Last October, former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis revealed that her breast cancer had advanced to stage IV.
Lewis, 51, was initially diagnosed with stage III breast cancer in 2019 but opted against a doctor-recommended double mastectomy to treat the cancer. Shortly after, it progressed to stage IV.
Now, in a heartfelt exclusive with Essence, the mom of one is opening up about how she discovered her diagnosis, why she decided to forego treatment, and the advice she wishes every Black woman would take to heart.
Ananda Lewis’ Journey With Breast Cancer

According to Ananda Lewis, breast cancer entered her life in a very sneaky way.
“I breastfed my son for three years. During that time, I had mastitis often, and it always happened in my right breast,” the former MTV VJ shared with Essence. “By 2014, I stopped breastfeeding, things calmed down, so I really didn’t pay much attention to the breast anymore.”
Life carried on until December 2018, when Lewis noticed a lump in the same area where mastitis had once flared up. Concerned but determined, she decided to investigate further.
“It was a little larger than a pea but definitely noticeable,” Lewis explained. “My next step was to get a thermography scan, which uses a heat-sensing camera to find hot spots in the body. Cancer tends to appear really hot.”
The scan confirmed that there was cause for concern, so in January 2019, Lewis visited a breast specialist and had a biopsy.
The following day, the doctor called and gave her the news: her tests were positive for invasive carcinoma.
“It was ER/PR positive, HER2 negative breast cancer, stage III,” she shared.
What Came Next

“In general, I’m not a fearful person,” Lewis explained. “My approach to life is to face things head-on as they come. Life is challenging for everyone—I’m no exception. So, what’s the point of responding with fear? Fear freezes you. I’m an action-taker. So instead of panicking, I made a game plan.”
She thought back to what she’d learned from her mom and cousin’s journeys with breast cancer, and specifically, the things she observed being done to her mom—and decided to take a different path.
“It’s not that I don’t trust the medical community. I do, with certain things, but I see a flaw in how they think about treating cancer. So, I knew that I would address it in a different way.”
Lewis dove into research and started by figuring out why her body was creating cancer and the best way to change the terrain, which, according to medical sources, was to do a complete lifestyle overhaul.
So, she stopped consuming alcohol and sugar, did a cleanse to get the buildup of toxins out, and began shifting the way she managed stress.
“My goal was to do things that supported my body’s ability to continue to be whole enough to heal instead of destroying it,” the TV host shared.
“I also couldn’t figure out how to fit the double mastectomy, the full chemotherapy, and potentially the radiation they were telling me to have into my already overwhelmed life. More importantly, these methods went against what I believed was right for my body.”
Still, Lewis ensured the breast specialist performed monthly ultrasounds to keep an eye on the tumor.
She also turned to high-dose Vitamin C IVs, hyperbaric chamber sessions, qigong exercises, energy work, prayers and diet changes—all while grappling with the stress of ending a 10-year relationship with the man she loved: her son’s father.
In January 2020, ultrasounds revealed that while everything was still growing slowly, the social activist was doing remarkably well. Even her doctors were impressed.
But then COVID hit—and everything changed.
Battling Breast Cancer Through COVID

