Dr Punam Krishan on how Strictly ‘was the best thing I’ve done for my health and fitness’
The Morning Live GP tells Lisa Salmon how good dancing is for her health, as she warns of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Your support makes all the difference.If Dr Punam Krishan could write a prescription to take part in Strictly Come Dancing for her unfit patients, she probably would.
The resident doctor on the BBC’s Morning Live show, who also works full-time as an NHS GP, took part in the last series of Strictly herself, and says it had a huge positive impact on her health and fitness, as well as being a fantastic experience.
“It’s been the best fitness journey of my life, hands down,” she declares.
“At first I was a bit anxious and I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but the training is so physical, and the dancing, and I was loving it. I’m more toned than I’ve ever been, and I had so much more energy as a result.
“And of course, there’s the mental wellbeing aspect as well – there’s mental fitness that you get as a result of dancing, and it brings so much joy. So all round, I think it was the best thing I’ve done for my health and fitness in my life.”
She says her two children – 11-year-old son Aarish, and daughter Ellora, aged four – loved her being on Strictly. “My son and I have always watched Strictly together, and over the years he’d say ‘I can imagine you doing that one day mummy’, and I used to just laugh at him. But, of course, the joy in him when I told him that his mummy was going to do Strictly – it was just amazing to watch.
“So it felt like for a few months it wasn’t just a journey that I went on, the whole family went on it together, and they loved it.”
Krishan, 41, became the fifth contestant to be eliminated from the show at the end of October, but she was delighted that blind comedian Chris McCausland was the eventual winner.
“I really connected with Chris during Strictly,” she says. “He’s such a genuine guy, a lovely, lovely man. And I think what he did through dance was inspire so many of us to believe that you really can achieve anything you set your mind to, and nothing is impossible.
“So I’m just delighted, I think he absolutely deserved to win.”
Krishan, who’s married to the Scottish Conservative MSP Sandesh Gulhane, used her own Strictly experience to keep on track with her fitness, and as well as starting the Couch to 5k challenge, she’s also enjoying weekly jazz heels dance classes.
“I think it’s been the kickstart I needed,” she reflects. “I’m a full-time working GP with two young children and I don’t have a huge amount of time – or that’s been my excuse over the last decade, when trying to find time to go to a gym class or whatever has been really difficult.
“But I’m an active person, and doing Strictly was the real boost I needed. It’s given me that need to exercise because it makes me feel so much better about myself – I feel I’ve got more energy and I’m actually carving out time, because I know I do have it.”
She says the evidence behind what any form of movement can do for your mental health is robust, and points out: “Modern life for all of us is busy, the hectic schedules are full-on. You’re switched on 24/7, and a lot of the micro-stressors stack up and can create stress, anxiety and overwhelm, and can lead you to burn out.
“In order to combat all that and to find yourself in a grounded environment, it’s important to try and exercise, because that helps to counterbalance the cortisol [stress hormone] that we get from all these everyday stressors.”
As well as dancing and running, Krishan enjoys going for long walks with the family dog, while listening to motivational podcasts. “I just feel that protecting your mental health is the most important thing you can do, because if that’s in check, then everything else follows.
“All your decisions follow on from positive mental health, and it’s not easy. It’s something we’ve all got to work hard at – and I’m not immune to that either.”
To try to retain some balance in her life and protect her mental health, Krishan says she tries to keep weekends free to spend time with her family and “recharge”, admitting that Monday to Fridays are “absolutely chaotic with work – I have a very, very busy life.”
Nevertheless, as a committed doctor she still finds the time to champion important public health messages, including a new Gas Safe Register campaign urging people to check if their cold symptoms are really a virus or actually a sign of the far more sinister carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning.
New Gas Safe Register research for the Check Your CO-ld campaign has found only a quarter (27%) of Brits recognise that symptoms such as headaches, shortness of breath and fatigue – all of which could be signs of a cold – are also potential signs of CO exposure.
Yet over half (54%) of those surveyed wrongly identified nasal congestion and fever as potential signs of CO poisoning – when in fact these two symptoms are unlikely to occur when exposed to the deadly gas.
Krishan says: “This is the time of year when we seem to have many people, particularly elderly people, who suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning, and aren’t aware of the symptoms to look out for.
“And when there’s so much flu and viruses and colds circulating, the symptoms can overlap between those and carbon monoxide poisoning.”
She says if multiple people in a household experience symptoms like headaches, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath and fatigue which are getting worse, but improve when out of the house and in fresh air, it’s crucial to get them checked out.
The best way to prevent a CO leak is to have domestic gas appliances safety checked annually, and to have a CO alarm in your home, and Krishan stresses: “I want to help educate people about what carbon monoxide poisoning is, how to recognise the signs and symptoms, and how to prevent it from happening in the first place.
“Because in this day and age, none of us should have carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Dr Punam Krishan has joined forces with Gas Safe Register to raise awareness of the differences between carbon monoxide poisoning and colds.