Maria Menounos on Sunlight, Slowing Down and What Happened When She Made Her Health the Priority

What happens when you temporarily remove yourself from the routines, stress and responsibilities of everyday life—and give your body your full attention?

In part two of her conversation with Dr. Allison, Maria shares what she’s been doing during an extended stay in the Dominican Republic and the changes she’s beginning to notice. Her days have become remarkably simple: morning sunlight, outdoor movement, seasonal food, early dinners, meditation, rest and plenty of time outside.

But the experiment is becoming about more than physical health.

It’s also forcing Maria to confront something many people struggle with: Why is it so difficult to give ourselves the same time and care we so readily give everyone else?

Some of the health theories discussed in the episode—including claims about grounding, electromagnetic fields, bioresonance and sunlight improving specific medical conditions—aren’t established medical treatments. Maria’s results are personal observations, not proof that the same practices will produce similar results for others.

Still, her experiment raises a compelling question: What might change if taking care of yourself stopped being the thing you squeezed in after everything else?

Maria’s Health Experiment Is Surprisingly Simple

Maria traveled to the Dominican Republic partly because she wanted to immerse herself in an environment with abundant natural light.

And once she arrived, she began documenting what she did each day.

Her routine includes watching the sunrise, spending significant time outdoors, doing fascia stretches and movement, walking barefoot, meditating, eating locally grown foods, eating plenty of seafood, exercising, taking naps when she’s tired, watching the sunset and eating dinner earlier.

She has also been journaling everything she eats and does so she can look back at the experience as an experiment rather than relying solely on memory.

What’s largely missing?

The frantic pace of her normal life.

Instead of trying to fit health into the margins of her schedule, she’s temporarily made health the schedule.

Is Living Near the Equator Automatically Healthier?

Dr. Allison believes latitude and sunlight exposure can play important roles in health, and she describes being struck by the people she observed while visiting El Salvador.

She saw people spending large portions of their days outside, walking, surfing, eating locally grown seasonal foods and experiencing relatively consistent sunrise and sunset times throughout the year.

But Maria noticed something that complicated the picture.

During her travels, she also saw many people using wheelchairs. It reminded her that simply living in a sunny climate doesn’t automatically make someone healthy.

Dr. Allison agrees.

Location is only one part of someone’s health. Diet, physical activity, genetics, socioeconomic conditions, healthcare access, environmental exposures, smoking, alcohol use, infections and countless other factors can influence disease.

And while sunlight plays important biological roles—including helping regulate circadian rhythms and supporting vitamin D production—living closer to the equator isn’t a prescription for good health.

More sunlight isn’t automatically better sunlight, either. Excess ultraviolet exposure can damage skin and increase skin-cancer risk.

The useful takeaway is simpler:

Where you live creates opportunities for certain health behaviors. What you do with those opportunities still matters.

What Maria Actually Does All Day

Maria’s Dominican Republic routine sounds almost like the opposite of a traditional wellness boot camp.

She’s not trying to cram every possible treatment into every hour.

She gets up for sunrise and spends about two hours outside.

She stretches.

She meditates.

She eats foods being grown on the property.

She drinks coconut water and green juice.

She eats seafood.

She plays pickleball.

She spends additional time outside when the weather allows.

She naps if she’s tired.

She watches the sunset.

She eats dinner around 5 p.m.

Then she begins winding down for bed.

There are supplements and other wellness practices mixed in, but one of the biggest changes may simply be the amount of time she’s allowing herself to rest, move, think and exist without constantly rushing to the next obligation.

She Stopped Forcing Herself to Produce a Result

There’s an important moment when Maria catches herself turning her health retreat into another job.

She starts worrying that she needs results.

She’s documenting the experience for Heal Squad. People are following her journey. She’s testing different practices.

So somewhere along the way, another pressure sneaks in:

I need to have something to show everybody.

Maria eventually recognizes what she’s doing.

Even while trying to heal, she’s creating another performance metric.

So she gives herself permission to stop forcing an outcome.

That shift matters because wellness itself can become stressful when every meal, workout, blood test, meditation and hour of sleep becomes something to optimize.

Sometimes taking care of yourself also means allowing yourself to simply be.

What If Your Love Language Applies to You, Too?

During the trip, Maria speaks with a hypnotherapist friend about one of her longstanding sources of stress: time.

She frequently feels as though she doesn’t have enough of it.

There’s always something else that needs to happen. Something else she should be doing. Someone else who needs her.

Then her friend makes an observation:

Maria’s love language is quality time.

So why isn’t she giving quality time to herself?

It reframes the issue.

Self-care doesn’t necessarily require another wellness treatment. Maybe it means protecting the first part of the morning.

Watching the sunrise.

Feeding your child without simultaneously rushing toward work.

Playing.

Thinking.

Having enough space in your day that you’re not perpetually chasing the clock.

Maria even considers moving her show later so she can protect that morning time.

If quality time is how you show other people love, perhaps you deserve some of it too.

When Constant “What Ifs” Become Your Normal

The slower pace is also giving Maria room to recognize patterns from her past.

She describes growing up with constant uncertainty around her father’s health.

What if his blood sugar drops?

What if he doesn’t come home?

What if he dies?

Her mother was constantly on edge, and Maria recognizes how much of that fear became part of her own way of operating.

