Menounos” host and her husband, Keven Undergaro, endured a decade-long fertility struggle before they welcomed their daughter, Athena Alexandra, via surrogacy in 2023.
Two years earlier, Maria opened up to Today about the frustrations and heartbreak that she and Undergaro experienced while trying to conceive using multiple methods.
“Every psychic says, ‘You’re having twins,” she recalled in 2021. “And I’m like, ‘I’m having nothing. Nothing is working.’ We had an amazing surrogate and we loved her. But our fertility doctor told us that it was never going to work. We tried and tried and and tried and tried.”
Maria Menounos and her husband Keven Undergaro in 2020. CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty ImagesShe added, “You start to think, ‘Am I too old? Am I too tired? Is this a sign? Is it a message that we’re not supposed to have kids?’”
The couple never gave up on their dream and ultimately welcomed their daughter through use of a surrogate.
“It was the most special moment of my life,” Maria told Us Weekly in 2023. “The doctor literally grabbed her and hiked her onto me. I sat with her on my chest, and Keven and I kept looking at each other like, ‘Oh, my God.’ It was just pure joy.”
Maria Menounos Battled Cancer Soon After Becoming a Mom
Speaking to Hoda Kotba on the “Making Space” podcast in November 2023, Maria Menounos shared that her doctors recently discovered a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, a rare form of pancreatic cancer.
Maria described a frustrating ordeal where it took more than a year for her to convince doctors that something was seriously wrong in her abdomen. She recalled looking like she “swallowed a basketball” for “at least a year and a half.”
The TV host underwent both an endoscopy and colonoscopy, each of which turned up nothing, but she refused to drop the issue. Eventually, Maria learned she had type 1 diabetes and underwent a full body scan that identified a mass on her pancreas.
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“I have learned that we have to be the CEO of our health. We have to use our own internal guidance. We have to do our own homework. We have to push if the pain persists,” she told Kotb. “You can’t just listen to somebody else tell you what’s happening in your body.”
Maria continued, “I even knew there was something wrong with my pancreas. I had a viewer reach out to me and say, ‘You predicted this last April on your [podcast].’ … And I did. I said, ‘I think something’s wrong with my pancreas.’”
Maria Menounos Has Been Treated for Pernicious Anemia
Maria Menounos chatted with Jenny McCarthy on her podcast in March 2026 about the latter’s health issues linked to mold toxicity. During their discussion, Maria mentioned that she was being treated with B12 for pernicious anemia, a condition that develops due to a deficiency of healthy red blood cells.
“[My deficiency] is really high right now,” Maria explained.
McCarthy encouraged Maria to look into adjusting her treatment by taking methylated B12, a tissue-ready form of the vitamin.
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