BBC Breakfast star Naga Munchetty has opened up about her "debilitating" adenomyosis symptoms and the lengths she has to go to in order to manage them.
In a new interview with The Times, the journalist revealed that she "loads herself up on painkillers" to get through the show.
Speaking about her symptoms, she said: "When I talk about debilitating pain I mean going to bed and flooding, so I have to set an alarm every three hours, lie on a towel and wear a sanitary towel as well as a super plus tampon."
She went on to explain how difficult it is to concentrate on her job when she's experiencing intense pain. "I've been in pain on the BBC Breakfast sofa and doing my radio show where I've not been 'in the room,'" she said, adding that she "loads herself up on painkillers," taking four to six paracetamol and a couple of ibuprofen over the course of a day.
Explaining that doctors didn't take her debilitating adenomyosis symptoms seriously when she was growing up, she revealed that she was told that her pain may ease after having children.
"I was always told, 'You're just unlucky. It might get better when you have children,'" she said.
Naga, who lives in Hertfordshire with her TV director husband, has been very open about her decision not to have children in the past. "We never tried and I never miscarried, we just never really wanted them," she previously said.
"We kept putting the decision off, then life got better for us, we became more selfish . . . and just didn't find the time."
The 48-year-old first opened up about her diagnosis in May. She told her Radio 5 Live listeners: "Right now as I sit here talking to you: I am in pain. Constant, nagging pain. In my uterus. Around my pelvis. Sometimes it runs down my thighs. And I’ll have some level of pain for the entire show and for the rest of the day until I go to sleep."
She went on to say that she avoids wearing "light-coloured trousers" while presenting BBC Breakfast as she is "so afraid" of leaking while on her period.
Recalling a time that she almost passed out while presenting the programme, she said: "I just said, 'I have to leave'. And I went to the loo and I thought I was going to pass out, but I threw up and then just came back."
On one occasion, her husband had to phone an ambulance in the middle of the night after she was "writhing around and moaning and screaming in pain".
"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," she said.