She also remembers spending significant time cleaning nightclubs with her family—being inside during morning hours under artificial lighting rather than experiencing the outdoor routines she is now prioritizing.

The trip is giving her enough quiet to notice how much of her life has been shaped by vigilance, fear and pressure.

That doesn’t mean sunlight or a vacation can erase longstanding stress patterns.

But recognizing those patterns can be an important first step toward changing how you respond to them.

Maria Says Her Energy Is Coming Back

When Maria first arrived, she was tired.

She slept.

She napped.

She allowed herself to slow down.

As the trip continued, she says something began changing.

Her energy started increasing.

She needed fewer naps.

She felt better.

And she noticed another change that was particularly meaningful because of her diabetes: she says she was requiring less insulin for some breakfasts than she had before the trip, despite sometimes eating more carbohydrates.

That’s an important observation for Maria—but it should not be generalized into a treatment recommendation.

Insulin needs can change for many reasons, including food intake, physical activity, stress, illness, sleep, medications and other physiological factors. People who use insulin should not reduce or discontinue it based on someone else’s experience with sunlight, travel, diet or other wellness practices. Changes in diabetes treatment should be made with appropriate medical guidance.

For Maria, the change is a data point she intends to investigate further with blood testing.

What Is Bioresonance—and What Can It Actually Tell You?

Maria also shares results from a bioresonance session conducted remotely using a current photograph.

She says the practitioner reported improvements in areas including her pancreas and liver and identified symptoms she was experiencing at the time, including sinus inflammation and hip discomfort.

Maria found the results remarkable.

But this is an area where the distinction between personal experience and medical evidence is particularly important.

Bioresonance is an alternative-health practice based on the theory that electromagnetic frequencies emitted by the body can be measured and manipulated to identify or treat health problems. It isn’t an established diagnostic replacement for conventional blood tests, imaging, biopsies or other validated medical testing.

Maria acknowledges the uncertainty herself, saying the technique isn’t completely proven and describing it as another data point in her experiment.

That’s a useful way to think about any unconventional test:

Interesting information isn’t necessarily the same thing as a diagnosis.

Don’t Let a Wellness Experiment Replace Medical Care

The conversation includes several intriguing theories about light, mitochondrial function, electromagnetic frequencies and the possibility of improving chronic health conditions through environmental changes.

Maria also mentions hearing stories of people traveling closer to the equator and no longer needing insulin.

Those anecdotes shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence that sunlight can cure diabetes or replace insulin.

For someone managing diabetes, thyroid disease, cancer or another medical condition, lifestyle changes can sometimes play an important supportive role. But they should complement appropriate medical monitoring rather than replace it.

Maria herself is continuing to collect objective information through blood work.

That’s an important part of experimenting responsibly:

Pay attention to how you feel—but also measure what actually changed.

Maybe Rest Is Part of the Treatment

One of the most interesting things about Maria’s experience may have nothing to do with latitude.

She’s resting.

She describes spending time thinking and daydreaming.

She’s outside.

She’s moving her body.

She’s eating early.

She’s sleeping when she’s tired.

She’s meditating.

She’s temporarily removed from many of the cues and responsibilities that normally keep her moving.

And she’s beginning to recognize that slowing down doesn’t necessarily mean she’s wasting time.

Dr. Allison connects better health with the idea of “gaining time”—not literally creating more hours in a day, but potentially having more energy and healthier years in which to use them.

That reframes the usual objection to self-care:

I don’t have time.

Perhaps the better question is:

What is constantly running without recovery costing you?

Taking Care of Yourself Isn’t Abandoning Everyone Else

Toward the end of the conversation, Maria gets to the emotional heart of why this trip has been difficult.

She’s away from her daughter.

She misses her.

And yet she knows why she came.

Maria reflects on how easily people—especially caregivers—can learn that loving their families means sacrificing themselves completely.

She describes it as believing we’re supposed to “go down with the ship.”

Her trip is challenging that belief.

She thinks about her mother and wonders whether things might have been different if her mother had been able to prioritize herself more.

There’s no way to know that, and it would be wrong to suggest that self-care could have prevented her mother’s illness.

But the question underneath it is still powerful:

Does caring for everyone else require neglecting yourself?

Maria is beginning to believe the answer is no.

You Don’t Have to Earn the Right to Take Care of Yourself

This episode begins with sunlight and ends somewhere much deeper.

Maria traveled to the Dominican Republic to experiment with her physical environment.

But once life became quiet enough, she started examining her internal one.

The pressure to perform.

The constant fear.

The obsession with time.

The habit of worrying about everyone else.

The guilt that can come with putting herself first.

And maybe that’s the most important part of her experiment.

You don’t necessarily need a tropical retreat.

You don’t need to follow Maria’s routine.

You don’t need to adopt every theory discussed in the episode.

But you can ask yourself the question her experience raises:

Where am I consistently giving everyone else something I refuse to give myself?

Time.

Rest.

Attention.

Patience.

Care.

Maria’s trip is still an experiment, and the medical results remain to be seen.

But she’s already learning something that doesn’t require a laboratory to measure:

Taking care of yourself isn’t something you do instead of caring for the people you love. It may be part of how you stay well enough to keep loving them.