Featured Image Credit: BBC/Ian Davidson/Alamy
Topics: Celebrity, BBC, Health, Endometriosis
Jess Hardiman
Topics: Celebrity, BBC, Health, Endometriosis
BBC presenter Naga Munchetty has spoken out about the debilitatingly painful condition that makes her terrified to wear light trousers.
Munchetty, 48, has said her condition is so severe that she almost passed out while presenting BBC Breakfast, having had to run out of the studio before throwing up.
“I just said, ‘I have to leave’,” she told The Independent.
“And I went to the loo and I thought I was going to pass out, but I threw up and then just came back.”
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Munchetty was diagnosed with a condition called adenomyosis, which has been dubbed the ‘bad cousin’ of endometriosis.
The chronic disease can cause severe, life-impacting pain during periods, sexual intercourse and bowel movements, and can sometimes cause depression, anxiety and infertility, according to the World Health Organisation.
It currently affects roughly 190 million people worldwide, of those who are at a reproductive age as women and girls, the organisation said.
Both adenomyosis and endometriosis are conditions that involve endometrial-like tissue but the key difference between them is where the tissue grows.
With adenomyosis, endometrial-like tissue grows into the muscle of your uterus.
Whereas with endometriosis, endometrial-like tissue grows outside your uterus in places like your ovaries or fallopian tubes, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Munchetty said she had never heard of the illness until she was diagnosed around eight months ago.
She explained how she lives ‘every day on painkillers’ as she is in constant pain, also saying she does not wear ‘light-coloured trousers’ while presenting, having become ‘so afraid’ of leaking when it’s her time of the month.
Munchetty said the pain was so debilitating this weekend that her husband had to call an ambulance in the middle of the night, stressing she’d ‘never dialled 999’ in her life.
“I was writhing around and moaning and screaming in pain,” she continued.
“Eventually I got to sleep after about 45 minutes. And then it happened again in the middle of the night and we had to call an ambulance because I couldn’t be moved. And I was just screaming.
“All I remember saying is ‘if the ambulance comes’, which it didn’t. ‘Do not let them, give me a full hysterectomy’ because that is the only cure to get rid of it.”