BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty has opened up about her experience with an extremely painful condition which has caused her to be ‘doubled over in pain’ and ‘pass out’
Naga Munchetty has opened up about being diagnosed with a debilitating condition that has left her in “extreme pain” for three decades. The BBC Breakfast star appeared on Lorraine to speak about her new book, which is about her experience of medical misogyny.
Speaking about how she suffered with intense symptoms once she started her periods, Naga told host Christine Lampard: “Mine involved extreme pain, doubled over in pain, throwing up, passing out, cramps, fainting over and over again and really heavy periods to the point where I was setting an alarm at night to change my period products and sleeping on the floor. If I was uncomfortable on the floor, I thought it might distract from the pain.”
BBC Breakfast star Naga was diagnosed with adenomyosis in 2022 (
Image:
BBC/James Stack)
While initially told that she would “grow out of it”, Naga was finally diagnosed with adenomyosis after struggling with symptoms for decades. “It was only because I had a cyst on my ovary and I was having an ultrasound that they found adenomyosis,” she said.
“It’s the evil twin to endometriosis – it’s when the uterine wall, the lining grows outside the uterus so it’s spread into my pelvis and my lower back,” she said. “It can affect women in different ways but ultimately the pain is when hormones react, it takes your muscles, you have very heavy bleeding.”
Naga added that there is no cure for the condition and that treatment is management through hormones or a hysterectomy, which she has “refused to have”.
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Last week, Naga opened up about her diagnosis – and how the symptoms had become so intense that she that she had to call an ambulance on one occasion.
Adenomyosis, which affects around one in 10 women in the UK, is a condition where “the lining of the womb (uterus) starts growing into the muscle in the wall of the womb. There are treatments that can help with any symptoms”, the NHS states.
In an interview with The Times, Naga revealed that she had begun to ‘second guess’ her pain after three decades of the condition being undiagnosed.
“It makes you angry. If you are second-guessing that you are not strong enough to be a woman, that you are weaker than all the other women because you’re told it’s all normal, everyone’s going through it, you second-guess other parts of your life.”
