Spurred by her own experiences of poor care, Naga Munchetty has become a fierce advocate for women’s health. She tells Emma Higginbotham why change is so badly needed
On a Saturday evening in November 2022, Naga Munchetty was in so much pain that her husband James carried her to bed. The BBC Breakfast presenter has adenomyosis, a condition where the womb’s lining grows into its muscular wall, and was enduring an excruciating flare-up. Screaming in agony, drenched in sweat and fighting the urge to pass out, she eventually agreed to let him call an ambulance.
The ambulance never came, as Naga wasn’t considered a priority. Instead, when the stabbing pain became more bearable a few hours later, she spoke to a paramedic over the phone – who suggested that next time it happens, she should try taking two paracetamol.
“Honestly, if someone said something as ridiculous as that to me now, they would get it with two barrels,” says Naga grimly. “But I was so exhausted and so shocked, I just went, ‘yeah, thanks’.
“I just couldn't believe it. You've had a woman whose husband has been on the phone because she can't speak, and you can hear her screaming in the background, and then to be told to take two paracetamol! It was as if I'd had a paper cut.”
Naga had always suffered with periods so heavy and painful that she’d regularly vomit, faint, and sleep curled up on the bathroom floor, but was consistently told by doctors that it was normal. She hadn’t even heard of adenomyosis, even though it affects one in 10 women, until her diagnosis eight months earlier. Furious at being failed once again, Naga decided to speak out, and made headlines when she revealed her constant, nagging pain to the listeners of her daytime Radio 5 Live show.
“The response was amazing,” she recalls. “It's what kicked off That Time of the Month [her taboo-busting health series on 5 Live], and getting people to talk about things that they’re ashamed or scared to talk about, which they absolutely shouldn't be.”
It also put adenomyosis in the spotlight, and prompted the NHS to add a full webpage about the condition. Within four months it had been viewed 80,000 times.
This wasn’t the first time that Naga has sparked a positive change. A few years earlier, she’d endured a contraceptive IUD fitting that was, she says, “one of the most traumatic physical experiences I have ever had.” The pain caused her to pass out twice. “The GP said ‘Do you want to stop?’ and I said ‘We've got this far, I'm not going through that again’. I thought I'd be going to the gym afterwards, but I ended up lying on the sofa, cramping and bleeding for hours, not knowing what the hell had happened.”
In 2021, Naga spotted an article that Times columnist Caitlin Moran had written about her own distressing IUD fitting. “For some women it’s fine, but you have to take into account that this is an excruciatingly painful experience for others,” she says. “I ranted in my morning meeting at my team, going, ‘She's bloody got it right! This is what happens to me!’ And there was silence. They're used to my rants, and I thought I'd gone too far. Then they said, ‘You've got to talk about it’. I’d never, ever spoken about anything like that before. I’m very private, and I was very reluctant, but again, the responses we got were fantastic.”
As a direct result of the discussion on Naga’s radio show, the guidelines were changed, and proper pain relief is now offered for IUD fittings. “A friend texted me and said, ‘Oh my goodness, I've just been offered gas and air for the first time, and it was bloody marvellous!’ she says. “It feels great. But why did it take so long for women to be listened to?”
Fuelled by her experiences, Naga has written a book called It’s Probably Nothing: Critical Conversations on the Women’s Health Crisis (and how to thrive despite it). A guide to dozens of conditions that can affect the female body, it also features testimonies from more than 80 women who’ve struggled to be taken seriously.
There’s Anna, whose heart attack was dismissed as a panic attack. There’s Fiona, whose sister died of uterine cancer after being misdiagnosed with fibroids. There’s Lucy-Rose, who was told she was making a fuss when she asked for a scan for her back pain, which then revealed eight fractured vertebrae. And Bhavna, whose cries for help were ignored when her womb ruptured during labour. “She knows that there was eye-rolling around her,” says Naga. “But she had a 30cm uterine tear which was causing that pain, and the baby died.” She shakes her head. “I hate injustice. It gives me this red mist. We're all human beings, and our brilliant NHS system means that we all get the opportunity to be treated equally. If that's not happening, and women are suffering, then that's not fair.”
Throughout history, women’s pain has been dismissed as an innate part of being female, but now is the time for change, she says. “This is the book that I wish I had when I was younger, because knowing these things occur means you feel more empowered to question what's going wrong if something doesn't feel right.”
Naga has always had a defiant streak. Born in 1975, the daughter of an Indian mother and Mauritian father who were both nurses, she grew up with her younger sister in south London, and describes her childhood self as “stubborn, curious, mischievous, tenacious – I don't let things go. But I loved to laugh, and had the biggest cackle. I still do.”
She had no burning career ambitions beyond perhaps becoming a vet (“but I couldn't bear to see animals in distress, I'm too soft like that”), and hadn’t considered journalism until she was at university in Leeds. A friend on her English course was involved with the student newspaper, and suggested that Naga should come along. She was quickly hooked. “I just liked asking questions. I liked the focus not being me, and I liked telling difficult stories well, which is why I became a financial journalist at the start. Sometimes financial news can feel really heavy, and it was a skill that gave me a really good grounding to get to the nub of a story.”
