How Crohn’s Disease Changed YouTuber MrBeast’s Life

In a March 2022 podcast, renowned YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson — better known by his YouTube handle MrBeast — opened up about living with Crohn’s disease. “I’m probably one of the least energetic people you’ll ever meet,” 24-year-old Donaldson told the host. “I get tired very easily. I take a lot of naps and stuff like that.”

“How is that possible?” the host asked the prolific YouTuber. “You have so much energy!”

This type of exchange is quite familiar to people living with Crohn’s disease. As with many other health conditions, Crohn’s is sometimes known as an invisible illness, because people living with it often appear perfectly healthy to those around them. As a result, they don’t always get the understanding or support they need from their peers, friends, and loved ones.

MyCrohnsAndColitisTeam members can certainly relate to this scenario. “This illness is truly the worst,” one member told another. “Also, it’s an invisible sickness, so people have no clue how we actually feel.”

Donaldson has used his platform and fame to bring some visibility to Crohn’s. Crohn’s is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in which an overactive immune system causes inflammation in the digestive tract. Symptoms of Crohn’s disease — for which there are treatments but no cure — include diarrhea, abdominal pain, weight loss, and fatigue.

Donaldson’s symptoms first emerged when he was 15 — which isn’t unusual. According to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, Crohn’s is most commonly diagnosed in adolescents and people aged 20 to 30. “I lost 40 pounds because I was, like, going to the bathroom 10 times per day,” Donaldson said during the 2022 podcast interview.

In addition, Donaldson started experiencing Crohn’s-related fatigue. His lack of energy forced him to abandon playing baseball, which he’d been doing two to three hours a day.

He shifted his focus to another interest: creating videos for YouTube. Over the past decade, he’s become a master of the medium. Donaldson is the most-subscribed individual user on YouTube and has the fourth most-subscribed YouTube channel overall, with more than 121 million subscribers as of December 2022.

Among the 700-plus videos Donaldson has posted to his channel are game show-esque giveaways like “$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life!” — inspired by the hit Netflix series “Squid Game” — and stunt videos like “I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive.” Also in his trove of uploads are videos in which Donaldson talks about his experiences living with Crohn’s disease.

In his videos and interviews, Donaldson has spread awareness about life with Crohn’s, including discussing his treatment and its effect on his immune system: “I’m on what’s called Remicade,” Donaldson said in 2022. “So every eight weeks, they just do an IV with this huge bag, which essentially suppresses my immune system. So that’s why I get sick very easily — because the answer to my immune system attacking itself is just to … nuke my immune system.”

Remicade, a formulation of infliximab, is one of many treatments available for Crohn’s. It’s a type of biologic. Biologics are known to suppress the immune system, which can increase a person’s risk of contracting infections.

Donaldson has also talked about how Crohn’s affects his diet and, by association, his social life. “You know, a lot of the things you do with your friends, and whenever you hang, it usually revolves around food, which is hard for me,” he said in a 2015 video called “What Is Crohns Disease?????”

In the video, which he made when he was still a teenager learning about the condition, he said, “Sometimes, I end up bringing my own PB&J when we’re eating fast food or things like that. It just sucks all the fun out of food. I mean, eating food is a huge part of your life.”

MyCrohnsAndColitisTeam members can relate to the struggle of dining out. “I wish there was a list of food-friendly restaurants and eateries,” wrote one member. “Every time I go out to dinner, it is so hard to find a meal that does not have onion, garlic, or curry! Or even a low-FODMAP menu item.” (A low-FODMAP diet limits particularly hard-to-digest carbohydrates.)

Over the years, Donaldson learned which foods caused him to experience flare-ups by following an elimination diet. This entails starting with a very limited diet, then gradually adding different foods to see what causes a flare. “There’s a lot of things that aggravate it. Like, chips, cookies, or things that have corn,” Donaldson said in 2022. “I know what to eat now, where, like, my diet isn’t causing it, but sometimes, it just flares up. It’s weird.”

Recently featured in the Forbes “30 Under 30” list for the second year in a row, Donaldson has launched other successful business ventures. Among them is his Feastables line of chocolate bars, which are made with limited ingredients. The plant-based varieties contain four ingredients: sugar cane, cocoa bean, cocoa butter, and sunflower lecithin. The milk chocolate bars also include milk. The small number of ingredients means people with restricted diets won’t have to pore over dozens of ingredients to figure out everything they’re ingesting.

Donaldson has also launched a fast-food line called MrBeast Burger. It started as a virtual restaurant concept: Customers can order MrBeast Burger beef burgers, vegan Impossible-brand burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, and fries prepared in the kitchens of contracted restaurants in North America and Europe. A physical MrBeast Burger restaurant opened in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in September 2022.

Donaldson says he’s able to eat his burgers. “Actually that’s fine. It doesn’t flare me up. Even when I eat burgers, I usually take off the buns and eat meat. I don’t really like bread that much anyways,” he said in 2022.

Health experts recommend that people with IBD avoid fried foods, heavily processed foods, and overly fatty red meat — but ground beef seems to be easier to digest compared to steak.

Donaldson also engages in philanthropic efforts — beyond famously giving away extravagant prizes to strangers in videos such as “I Opened a FREE BANK” and “I Opened a Free Car Dealership.” In 2021, he launched a nonprofit called Beast Philanthropy. The organization has thus far donated more than 4 million pounds of food and has fed nearly 250,000 people.

Also in 2021, Donaldson and YouTuber Mark Rober teamed with Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup to raise $30 million to remove 30 million pounds of garbage from the world’s oceans.

More recently, Donaldson and Rober announced that their #TeamTrees campaign had raised enough money to plant 20 million trees around the globe in support of the Arbor Day Foundation’s global reforestation projects.

Despite Crohn’s fatigue and unpredictable flare-ups, Donaldson remains positive and laser-focused on his various endeavors. He said having an accepting attitude about his condition has helped in pursuing and achieving his goals. “Sitting there and mourning over it all day, that doesn’t do anything,” he said. “If it’s something that’s out of your control, worrying about it is, quite literally, a waste of time.”

Many MyCrohnsAndColitisTeam members also recommend fostering and maintaining a positive mindset. “I do believe attitude goes a long way in staying healthy,” wrote one member. “I have a puppy that just turned 1, and she helps me stay active.”

Advocating for yourself and sharing your experiences with others can also be helpful — and you don’t need 120 million subscribers and a global platform like Donaldson to do it. Responding to a MyCrohnsAndColitisTeam member who wrote, “An invisible illness is a lonely illness,” another member advised the following: “Tell one of your closest friends about what you are dealing with, and trust me, it’s a huge boulder off your shoulders when you have a friend who is willing to listen and realize that this disease is different for different people.”

MyCrohnsAndColitisTeam is the social network for people with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and their loved ones. On MyCrohnsAndColitisTeam, more than 167,000 members come together to ask questions, give advice, and share their stories with others who understand life with Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis.

Can you relate to any of Donaldson’s experiences living with Crohn’s? Share your thoughts in the comments below, or start a conversation by posting on your Activities page.

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