When California went into lockdown in March 2020, Lewis faced a challenging setback—everything was shut down, and she could no longer access her treatments or ultrasounds.
By the summer of that year, she noticed the tumor growing again, forcing her to revisit her options.
“I needed to look at all my options again,” the mom of one shared. “What would surgery look like now? What steps would I need to take? But the hospitals weren’t scheduling those surgeries then—only emergency surgeries.”
Determined to find a solution, Lewis expanded her search beyond California and discovered everything was still up and running in Arizona.
She found a comprehensive integrative facility, and in August 2020, she packed up her truck, drove 419 miles to Arizona, and started 16 weeks of intensive treatment.
“I was heartbroken to leave my son. I had never been without him, not even for a weekend. But I was in warrior mode, determined to get my health back for the both of us,” Lewis explained.
She underwent treatments such as cryoablation (an FDA-approved procedure in which an icy liquid—usually liquid nitrogen, liquid nitrous oxide, or compressed argon gas—is used to freeze abnormal tissue), genetically targeted fractionated chemotherapy, and even went through acupuncture to help restore red blood cell levels.
Lewis also tried a cutting-edge drug designed to boost the immune system within the tumor and apheresis (a procedure that filters toxins from the blood before reintroducing it back into the body).
“All these things were part of a layered approach,” she said. “Cancer was attacking my body from a lot of different directions. So, to be truly effective, we had to attack it the same way.”
And it worked. By the time she left Arizona in December 2020, Lewis had gone from stage III to stage II. The tumor had shrunk significantly, and it was no longer in her lymph nodes. However, the journey was far from over. Maintaining her health came with a strict set of instructions—and a hefty price tag.
“I struggled to pay for the ongoing treatments that would have kept things at bay, and then I lost my insurance,” she shared. “It was two and a half years before I could really do any more effective treatments. I needed to find work.”
So, Lewis shifted her focus from battling cancer to getting back into the TV hosting business, launching an app, starting a T-shirt business, and doing all the entrepreneurial things she could from home as COVID lockdowns continued.
She ultimately got her insurance back, and when she had a scan done in January 2023, everything was still stable. Yes, the tumor had grown bigger, but it hadn’t spread anywhere else.
“I felt really, really blessed and really, really good,” Lewis told the news outlet.
As she continued navigating her health journey, she began exploring other treatment options to address the tumor more directly.
It was this search that led her to electrical ablation (another FDA-approved cancer-treating procedure performed by an American doctor in Mexico). But while the treatment showed promising results in other cancer patients, things didn’t quite work out as expected for Lewis.
“I could feel things happening in my body that didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what was causing it. Was it the ablation procedure? The radiation that PET scans expose you to? The shift I’d make in my diet to try an all-fruit approach? No one had clear answers.”
By October 2023, Lewis’ PET scans revealed that the cancer had spread outside the original location, which meant she had entered stage IV.
“I called on my loved ones again and got back into treatment at an integrative facility closer to home in Southern California. By January 2024, I had completed about 12 weeks of therapy and had greatly improved,” she said.
What’s Next For Ananda Lewis?

“Stage IV breast cancer isn’t a death penalty, as many headlines have written,” Lewis told Essence Magazine. “It just means I have to do bigger things to get it back in check.”
So she plans on staying proactive – taking her meds, continuing her integrative approach (which includes traditional Chinese medicine), and when needed. undergo insulin-potentiated chemo.
“My last PET scan showed that almost all the new areas discovered in October were no longer active. The few areas that remain are significantly reduced in terms of cancer activity. I’m doing really well right now, according to my medical team, and I’m going to work my butt off to make sure I stay that way.”
She continued: “Am I in the clear? No. But I could’ve ended up here no matter what route I took because I didn’t come in this with the resources I needed to stay the course.”
So, it is what it is for now.
What she doesn’t want is for her story to be framed as a cautionary tale about rejecting the conventional path. “That’s not why I ended up at Stage IV,” she emphasized.
“Sometimes, people end up here whether they do conventional or not.”
Ananda Lewis’ Message To Black Women

Going into 2025, Lewis urges Black women to take charge of their health and avoid walking the same path she has had to navigate.
Looking back, she shared with Essence, “If I had known what I know now 10 years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up here. I would have been cold plunging, exercising consistently, making sure my vitamin D levels were good, detoxing my body on a monthly and yearly basis, and sleeping better.”
She continued: “As Black women, we tend to have higher chronic stress rates. We have, in many cases, worse diets and sleep diets. Up until this diagnosis, I was sleeping only three or four hours a night. That, on top of toxic exposure, not drinking enough water, and eating completely wrong, created a perfect storm for cancer.”
So, her advice to Black women is to empower themselves with knowledge. She encourages us to seek out verified health and wellness information, learn from it, and apply it in our lives so we can continue thriving and leading healthier lives.
“As Black women, we have all kinds of factors we’re not even aware of that contribute to cancer impinging upon us,” she said. So, make sure to “increase your knowledge about how to prevent getting here in the first place.”
Prevention is the real cure.