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With two cancer diagnoses over the course of a decade, former “Dancing with the Stars” co-host Samantha Harris learned an invaluable lesson: Be your own advocate.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Harris, who served as host for Tower Cancer Research Foundation’s annual Tower of Hope Gala in Los Angeles earlier this month, opened up about her personal cancer journey, revealed how multiple misdiagnoses forced her to listen to her “inner voice” on two separate occasions\ and shared how she manages to live a healthy and cancer-free life today.
“If there’s a PSA for what I learned from my cancer diagnosis, (it) is that we have to be our own best health advocates,” the certified health coach said. “We can’t just sit back and ignore signs when our body, as mine was screaming at me after I had three doctors after a clear mammogram over the course of four months tell me that the lump I found … was nothing. They said, ‘No, Samantha, it’s nothing. We touched it, we felt it. It was nothing.’
Samantha Harris was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, then again in 2024. (Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for EWG)
“And that inner voice was screaming at me to say, ‘Samantha, if this is truly nothing, how do we know unless we have more diagnostic testing?’ And I’ll be honest. All the diagnostic tests actually came back with … it’s also not cancer,” she continued. “But, thankfully, I had an incredible specialist, a breast oncologist who took that tumor out not thinking it was a tumor, and we found out it was Stage 2 invasive breast cancer.
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“We eventually, from my mastectomy, found that it had gone to a lymph node. It was much more further along than we even realized,” she added. “And it was in that moment, despite this wonderful television career I had hosting ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ hosting ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ all the fun red carpets, none of that was meaningful to me.”
WATCH HERE: FORMER ‘DWTS’ HOST SAMANTHA HARRIS WAS DISMISSED MULTIPLE TIMES BEFORE 2 BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSES IN 10 YEARS
The former “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent was first diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in March 2014, when she was 40 years old.
“It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest,” she told People magazine at the time. “I was sick of feeling the way that I did in the days after the diagnosis. I knew I needed to take control.”
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She underwent a double mastectomy and was declared cancer-free later that year.
However, the cancer returned in August 2024.
The TV personality has since been an avid advocate for cancer research. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
“[After my first diagnosis], every expert … was telling me to do A through Z three times over,” she said. “And it took my diagnosis in 2024 when I had a recurrence again of this local regional recurrence that, thankfully because of the healthy lifestyle changes I had made, that recurrence was very small. I caught it myself again, had doctors again tell me it was nothing, pushed again. And, thankfully, we found that it was, and we got it out, but it gave me another wake up call.
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“I absolutely found a new purpose,” she continued. “I mean, this is for the last 12 years now, since my initial diagnosis, I have really shifted. Yes, I love doing my work on television, but now the work I’m doing on television is much more blending the world of wellness and how we can have agency over our health future.”
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Harris quickly learned that everything we’re putting in, on and around our body can affect us.
“It can be paralyzing because of the overwhelm,” she admitted. “And I learned it’s OK to embrace what I call 10% toxic. So, now I live by this 10% toxic method, which means I kind of assess all the different areas of my life that have toxicity from the air I’m breathing to my workouts, to my food, to my products I’m using.
“And then where can I make small, easy-step changes to really mitigate the harm. And bring that toxicity from maybe 70% or 40% down to as close to 10% toxic as possible, but never trying to achieve zero, because what I learned is when we’re trying for 100% toxin-free lifestyle, 100% of the time, we 100% fail. We need that wiggle room.”
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Harris was initially told her first diagnosis was “nothing.” (Michael Kovac/Getty Images)
These days, Harris is focused on living her best, healthy life while continuing to educate, advocate for research advances and give back to foundations such as Tower Cancer Research.
“What I love about Tower is that it acts as an angel investor to typically support these early career scientists,” she said. “And they’re younger, they’re less established. They’re not getting the money from the big organizations, but Tower funds and supports the high-risk, high-reward science that is taking those risks that we as survivors need so much to pursue these new treatments or unconventional treatments that have that potential for incredible breakthrough and survivorship.”
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While Harris admitted she still battles an ongoing fear of recurrence, she’s grateful for where she is today.
“I am feeling more energetic, happier, healthier, more vibrant than I have ever been,” she said. “And I really think that the changes that I have made since my initial cancer diagnosis and then the pivot to becoming 10% toxic since my recurrence has really given me a new lease on life. And I’m excited for this next chapter.”