After stints at the Evening Standard and The Observer, she switched from print to broadcast journalism by chance when a camera operator friend at Reuters financial television mentioned there were shifts going. For Naga, it was a natural fit. “I really liked the pace of it, because I’m not someone who works well with a long deadline. That's why I love live television and radio, because you hit the ground running. It suits my personality. Fast and furious. I like that tension of having to be precise in a short amount of time, and then I just stop, like a toddler, and everything falls out of my brain.”
Moving from financial to general news, Naga has been gracing the red Breakfast sofa for more than a decade now. Do people always ask how early she gets up? “Yes, every time!” she grins. “Quarter to four is my first alarm. I have about six, because I'm not someone who jumps out of bed, and I get into the office just before five.” Nerves are never an issue, “because I prepare incessantly. If I'm on the tube, tram or train, I'll be looking at news websites, constantly making sure I'm on top of stuff, and if I'm interviewing someone who's written a book, I will read it from cover to cover. I hate laziness.
“I'm very conscious of the responsibility of doing what I do,” she adds. “I've been a journalist for 29 years, but every day I go back and think, ‘What could I have done better?’ I critically analyse myself.”
She’s not the only one analysing her critically – Naga has long suffered at the hands of trolls. Does it bother her when she gets a bit of a hard time from the keyboard warriors? “A bit of one?!” she says, and laughs. “I say fuck ’em. I'm doing the best I can, and I know I put the hours into being good at my job.”
They are relentless, though. “I had an ex speech therapist email me the other day, telling me how nasal and grating my voice was, and why hadn't I worked on it? One woman used to email me every three weeks to tell me I had no dress sense, how I looked like I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards, or how I was looking more and more manly. And then on X, people used to be a lot worse – it was blatant racism and misogyny. But I would just call it out. I don't think there's anything particularly nice about a pile-on onto someone who has been called out, but they won't do it again.”
Naga’s grit bristles throughout the pages of It’s Probably Nothing. She writes about the lack of research, funding and interest in women’s health, and about medical misogyny (noting that when she decided not to have children and opted to be sterilised, the surgeon asked if her husband had agreed). She also talks about how to have a good GP appointment: take notes, bring someone with you as an advocate, don’t be afraid to ask for a second opinion, and leave your embarrassment at the door, as nothing will shock them.
Yet she acknowledges that many women put off going to the doctor, fearing that their issue won’t be thought important enough, or because they don’t want to ‘waste’ the GP’s time. Her rule of thumb? If something is stopping you from living normally, then you need to get it sorted out. “We have to recognise when things aren't right, and say ‘I'm not living my best life’. To say ‘Something's impacting me so negatively, I can't get up for work’, or ‘I'm not sleeping’, or ‘I'm really struggling to play on the floor with my kids’. And not to just accept it.”
It’s also helpful to consider your pain thresholds, she adds. “I remember once going to the doctor, and I had a cyst on my ovary. I was lying on the bed and she said, what's your pain level? And I said, ‘Oh, it's about five or six’. She lightly touched me, and I leapt off the bed. She said, ‘Naga, your pain is not a five or a six!’ And I got sent to hospital to get it checked out.
“I think we do underplay what we go through, and push it to one side. We need to be more confident to say ‘No, this is important, I've got to address this’, and actually give ourselves a bit of a kick up the butt as well.”
Despite her condition, Naga, who lives in Hertfordshire, loves a physical challenge. She’s conquered several gruelling charity bike rides, sashayed into the 2016 series of Strictly Come Dancing, and she and James (Haggar), her TV executive husband of 18 years, both play golf “very competitively”. Very well, too – she has a handicap index of 6.4. Life is good, but the constant uterine pain persists. “Today isn't a great day, if I'm honest,” she admits. “I've got some low-level pain, probably about four or five. It hasn't been stabby this morning – it was stabby yesterday. But it's fine. To go to the words of my book, it's not life-impacting today.”
Putting adenomyosis on the map, effecting new pain relief guidance for invasive procedures, and now writing a book that crusades for women’s health – will this be her legacy? “Oh, that's a big word. That's a big, big word for someone like me,” says Naga, and pauses.
“Everything I do – from playing golf, to making a meal, to changing my sheets, to the way my bookshelf or spice cupboard is arranged – I genuinely try to do to the best of my ability. That's it. I just want to do things well.”
FOOD BITES
What’s your speciality? I make a very good curry, and fantastic roast dinners. My roast potatoes are absolutely amazing, to the point where I can't eat other people's because they're simply not as good as mine.
Mid-show snacks? Decaf tea and coffee, and herbal teas. I haven't had caffeine for about 20 years because it gives me a dodgy tummy. If I’m having a bit of a slump, it's biscuit time – a dark chocolate digestive.
Most memorable meal? It was my 50th in February, and 21 of us went to a restaurant. The wine was flowing, the food was amazing, and I was surrounded by people I loved. I'm not a massive birthday person, but that was the best celebration I've ever had.
Food favourites? Kulambu, a kidney bean curry with baby aubergines and tamarind. It's very, very spicy. Fishfingers are my guilty pleasure. I always have to have them in my freezer.
An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend in May 2025 (c) Waitrose