MrBeast opens up about 'brutal' battle with incurable disease that forced him to go on extreme medication
Anyone who is anyone knows who Jimmy Donaldson is, the thing is, you probably know him as his online alter ego of MrBeast. Boasting the most popular channel on YouTube and an incredibly successful Amazon Prime show, MrBeast has come a long way from uploading Minecraft Let's Plays as "MrBeast6000". He's now sat down for an interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
His big break came when he posted a video of him counting to 100,000 in 2017, and from there, there's been no stopping him. These days, MrBeast's biggest video is his November 2021 "$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life!", which earned him a jaw-dropping 755.5 million views.
He regularly breaks the internet with videos of him living in a cave for a week, making real-life chocolate factories, and forcing members of the public to survive for 100 days in a nuclear bunker.
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Despite his astronomical fame, reported net worth of over $1 billion, and recent engagement, it hasn't been easy for Donaldson. Speaking to Steven Bartlett on the The Diary of a CEO podcast, he opened up about his diagnosis with Crohn's disease.
Explaining how Crohn's disease is where your immune system attacks itself, MrBeast says he first noticed it when he started going to the toilet up to 10 times a day at age 15: "My GI (gastrointestinal) tract is like literally just attacking itself. It's very weird, your immune system in your gut thinks your gut is a foreign invader.
"And so it just starts attacking itself, which if you're just using the bathroom 10 times a day and not digesting food, it's why you drop weight rapidly."
Saying it 'hurts like crazy', Donaldson added: "It feels like someone's stabbing you in the gut with knife constantly when it's really, really bad."
He says that Crohn's disease led to him losing 50lbs, and after trying a series of different medications, he's now on Remicade that 'nukes' your immune system.
As for the side effects, MrBeast continued: "My voice sounds a little off right now because I just got the flu, I got COVID six times, I got shingles. I get sick all the time because for me to have my GI tract stop attacking itself, we basically have to shut down my immune system."
There are still flare-ups of his Crohn's disease, and coupled with his Remicade, Donaldson says it makes him very sick and very tired: "I just live life on hard mode, to be honest...If you wake up and you have energy, like you're already leaps and bounds ahead of me.
"You know, it makes things way more difficult."
Admitting that MrBeast looks like someone who is so productive and full of energy, Bartlett asked if the content creator still wakes up some days with fatigue. Explaining how he spent four days in a South African hospital because he got the flu and it takes him a lot longer to recover, MrBeast said that if he didn't spend so much time working, he'd put his time and efforts into researching Crohn's disease.
Referring to his medicine as a 'band-aid', he claims he's met with the top Crohn's doctors and this is the best solution for now. As for pushing through, Donaldson concluded: "You just got to really love what you do, I mean and push through, it's pretty brutal."